TRANSCRIPT: CLINTON REMARKS AT RACE INITIATIVE OUTREACH MEETING

[USIA]

USIS Washington File

13 January 1998

TRANSCRIPT: CLINTON REMARKS AT RACE INITIATIVE OUTREACH MEETING

(President meets with prominent U.S. civil rights leaders) (16050)

Washington -- President Clinton met for an hour and forty minutes the
evening of January 12 in the Cabinet Room of the White House with 15
U.S. civil rights leaders to learn their thinking on ways to improve
race relations in the United States.

The group included Jewish, Muslim, Hispanic, Asian, Native American
and African American leaders.

They praised Clinton for launching a national dialogue on race.
Several participants praised him for sticking with his appointment of
Bill Lann Lee as acting Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights,
despite Republican opposition in Congress, and they urged him not to
back down on support for affirmative action programs.

Representative Eleanore Holmes Norton (Democrat-District of Columbia),
one of four members of the U.S. Congress at the meeting, told Clinton
that "this is the first time in the history of the Republic that a
President of the United States has confronted race without it
confronting him; that is to say, without an in-your-face crisis."

Representative John Lewis (Democrat-Georgia) urged the President to
use his January 27 State of the Union address to discuss the racial
question.

"We cannot deny the fact that the scars and sting of racism are still
deeply embedded in American society. That cannot be denied. You should
say, there's not any room in our society for racism, for bigotry,
anti-Semitism, for hate crime and violence against our fellow
Americans. Make this issue, this crusade a moral issue," Lewis said.
"On affirmative action, don't back off, don't back down; meet it head
on," he added.

Civil Rights leader Roger Wilkins, a Professor of History and American
Culture at George Mason University, thanked Clinton for inviting him
to participate in the meeting.

Lewis said being present in the Cabinet Room was "quite an emotional
moment" for him. "I haven't been in this room in 30 years. And the
last time I was in this room, Martin (Luther) King was sitting there,
and my uncle was sitting there, Whitney Young was sitting where Hugh
(Bernard Price) is sitting. John (Lewis himself) wasn't here because
he was in jail."

The White House released this list of attendees at the meeting:

John Echohawk is a member of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and is the
Executive Director of the Native American Rights Fund (NAPF).

Wade Henderson is the Executive Director of the Leadership Conference
on Civil Rights.

Stewart Kwoh is currently the President and Executive Director of the
Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California and serves
as Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors for the National Asian Pacific
American Legal Consortium.

Karen Narasaki is the Executive Director of The National Asian Pacific
American Legal Consortium, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

Hugh Bernard Price is the Association Executive of the Urban League.

Anifa Quraishi is an LLM student of comparative constitutional law at
Columbia University. Currently, she is President of Karamahi Muslim
Women Lawyers for Human Rights and an associate of the Muslim Women's
League based in Los Angeles, California.

Nan Rich is currently the President of the National Council of Jewish
Women (NCJW).

Alfred Rotondaro has been the Executive Director of the National
Italian American Foundation since 1979.

Mayor Joe Scrna, Jr. (Democrat-Sacramento, California) was elected to
the Sacramento City Council in 1981, and was elected Mayor of
Sacramento in 1992.

Roger Wilkins is a professor of History and American Culture at George
Mason University and a commentator on National Public Radio.

Raul Yzaguirre is the President of the National Council of La Raza.

Congressional Members:
Sen. Tom Daschle (Democrat-South Dakota)
Rep. John Lewis (Democrat-Georgia)
Rep. Eleanore Holmes Norton (Democrat-District of Columbia)
Rep. Bob Matsui (Democrat-California)

Administration Officials:
Sylvia Mathews
Maria Echaveste
Minyon Moore
Janet Murguia
John Hope Franklin
Christopher Edley
Judy Winston

Following is the White House transcript:

(begin transcript)

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
January 12, 1998

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
IN RACE INITIATIVE OUTREACH MEETING
The Cabinet Room

THE PRESIDENT: Well, welcome. I'm glad to see all of you, and I thank
you for coming in, some of you from a very great distance. I will be
very brief. We're about six months into this effort and I think we've
gotten quite a bit done and we've certainly generated a fair amount of
controversy. And we're hoping for a good next six months. We've got a
very ambitious schedule laid out. But we thought it would be quite
helpful to bring a group in and just listen to you talk about where
you think we are with the issue, what you think still needs to be
done, what this Advisory Board and our project can and cannot
reasonably expect to do within this year. And maybe we can talk about
some of the things that we expect to be in the budget and some other
issues.

But I'll say more as we go along through the meeting, but I'd rather
take the maximum amount of time to be listening to you. And maybe we
could just start with Wade.

MR. HENDERSON: Thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT: Nice tie.

MR. HENDERSON: Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much. First of
all, thank you not only on my own behalf, but on behalf of everyone
here, for the invitation to be with you this afternoon. Suffice it to
say we're honored to have a few moments of your time to talk about the
Advisory Board and what we consider one of the most important
initiatives of your administration.

I think all of us are fully aware of the depth of your commitment to
these issues and your work on these issues is reflected in the
policies of your administration. We're pleased by that. And this is an
opportunity for us, obviously, to contribute in what we hope will be a
positive way to the success of this most important endeavor.

I think as we look around the room, the diversity of the attendants --
the attendees, those who are here, and the communities from whence
they come, reflect the diversity in America as a whole. And the fact
that you've sought to bring these voices to the table is something
that should be commended. We want to use this time productively, and
obviously, many of us, we think, are of like mind on some of the
important policy issues and civil rights issues facing the country.

We certainly think that on the issue of affirmative action, which has
been the most burning and controversial issue in the debate on civil
rights, we have a generally shared vision of where we want the country
to go and we know you share that vision. And therefore, we don't think
it's necessary to spend a great deal of time reaffirming our mission
and message on that important question. I will note with one exception
that we will face in the coming year a new challenge to that effect in
the state of Washington where an initiative may be on the ballot in
November of this year, and we think that's an important issue that
require national attention. And we know that you will be there leading
the effort to ensure that the citizens of that state reaffirm their
commitment to equal opportunity.

Therefore, if we spend our time productively, I'd like to at least
highlight three issues that I think could reflect well on the work of
the Advisory Board. And I'm especially pleased to see Dr. Franklin
here, my old mentor and colleague. He's doing such a fine job in that
regard.

The first issue, I think, is one that brings Americans together. It
unites across party lines Democrat and Republican alike, and that is a
commitment to enforce existing civil rights laws in a vigorous way. We
know that throughout the debate over affirmative action one thing is
clear, and that is the American people share a commitment to the
vigorous enforcement of existing law. And if those laws can be made to
work effectively, discrimination, which we know exists and is real,
can be diminished.

