Has pink always been known as a girly color?

No because boys wear pink too! girly is how a person acts. A colour is a colour

When babies began to be "color coded" the colors were actually flipped, boys in pink and girls in blue. 

Paul Rusesabagina might mean that words have the power to make people act or react in a certain situations. Let´s take an example from his text, he asked the question "What had caused this to happen? Very simple: words" He is referring to a "cool" guy who ends up being a militar carrying guns so Paul blames his parents because he thinks that he might have been told "over and over again" how stupid he was, how he never would be attractive or physically fit. This was used to enforce the power of the elite. So this might be considered a clear case in which  due to words a person might decide his future.