We know that discrimination is a problem, and one need only look at
the reports from the federal agencies in the Executive Branch to
confirm that. The FBI's statistics on hate crimes issued last week
helps to confirm that. The statistics from agencies like the EEOC and
others help to confirm that.

So from our standpoint, it would be a productive use of resources if
the federal government took a zero tolerance policy on discrimination
in the same way that it does in other areas of policy, and that that
commitment is reflected in the budgetary submissions that you make to
Congress this year and in the remainder of your term in office.

Now, we know you have a commitment to that. You've made every effort
to increase civil rights enforcement budget over the last several
years, but making a vigorous commitment to that effort we think could
make an important contribution overall.

I would mention only two other things. From our standpoint, certainly
the economic growth of the economy has been outstanding, and we have
seen a more robust, more vigorous economy than we've ever seen in our
country. And yet, at the same time, there is a growing gap in terms of
the benefits of the economy between those who have the resources that
the economy generates and those who don't. So the gap between the
haves and the have-nots and their ability to participate in the fruits
of the economy seems to us, at least to me, has not been fully
appreciated.

What we're hoping is that you can use the bully pulpit of the
Presidency to help focus the attention of the American people on that
gap, and to use your good office to influence, in the private sector,
policy initiatives that might contribute to a lessening of the
problem.

One of the things that perhaps you might consider is convening a
meeting of CEOs and chairs of boards of Fortune 500 companies here at
the White House for a private conversation with you to talk about how
these companies can use their resources to help reverse the trend
toward disinvestment, both in urban communities, but also in poor
world communities. It's a policy effort that unites across racial
lines. It speaks to the economic needs of the American people,
regardless of where they live. And certainly it involves using the
resources that these companies have to help stimulate economic growth.
It's the greening of America in ways that we've seen already.

I know that others have spoken about the problems of discrimination on
Wall Street -- Reverend Jackson, in particular. There's going to be an
effort to address that; but making sure that economic benefits are
extended to more people. And that includes, hopefully, the development
of jobs and opportunity for people who don't have them is very
important.

Now, I know of your welfare-to-work initiative. That makes a
significant contribution to the debate, but there are many people who
are currently not receiving welfare, who are still missing out on the
economic wherewithal that we're talking about. Addressing their needs,
helping to encourage job development and investment in these
communities can make a difference.

Lastly, I think that many of the problems that we've talked about with
respect to the race initiative and the need for this Advisory Board,
trace their roots back to the inequality that's inherent in the
American educational system. And unless we spend some time focusing on
the needs of children of the next generation, trying to reduce that
disparity, we're going to have a continuing problem.

The single most important contribution perhaps that you could make
under these circumstances is to try to ensure that more high-quality
instruction is made available in both inner-city and in rural school
system that don't have that high-quality instruction that is brought
about largely through the creation of incentives that attract bright,
committed, dedicated professionals to the profession of teaching.

Right now the profession lacks status. It lacks recognition. And
certainly it lacks the kind of economic incentive that attracts the
best and the brightest. So incentives for loan reduction for students
or individuals who commit themselves to five years or more working in
these urban school systems, providing them with the training that
allows them to be successful, helping to hold young people to high
standards -- all of that could make, we think, a significant
difference.

And so my suggestion is to focus on those areas that tend to unite the
American people, and that these are I think three examples of perhaps
what could be done.

THE PRESIDENT: I agree with that. Let me say on the first, on the
discrimination, just very, very briefly, we're working on that. We
have a good budget and a good plan. And I think we ought to go hard
toward the people who say they are against discrimination but they
oppose affirmative action in the Republican majority, and say, well,
if you are, why won't you fund the EEOC? Give us the tools to do the
job.

On the economy, we'll have a very aggressive set of proposals that go
right at you're suggesting and also education. Of course, we've
already suggested that we -- and have offered a program of loan
forgiveness for people who will go into educationally underperforming
school districts to teach. But we have some other things to offer in
that regard.

I think all these are important because we have to find ways to unify
the American people around this agenda in ways that actually change
the future outcomes for people. And so I appreciate that. I think
that's very good.

Who wants to go next? Go ahead.

MR. ROTUNDARO: Mr. President, I would pick up on a number of things
that Wade said. In particular, two points that I think are of some
substantial importance. Number one, and I would agree with I think
most people around the table that the racial commission that is doing
a very fine job under very difficult circumstances. But I think it
would be a tragedy if the work the racial commission stops this June,
stops in September, or stops sometime this year. One of the things
that I would propose is that one of the aspects of the racial
commission should be an attempt to enlist as many forces as possible
in American government, the opinion leaders, the universities, the
corporations, to enlist as many of the opinion leaders as possible in
an effort to continue the fight against social injustice or racism.

I think it's important that -- I think it's very, very important that
racism, that discrimination simply be held as an unacceptable approach
to life by most Americans. And I think that that is something that can
only be done through enlisting the opinion leaders in this country.

And by the opinion leaders I mean the brokers in Congress, I mean the
educators, I mean the journalists, I mean people in public life. But I
also mean organizations such as mine -- white, ethnic organizations;
i.e., we're with the National Italian American Foundation. I represent
that organization, but we've also been working with some 30 or 40
different other ethnic groups -- Polish groups, Croatian, German. Most
of these groups can have, and I think do have, an influence on their
membership, and I think that an attempt should be made so that we also
can be educated to the needs of what has to be done.

As an example, -- Isadaria (phonetic) and I go back a long way. It's
only been within the last couple of years that I've begun to
understand in even some small amount the impact of police reaction to
minorities -- blacks, to Hispanics. I simply did not know it. Hugh
Price -- I think your organization did a paper on this and mentioned
this as a very important element. This is something that I simply was
not aware of to any substantial degree. So I think we -- that is white
ethnic groups -- do have to be educated along these lines so we can
help educate our own membership.

Finally, there's one other element that I think is important and that
is that not only must there be an attempt made to combat at the
highest levels and on down through the society the impact of social
injustice and racism, but I think we're also dealing to a degree with
not just racism but also the elements of class. Once again I turn to
the National Urban League -- I think you've just undertaken what I
read is supposed to be a major project on the question of elevating
the importance of academics for black kids in the urban community.

Virtually everything I've been reading in this field recently leads me
to believe that academic excellence is maybe not prized as much as it
should be. And if education isn't there, jobs -- the better jobs will
not be there. And although you may make a very substantial impact on
the question of racism in America, we still might be left with a
substantial amount of minority kids who don't have the right attitude
to an education, who don't have the right skills to have jobs and who
are never going to get out of that economic, educational ghetto.

MS. RICH: I guess there are two areas that I would like to emphasize,
and both of them, I think both approaches would include
public-private, nonprofit partnerships, because I think that
collaboration is very important in all of these efforts.

I guess Wade kind of touched on it with the economic. I'd like to say
that I think the workplace is probably one of the most important areas
where we need to focus. There is, obviously, still a lack of
opportunity, of full opportunity for people of color and for women.
And I think the workplace is key because people with diverse
backgrounds are more likely to meet each other in the workplace than,
say, in possibly their neighborhoods or places of worship.

And so I think that I would want to suggest that there be -- you
mentioned about bringing CEOs together -- I think that a lot of
emphasis of trying to bring corporate people together into this
process and deal with training for cultural diversity and increase
cultural diversity awareness, which would help reduce bias.

The other thing is that I think that very often we start too late. I
think that it needs to be started at pre-school, in child care, if you
will. I mean, very early -- children aren't born prejudiced; they
learn it from someplace. I would suggest that even in programs -- I
know a program which you're familiar with, which I think you know I'm
familiar with -- a program like HIPPIE (phonetic), which is an early
childhood program. It has culturally diverse materials, dealing with
all types of populations. There are many programs that are in our
schools today that are very focused on cultural diversity.

But I think that we can't wait until high school. We have to really
start earlier, and focus on increasing this awareness training even at
very early ages.

MAYOR SCRNA: Mr. President, I think Wade does speak for a lot of us.
And I think all of those issues -- the urban issues, job issues,
economic development, schooling, education -- are important.

In California, we are confronted with a particularly difficult
dilemma, and that is the scapegoating of immigrants, which is
incredibly divisive in the state. As you know, there's a current issue
that will be on the '98 ballot regarding bilingual education. It's
going to be very difficult for all of us. I don't know what to advise
you on that issue. Obviously, the courageous position would be for all
of us to oppose it, and I personally will as the Mayor of the City of
Sacramento. But what concerns me the most is over time, especially
with Prop 187 that was passed by the voters, led by the Republicans,
and then 209, that those are all wedge issues that tend to divide us
along racial lines.

The immigrant community is being scapegoated in California, as you
know, and making them to be the ogres. What to do about that problem
confronts me. I think a lot of the issues that Wade talked about
touches, I think, what we all have to do as people of color, with the
President's support to advance the cause of justice and equity.

This issue of immigration is a particularly difficult one because I
don't think any of us know what to do. The one thing to do, however, I
think, is encourage the INS to process those folks that are applying
for citizenship to either make that process work more efficiently, to
get people through that process. It can be very, very difficult, and
it can even be very costly to some folks. And once that has happened,
to then, I think, devise a program. I don't know where it would come
from. Maybe it comes from business. Maybe it comes from labor leaders.
Maybe it comes from the White House. And that is an effort of
encouraging citizenship and processing citizenship as thoroughly and
as quickly as possible to incorporate those new citizens into the
American fabric.

I think a statement or your leadership in leading to citizenship and
all the responsibilities that go with it need incredible support. This
is a very difficult issue for us in California, and California is kind
of a unique place, as you know. You've made history there by winning
two elections in California. A lot of people don't know the basics
about our state. They perceive that, because surf is up, that we're
all kind of liberals out there. It's not true. And you know better
than I.

The last real contested race before yours, Mr. President, as you know,
of a Democrat who won the state, was in 1948.

I don't count '64 because that was a lopsided victory for us. But
you've made history there.

And I think the Latino, the Mexican American community has been
absolutely revolutionized. The Republicans are losing ground, and I
think all the press reports are correct, because Prop 187 and the
Wilson administration have so polarized our community that it has
scared them into participation. They're now participating politically
out of fear. That fear is -- my mother is an example, who's now 76
years old. She finally took out her citizenship papers at the age of
73. Before then, we couldn't get her to take out her citizenship
papers because she felt, well, if I take out my American citizenship
papers, I cease to be Mexican. Not true.

I couldn't convince her as her son, as the mayor of a major city in
California. Neither could my sister, who's also an elected official in
Stockton, California. But when she was told that 187 threatened her
Social Security, it got her to take the classes. She passed her
classes and is now a citizen, and is a registered Democrat. We have to
-- I'm not suggesting this is a campaign strategy.

What I am suggesting, though, is that it opens up an issue that's very
important. How do we get that new immigrant population to participate?
And the way you do that, I think, is encourage citizenship and
directing the INS to help us in that process.

These folks really are a part of our economy, and they want to be, I
think, good Americans. I think you'll find that those new immigrants
are probably more nationalistic than most of us here. They believe in
this country, and they believe in this system; and they're afraid to
participate. We need to make that easier.

So I think, Mr. President, from that perspective, there's a whole new
set out there -- a whole new set of Americans that are just waiting
for some encouragement that says, you're good people; you're here to
work like most of us, how we got here -- to build a better life for
all of us, to build on the American dream; and to be considered with
this race board that American democracy and the American fabric has to
include them.

Then when we talk about race, we include them in that discussion. In
our community, by the way, it's not just the Latinos.

It's also Asian Americans. We have a growing Southeast Asian community
in our city that is very productive, very honored to be here, working
hard. And I think a lot of folks that come from Mexico or that come
from other parts of Latin America are waiting to be told, we
appreciate you being here and we'll do everything to assist you in
becoming Americans. So I would encourage you, Mr. President, to do
what you can to encourage the INS to process folks thoroughly,
quickly, and then sponsor a citizenship program.

THE PRESIDENT: You know, when I came here, it was taking an
unconscionably long time for people to get through the system, and we
tried to accelerate it. And the Congress had such a negative reaction
to it, the Republican majority did, they tried to investigate the
whole INS because we took the position that you shouldn't have to wait
years and years and years after you had already been here five years,
to have the government decide whether you could become a citizen or
not. I still think that's the right thing to do. I think it's entirely
too bureaucratic, and I think we should do better.

MS. NARASAKI: Mr. President, I'm very glad to hear you say that,
because the backlog persists and there are already 2 million
individuals, and it's two years long. That's how many would-be
citizens we would have --

THE PRESIDENT: But we were taking it down, to be fair -- until we were
viciously and unfairly attacked for making the law work the way it's
supposed to.

MS. NARASAKI: Exactly it. I also wanted to applaud the administration
for including a sizable fix for food stamps in the budget. I think
it's going to be very important to save those who are the most
vulnerable in our society, who already are facing the loss of food in
the last two weeks of every month.

But I really most want to thank you for the stand that you took on
Bill Lann Lee, and we look forward to working with you to remove the
"acting" from his title, as you so eloquently said when you introduced
him.

I think that fight, to me, was very instructive, because it forced a
discussion on affirmative action in a way that I think this country
had not had the discussion. And I hope that you will continue to
pursue those opportunities to put a face on these issues, because all
too often the discussion is a lot of rhetoric, a lot of philosophy,
and people don't see the faces of discrimination that we're really
talking about.

I hope that you will take the opportunity to use Washington state's
initiative to again deepen the understanding that the American public
has about what we're talking about, why we need affirmative action,
what kind of discrimination is out there. The California initiative on
bilingual education I think is an important opportunity to talk about
discrimination as it impacts particularly Latinos and Asians.

Finally, I wanted to echo some of the earlier comments. I think it's
really important to try to now narrow the discussion. You've laid a
very good general foundation, but it's hard to get deep into actual,
where it hurts discussion until you get specific. And I hope that, by
homing in on things like bilingual education and affirmative action,
it will make the discussion more real.

I believe that you should challenge religious leaders to come in,
challenge the members of the Christian Coalition to come in and talk
about what are they going to do to address this issue, as you have
with the conservative meeting. I think that one of the best things
that the initiative has done is to cause the media to focus on these
issues and to start to flesh them out when you raise them.

I think it would be great if you called the entertainment network
heads together or the talk show hosts together or some of the
television or movie producers together, talk about how the stereotypes
that are still replete in our television and our movies continues to
drive the perception that Americans have about each other, and
challenge them and ask them what they plan to do on this issue.

This year is the 30th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act. We've
already heard that the housing industry plans assault on the Fair
Housing Act. It's a great opportunity, again, to talk about
discrimination in housing. Call the leaders in the insurance
companies, the bankers, the home builders, and talk about
discrimination in housing and their role in it and what they intend to
do.

I think that your leadership in bringing these real cases to light
will help further the discussion beyond where we've been able to go
today.

REPRESENTATIVE LEWIS: Mr. President, I want to thank you also for
inviting us to participate in this discussion. I agree with my friends
and colleagues here -- you have an opportunity to provide the way out,
I think, in America at this time, at this juncture. It's a major
crisis, really. We can take the great leap ahead, or we can stand
still.

I really believe that when you speak in two weeks, the State of the
Union address, you should address the whole question of race. You
should talk about the dialogue and get the American people to engage
in a national dialogue on race. I agree you should bring in the
religious leaders, the labor leaders, the business leaders, teacher
groups, student groups, young people, and get us all talking about
race.

We cannot deny the fact that the scars and sting of racism are still
deeply embedded in American society. That cannot be denied. You should
say, there's not any room in our society for racism, for bigotry,
anti-Semitism, for hate crime and violence against our fellow
Americans. Make this issue, this crusade a moral issue.

On affirmative action, don't back off, don't back down; meet it head
on. Debate the people the same way you did in Ohio, and let us all put
all our cards on the table if we're going to move down that road
toward the creation of one America and one American family, and create
what Dr. King called a beloved community, and inter-racial democracy.
If we believe we can do it, we must do it. And I don't think we have
much time in America to do it. But we're all in this boat together.

I think you just have to speak in a very plain way to the American
people, and leave no one out, leave no one behind.

MR. KWOH: Thank you. I want to join in in appreciating your commitment
on the race initiative. Coming from Los Angeles, I think your
appointment of Bill Lee and the fight for him in his current post
really built perhaps the best multi-racial coalition we've seen in
decades. So I want to thank you for that.

And one of our staff attorneys, Julie Soo (phonetic), wanted to say
hello. She was very honored by your welcome after she won the human
rights award.

Coming from Los Angeles and knowing, as my colleagues mentioned, some
of the racial dynamics in California, I am very concerned that the
race initiative has not had the local impact it can have. There's few,
if any, local politicians who have taken advantage of this
opportunity. There are only a handful of community groups who have
done anything new or additional since the race initiative was
launched. And certainly the race relations in California need
improvement. Since the '92 riots, since Prop 187 and Prop 209,
discussions and dialogues in the O.J. Simpson case, we've just seen
people more and more racially polarized.

My suggestion is to have you focus on local action. I agree with my
colleagues on the national enforcement issues that they've raised -- I
fully agree with them. But I do think that the local action will
enable you to see a bubbling up of creative solutions to race
divisions. It will allow more local support for the national
initiatives that you are taking leadership on. It will help to include
the diversity of those local areas.

It won't be a broad discussion, but when you talk about who is going
to do something in local communities you have to include everyone. And
I stress action because I believe that dialogue within the context of
taking common action is the best solution and the best dialogue,
because then people work out their differences within striving for
something of common good.

And let me just close by giving a couple suggestions. One is I think
that local leaders need to hear from you that you expect them to take
direct action, direct local action. The politicians, community groups
-- that if a letter, a call, a word from the President said, I want
you to take local community action to improve your communities and
improve race relations at the same time, and I'd like a report from
you in a year or two, I believe that would help us tremendously.

Secondly, I think there are a lot of federal programs at the local
level that can incorporate race relations improvement into them. For
example, your AmeriCorps program, which I greatly admire, if you set
one of the goals -- not the only goal, but one of the goals is to
improve race relations, then the group of people who are working in a
housing project are not just improving the physical environment of the
housing project. They're bringing the black and white, Latino, Asian
neighborhood people together. If that is a goal within the federal
program, I think then we could see a lot more action.

And both of these suggestions would not require a federal funding
program. But I think people are waiting to hear from you to say, what
should individuals, what should communities, what should local areas
do themselves to improve race relations. Right now I see it as people
are waiting and they're watching, but they have not heard from you on
what they should do. And that's my suggestion.

THE PRESIDENT: I've been just -- sort of in support of what you said.
We have -- one of the most clearly successful things we've done, even
though it's not -- we don't have it on prime-time television in ads or
anything, because we don't have that kind of money, but we put up this
Internet home page with promising practices in communities around the
country. And substantial numbers of people have tapped into it to see
what's being done someplace else and can they apply it in their own
community, is there some way to build on it. It's been very, very
impressive.

The other thing you said about recruiting leadership I think is -- the
one thing that we did is we wrote several thousand young people and
asked them to take some initiative, and hundreds of them wrote us back
with very specific things saying what they were going to do. So that's
some indication that if we identify a given list of people, whether
they're mayors, city council people, county officials, you name it --
and ask them to do something specific, that they'll do that.

MR. PRICE: Mr. President, first I'd like to thank you for appointing
the distinguished John Franklin to chair the advisory committee and
giving him a little bit of a travel budget. He was with the executives
of our Urban League movement just last week and it was a wonderful
presentation and a great chance for people who revere him to be in
touch with him.

The second point I'd make is I do think there are some things going on
that have been tripped off by the initiative that perhaps aren't on
the national media radar screen. But I spoke, as did your good friend,
Joe Martin, to a gathering of 400 people in Charlotte, North Carolina,
which has embarked on a major effort to look at race relations in that
community. And it was triggered by this initiative, although it hasn't
been formally associated with the initiative. And it might be
interesting to track how much of that is going on. There may be more
with some legs on it that perhaps we don't even realize.

There are three areas I'd like to touch on briefly. One is -- a couple
of them basically have been spoken to, but I wanted to underscore
them. I think the whole issue of closing the gap between young people
who are achieving in school and those who aren't is something that's
got to be dealt with on a mobilization footing. I don't think we're
quite at the fever pitch that we need in that area, and yet it's at
the root of the initiative.

I mean, you're announcing you want to do something to help close the
gap in skilled workers, and I read the other day in the Wall Street
Journal that head hunters are prowling Brazil looking for skilled
workers, and yet they're right in our school systems, our urban and
rural school systems. And we still aren't at a point where that has
got the level of commitment and energy that I think we need in the
nation.

There was a submit, that you remember only too well, on the Palisades
just a couple years ago, of governors and business leaders, and the
whole focus was on standards, tests, and sanctions. And I remember
several of us bringing up the subject of, are we going to focus on the
deliver systems, what happens in the school buildings and the
communities to lift the kids to these standards. And the subject was
literally ruled out of order. I remember because I was ruled out of
order when I raised that question.

And I think there has got to be a whole other mobilization around that
issue, and that's derivative of the knowledge base that exists. In an
earlier meeting, we talked about the Equity 2000 program of the
college board and Don Stewart, and they've just issued a whole other
report indicating dramatic gains in the number of kids who are taking
and passing algebra and geometry. And there is just a lot of knowledge
that now exists and some initiatives of scale that a whole agenda
could be built around that involves a combination of federal
responsibility, local responsibility, state, and community. And I just
think we've got to almost move to a -- it's naive of me to say this --
I think we need to move to an almost warlike mobilization on that
issue, because if we don't, we're not going to deal with many of the
other issues that bedevil us.

A second area that I think is derivative of the first is, many cities
are beginning to show some signs of life. There is an article, again,
I read today about Grand Rapids coming back and other cities are
coming back. But the kids who are in the inner-cities and in those
neighborhoods with still very high unemployment aren't as connected to
what's happening in downtown revitalization as perhaps the ought to
be, and I think that's an area for considerable attention.

The third one is a hobby horse you're familiar with. On the taxi over
from the airport today, I clipped out another article from my
alternative reading source, the Washington Times -- Police Profiling
Goes on Trial. A police officer in Miami, Florida, was stopped for
changing lanes and for a partially obscured tail light. And it's off
to the races. There is another ugly situation down there, and it's
because a trivial thing has been escalated into something serious.

After the Abna Luima (phonetic) incident in New York City, the New
York Times began poking around into this issue of police interaction
with civilians, and they have uncovered enormous problems in police
practices, but even more so in the attitudes that are developing among
minority citizens toward police, toward authority, therefore toward
whites, even though many of the officers may be black.

And I just think somehow we've got to dive into this issue -- you've
heard me on this before -- it does not go away and it just tears at
the fabric of our society.

THE PRESIDENT: The profiling, I think, is a serious problem. We've
talked a lot about it. I think I've seen the three most glaring
examples that I've seen since I've been President are the repeated
example black Americans have given of being stopped by police for no
apparent reason. We had a black journalists group in here not very
long ago, and every African American male in the room had been stopped
within the last few years for no apparent reason.

The stopping of Hispanics for no apparent reason near the border. And
the immediate assumption after the Oklahoma City bombing that some
Arab American had been involved. You know that I was able to sort of
put a puncher in that within 24 hours. But it was -- when I cautioned
the American people not to do that. But we just -- it's still a part
of how we relate to each other that we have to deal with.

REPRESENTATIVE HOLMES NORTON: Mr. President, I'd just like to say a
word about your initiative, from where I sit in the Congress. When you
first announced it -- John will recall, perhaps -- that we had an
immediate meeting because we thought that particularly black people
were looking for leadership on how they're supposed to think about
this race initiative.

It didn't take us long to decide that we should endorse and embrace
it; that if you get the attention of the President of the United
States on race, you ought to take it and run with it. And if I may say
so, Mr. President, so far as I can tell, this is the first time in the
history of the Republic that a President of the United States has
confronted race without it confronting him; that is to say, without an
in-your-face crisis. A war, a riot, then we're ready somehow to take
it on.

I hope that there is something instructive in your legacy about
ongoing American problems that have to be redefined and dealt with
again in each generation on its own terms. So notice what the
conservatives are saying -- oh, well, why are they talking about race;
who's doing something about it. In Congress it's really interesting to
hear these folks who don't want to do anything about it now criticize
you for only wanting to talk about it. I mean, our answer has to be,
you can't possibly do anything about race if you don't talk about it.
You surely are not prepared to do something about something you don't
even want to mention or come to grips with orally or verbally.

I endorse your notion that it is time to give some definition to where
you want the commission to go. I believe that you are struggling with
it in the right way, because in our country there is almost no
important problem that cannot be defined in racial terms. And thus is
the history of our country. Every social issue has a large racial
dimension, and a large multi-racial dimension. So in a real sense, it
could set your initiative up for failure if, in fact, it is left as
wide open as it is, so anybody's problem you can throw in here and
say, okay, that's race; you all deal with that before this is all
over.

You have taken on -- it is very brave to take on something called race
at this time, since you don't have a crisis that gives definition, and
therefore the burden is on you.

I would also like to see -- I think if we really want to get the
attention of everybody except the usual suspects that talking about
race only in terms that we have talked about for the last 50 years is
not likely to get the average American engaged. One of the things that
most concerns me is one of those problems that doesn't quite seem a
problem, and that is the absence of any sense of racial
reconciliation.

I don't know, Roger, it seems to me that there was more communication
across racial lines when we were in the civil rights movement than
there is today. There is enormous racial isolation in this country. I
make no real comparisons; I have no basis to do so. But I can tell you
that I was in Yugoslavia in the 1960s as a student, going to some
conference, and I was very impressed with Yugoslavia. In the middle of
-- totalitarian still intact -- and it just seemed just like America
to me. And once totalitarianism was gone, those people tore each other
apart and were involved in savagery.

So I don't like it, I feel a sense of discomfort when everybody's so
comfortable in her own racial and ethnic niche. It all feels great.
And you can turn to your channel on the cable, and you can find only
yourself there 24 hours a day, and isn't that great? I really wonder
how healthy that can be in a society that calls itself multiracial and
multiethnic and practices almost none of it. I must tell you, among my
own people, among black people, I see a very -- I will use a nice word
-- a very parochial sense that I didn't see before, where people are
quite willing to say things in their own councils that I don't think
they would have said 30 years ago. I think that just comes from the
comfort of dealing only in your own councils -- feeling reinforced,
really in your own views because you're dealing with yourself and it's
more comfortable to deal with yourself and not being challenged.

I would like to reinforce what Wade said about enforcement in a couple
of specific ways. The chairmanship of the EEOC -- I hope I will not be
seen as unduly parochial here -- is just being vacated by a very
capable young man -- for whatever reason, the chairmanship of this
lead agency on civil rights went vacant for enormous amount of time
last time. It does seem to me a lost ground.

The Reagan people had almost destroyed it. With all the positions to
fill, it was left vacant for a very long time. I can only hope that
you give some priority to filling the chairmanship.

In the Congress, the EEOC was left with all kinds of backlogging. We
were able -- I worked with J.C. Watts to get some money for it last
year, and we got some extra money for it this year.

But I believe it came at level funding this year. And again, one way
to express one's concern for race, it seems to me, is to adequately
fund these agencies.

Finally, something to be said about the State of the Union speech. I
think everybody -- I think the press is going to be looking to see the
way in which you in fact -- everybody is going to expect that you
refer to the race initiative in some form or fashion in the State of
the Union speech. I think that is a very difficult challenge for you.

There ought to be some kind of call for action. I like the notion of
activating the whole country, and letting everybody know this is more
than the President of the United States and the folks here in the
Beltway, and perhaps giving them some vehicle to begin to nationalize
what you're trying to do with the race initiative.

Finally, as a member of Congress, may I say that we made some
important headway last time on affirmative action because almost
surely this Canady bill was straight on its way to tossing affirmative
action over the side. And what we were able to do in the Judiciary
Committee was to get four Republicans to vote with the Democrats to
keep this bill in committee.

Now, I have to tell you, there almost surely was some cooperation with
the leadership; I certainly think with Newt. And I think you ought to
have a private conversation with him. I don't think he wants to -- but
I don't think he speaks for the caucus. But I do think the Chairman, I
think Hyde was cooperative. There were some people who we all worked
on who were Republicans who were cooperative.

In the State of the Union message, or in some appropriate place, as
part of what you're doing with race, it seems to me that it would be
important to call upon the Congress to resist the -- especially in an
election year -- to resist the temptation to make affirmative action a
wedge issue. Let it be to let your mend it, don't give it a chance,
let these regulations come out here. Then perhaps you will have some
basis to come forward, but that in the midst of your effort to bring
about reconciliation, for the Congress to go in the exact opposite
way, to draw a line in the sand among the races, would be just what we
don't need at this time.

MR. WILKINS: Mr. President, I'm grateful that you invited me to
participate in this meeting. And I must say, this is quite an
emotional moment for me -- I didn't realize it. I haven't been in this
room in 30 years. And the last time I was in this room, Martin King
was sitting there, and my uncle was sitting there, Whitney Young was
sitting where Hugh is sitting. John wasn't here because he was in
jail.

THE PRESIDENT: That's why he looks so young -- he had all those
resting days.

MR. WILKINS: The Vice President was sitting where Senator Daschle is
sitting. And Clarence Mitchell was sitting where Bill is sitting. And
it reminds me of a lot of things, but it suggests to me that -- I say
this with great trepidation with my hero and mentor sitting here on my
left -- but I think that the conversation, as Eleanore said, is really
important. And it should go forward, but I agree that it shouldn't end
in a year. At least, maybe the conversation part should, but the
effort should continue.

I think that conversation is good for getting things into people's
minds, and God knows it needs to get into people's minds -- if you
read that survey this morning about college kids and the low number of
college kids who are interested in doing something about race
relations. But in the end, what I remember most about that meeting 30
years ago was that President Johnson was urged to use the presidency
as a bully teaching lectern. And although he was a civil rights giant,
by that time he was disenchanted and he didn't do it. And in the
conversation, what happens is that a lot of views get legitimated, and
they're not always views that are very constructive.

Sometimes they're views that are a crime against humanity, in the
felicitous phrase that some have used.

And in the end, some truth has to be really pounded into the national
psyche. And one of them is that history counts. This country is the
most historic country in the world, as far as I can tell. And on this
issue, it is truly historic, until you get to the people like the
Thernstroms, who take history and turn it upside down and try to make
a different point.

But if you take the position that Justice Scalia has taken -- he is
against affirmative action because his parents, his grandparents came
here in the 20th century. They never owned a slave. They never
discriminated against a black person, and why should he be concerned
leaves out the whole history of the country up to that point where the
opportunity structure was denied to black people and that denial of
opportunities to black citizens who were penned up in the South was
exactly what gave Scalia's family its handhold into the 20th century
industrial opportunities which had been denied to blacks. Americans
need to know that. Americans really don't know that.

And so we have utterly ignorant conversations about race in which my
feelings are as valid as your feelings are as valid as her feelings,
because nobody is dealing with any facts. So I would hope that after
the conversation, that you would use the rest of your term to be what
you once were, which is a teacher -- a very strong and powerful
teacher.

And that brings me to the second point. I agree with everybody at this
table, starting with Wade, who talks about the importance of
education. So I won't belabor it except to say that it breaks my heart
when I am confronted by my most talented students, year after year
after year, with requests for recommendations to law school.

And I say to them, why don't you do something useful with your life?
Why don't you go teach? Well, they don't go teach because, as Wade
says, the status is lousy, the pay is lousy. You can help change that.

If you think about it, the Kennedy Center Honors gets a lot of play in
this country, in part because everybody who gets honored is famous and
glamorous, but you could institute some kind of program where instead
of a world champion baseball team or the national champion football
team -- well, this year you could do that, national champion, Michigan
is the national champion, you can let them -- then after that, you
could start something. But bring the teachers in. Bring the best
teachers in America in. Have a glamorous evening for them and begin,
you know, The Presidential Medal of Teaching Honor or something. It
would be terrific.

And also make the remuneration of teachers a huge, huge issue. I mean,
it is obscene, the disparity between what a running back gets and
somebody who is doing a useful thing in the inner city teaching a kid.

Finally, I would say that I agree with the point about education
starting at the earliest point. And I think of our mutual friend Bill
Wilson's lesson that joblessness is so destructive, more destructive
than poverty ever was. And somehow if we're going to do education for
poor kids right, because poor kids need parents to help educate them
just like your kid and my kid at Sidwell Friends, they need parents
even more. Parents who are stressed out by being jobless are not going
to be able to give those kids the help they need in the beginning.

I don't know how we do that. And perhaps this is something that the
race commission as it draws best practices from around the country,
something that we can find places where people are actually helping
the jobless parents of little children, (A) to become not jobless,
and, (B) to become more effective parents.

Thanks again for inviting me. I really appreciate it.

THE PRESIDENT: Let me say, one of the -- just a couple of things real
quick. Is it -- one of the big entertainment organizations sponsors
every year a big event honoring teachers -- is it Disney? Disney.
Maybe we should see if we should do something with them.

On this unemployment, one of you mentioned this earlier -- I think it
was Hugh that mentioned it -- but we announced today, it was in the
paper that we're going to spend a ton of money to try to focus on just
training people to take jobs in technology companies. And the reason
-- how that happened was I read two things at the same time several
weeks ago. I get -- a month after the unemployment rates come out, the
people who do the unemployment rates give you the state-by-state for
that month, so like every month you're getting this month's national
unemployment rate and last month's state-by state. So I don't have the
December state-by-states, but I do have it for November.

In November, two states -- North Dakota and one other -- Nebraska, I
think -- had 1.9 percent unemployment. Now, that is essentially
negative unemployment because any economist will tell you there's
somewhere between 2 and 3 percent of the people walking around all the
time. I mean, they're moving, they're get married, they change states,
they do something -- something is always happening to a couple percent
of the people -- in the way we measure unemployment.

And Washington, D.C. had 7.8, or whatever it was. And at the same time
-- this was this month. Anyway, the month before when this happened,
the same day I pick up this article in The Washington Post which says
that in all these suburban counties around Washington, D.C., there's
this huge shortage of high-technology workers. Well, if Washington,
D.C. had an unemployment rate of 2 percent instead of nearly 8
percent, we'd have about a quarter of the problems we've got here.
Maybe a tenth.

And so it occurred to me that a lot of -- but a lot of these jobs in
high technology areas do not require four-year college degrees. They
do require technology training, they do require advanced skills over
which you would get just coming out of high school, but they do not
require a four-year college degree. So what this announcement in the
paper is about -- it's Alexis Herman and some others who had been
working on this -- were trying to figure out whether -- not just in
D.C., but anywhere around the country where you've got this suburban
ring of job demand and a high unemployment core -- whether we can go
in there and do profiles on people and see who is capable of getting
these skills. And we're going to try and do it in some of the less
urbanized areas, too.

One of the problems -- a lot of our Native Americans without jobs,
without good jobs, live in highly dispersed areas where it's not as
easy to get there. But, anyway, if this works -- that is, if four
months from now we can show you that we did "x" amount of training and
the people that formerly would have gone into minimum wage jobs are
now going into jobs that pay above average wages, where they actually
get retirement and health insurance and other things because they got
this -- it will rather dramatically change the nature of job training
and the whole strategy that the federal government has generally
followed.

So, anyway -- but I appreciate what you're saying about it.

Bob, you were next, I think.

REPRESENTATIVE MATSUI: Well, thank you very much, Mr. President, for
inviting me today. Actually, I really appreciate this. Usually when I
come to the White House it's to talk about taxes or trade and this is
rather refreshing. I want to thank you very much. And, of course, in
1992, when you were running as a candidate, you said you wanted to
make your administration look like America. And I have to say that you
really have done that, both in the Cabinet, certainly within the White
House and all the agencies of the government. And I think it's been
very difficult for you to do that, because there has been some
criticism over the years. On the other hand, it's worked out very
well. And I think from an historic perspective for now on any
President that comes into this office will undoubtedly have to take
into consideration what you did over the last five years. And I think
it's really commendable and it shows that it works, the fact that
you've had so much diversity within your administration. Quite
remarkable.

And also, I think, as Stewart and perhaps Karen and others have said,
Bill Lann Lee's appointment was just remarkable. It brought together a
coalition that we'd never seen before. And I think we can keep
together as a result of that. And we really, really appreciate that.

One of the real difficulties I see in talking about the issue of race,
Mr. President, is the fact that, I think as Eleanore said, it
permeates almost all of America. Almost every major historic issue
will have some component of race to it. By the very nature of talking
about it, we seem to limit ourselves, and it almost becomes somewhat
diminishing. Every one of us raised two or three, maybe four points;
but we really, unfortunately, aren't able to really talk about race
because, again, it's like saying, let's talk about America. It's so
difficult to talk about something so large and so conceptual and that
has so much involved in almost everything we do.

But I think as Karen, and I think as Eleanore said, we will have to
narrow this issue because certainly if we don't, we're going to be
criticized, and obviously, it may just kind of wither away. I think
two of the most important issues I see in this -- and I do agree with
Eleanore -- that we have to be very careful because certainly in
Congress, particularly in the House, there may be an effort to
overturn affirmative action. But I think the issue of affirmative
action is just so critical to the issue of race in America today. It's
not the only thing, because there's a lot of things -- hate crimes,
police brutality. But the issue of affirmative action is absolutely
critical in American today.

I go to Los Angeles or San Francisco or New York, and you talk to CEOs
and they're all white males. When you see our country and see how
diverse it really is, particularly in a state like California, you
wonder, how are we going to be able to prevent a revolution in five or
20 or 30 years from now when all of these young people begin to
realize they're not part of the social fabric, the economic fabric,
the political fabric of America.

To have affirmative action eliminated would be, in my opinion, a major
step back in terms of this country and what it stands for and what it
really means. The real problem I see is that with this issue up and
going through the anti-affirmative action debate in California, unless
the proponents of affirmative action are willing to speak out and
really discuss this issue and really take a leadership role in it,
we're going to lose this debate -- whether it's the state of
Washington, whether it's in the Congress, no matter where it is;
because the opponents are really looking to beat affirmative action.

This is a very important issue for them. If we stand back, if we show
some tentativeness, I'm afraid we really won't be able to win this
issue. I think if the courts or if the Congress or through initiative
processes in the state it's eliminated, it will have a profound
negative impact. I just read press reports that came out today that
University of California, all 13 of the campuses now for their
graduate schools, African American enrollment has gone down by 25
percent, Latino enrollment's gone down by 50 percent. I think that
trend will continue. This is only the beginning of that particular
effort.

In addition, the second area, Mr. President, is in the area of poverty
-- inner city poverty. I know you've done a lot of work on that issue;
but it creates two phenomenons. One is a backlash by people that live
in the suburbs. They see the inner cities and say, I don't want
anything to do with it; these people are just no good; they don't
deserve to be part of our fabric of life. Somehow on the other side of
it is the squalor that these people live in, and the generational
problem that occur as a result of the poverty is something that this
country just cannot sustain. We really have to do something about it.

I think your initiatives in the technology area, obviously,
empowerment zones and a number of these other areas are very, very
important. On the other hand, I would say it's going to require, I
think, the private sector. I think we all know that and I guess it was
Wade that said somehow we have to get the CEOs involved in major
corporations. I think they will respond if it's through Presidential
leadership. Individual members of Congress, the leaders of the House
and Senate probably can't do it. But your leadership probably will get
them to start thinking, perhaps, a little bit more in the direction of
perhaps they have to think more long-term about the future of our
country.

And just in concluding, I do want to thank you for what you're doing.
I think, as Eleanore said, this is unprecedented. I know that there's
been some press criticism -- where is this going and all this stuff;
but I think the mere fact that people criticize it brings up the fact
that we're talking about it. From a long-term, historical perspective,
Mr. President, I think this is really one of your crowning
achievements. I'm just happy and very pleased that you've invited us
to share this moment with you.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thank you. Go ahead.

MS. QURAISHI: I was asked to offer some of my insights in being part
of the American Muslim community, and specifically as president of an
organization called Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights. I'm very
honored to be here, and I hope I can offer some suggestions.

One thing I think might help improve harassment and civil rights
violations of Muslim Americans is to try and get the American public
to separate in their minds international political events in politics
from individual American citizens, especially minority American
citizens. Our own past experience with the oppression of Japanese
Americans and the communist scares are an example in our history where
this has happened, and we look back and we realize how wrong we were
at the time.

Right now you mentioned profiling, the Anti-terrorism Act of 1996 has
scared a lot of Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in general for
their safety, their protection, their American civil rights.

Any time there is an international event in the Middle East, there are
numerous examples of individual Muslims, whether or not they are of
that particular ethnicity. My husband, who was born in Baghdad and was
raised in the United States since he was one year old, used to tell
stories of when he was a child in elementary school he would get
beaten up and harassed because they thought he was Mexican. And then
in the Iranian hostage crisis, they would beat him up because they
thought he was Iranian. And then in the Gulf War he would get harassed
because they thought he was Iraqi. Well, he said, at least now they
got the ethnicity right. But the point is that the connection made
between these international events and American citizens needs to be
separated and Americans -- Muslims, as you know, have been part of the
American community's fabric for a very, very long time. And in fact
it's a very interesting microcosm of America because it is very
ethnically diverse.

African American Muslims have been part of America from the very
beginning. You have your immigrant population coming from all over
Europe, Asia, the Middle East. My own father came here from India and
I'm of mixed racial heritage myself. My mother was raised Methodist in
Oregon, a Caucasian American. So you see a lot of this, especially in
the second generation, dealing with all of these racial issues, both
with black community, Hispanic, Asian, all of these within the
American Muslim community.

And I have high hopes for how the Muslim community in my generation
can deal with all of these various diversities and overcoming some of
the problems. But they deal with all the harassment of all the
different international events every day. And that's, I think,
something if we can make Americans -- and your administration has done
a lot. The first Id at the White House happened under your
administration. That was wonderful. You said a few words about the
vandalism of the Ramadan symbol outside. Those sorts of things, but
even more emphasis on American Muslims being American citizens first.

THE PRESIDENT: You know, when I was -- I made a big point to try to
make that exact same point when I spoke in the Jordanian parliament
when we went to sign the peace agreement between Israel and Jordan,
and how the United States had no quarrel with Islam. And it was
amazing the impact it had when I went back to the place where I was --
I didn't stay in this hotel, but I went back to this hotel and this
public crowd there. It was amazing the impact it had on the young
people that were there.

And then I got to Jerusalem and I had an Arab Palestinian employee in
one of the hotels where I was came up to me and mentioned it to me. So
even abroad it's a big deal. And here at home, there was a very kind
of troubling story here in our local press in the last week about a
Muslim school that had 50 students and they were trying to expand it
and they were looking for a new home. And the people in the various
places where they were looking were afraid that this would be funded
by people who would be preaching terrorism and all that.

And I think it's exceedingly important that we disassociate religious
conviction, and particularly being of Middle East or South Asian
heritage, from some iron connection to all the problems we're having
there. And we're going to have to work on it more because the Muslim
population is growing so substantially in this country.

MR. YZAGUIRRE: Mr. President, I join the folks who are around the
table who have been congratulating you for taking this initiative. I
think I also join others who have indicated that perhaps it's time to
bring some focus and narrow the scope of the initiative. There are
certainly several areas that would be worthwhile, but let me suggest
that the notion of using the commission, using the Advisory Board,
using the initiative as a teaching tool is one that I think deserves
some consideration.

And I don't mean it just in the short term. I don't mean it just in
terms of this particular exercise or this particular time period, but
let me offer a concept, a notion that the nature of this country is
such that it needs a continued education process, that every
generation needs to deal with its own identity and the identity of
this nation, and that it is appropriate for government to play a role
in continuing to build a national identity based on the respect of all
of its constituent groups.

I think that's also a unifying theme, because what we're trying to
promote is the idea of unity, and I think what scares -- some of the
racism, some of the division comes out of a sense that the country is
not what it used to be, and it's certainly true that it's not what it
used to be. But that somehow what it used to be is better than what it
is now. You've said that in your own ways a number of times.

And if we can get the notion across that, yes, it's not what it used
to be, it is what it is now, and that's wonderful and diversity is
appropriate and -- but we need a way of taking it from the
intellectual and moving it to the visceral.

In the nature of a teaching tool or a teaching mechanism, let me
suggest that we also use it to educate the American public in a number
of areas pertaining to this theme. This country has painfully learned
about the stigma of slavery. We're less acquainted, less knowledgeable
-- indeed, if you walk into any library, into any book store, and you
try to understand something about the victims of conquest and
colonialism, native Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans,
you'll find very little because this country is, as Roger indicated,
historical.

It's even more than that. We simply do not want to view ourselves as a
colonial power. It's against the nature of how we define ourselves.
Yet, when you look at what has happened, clearly we have been, are
perhaps -- have been a colonial power in many ways, and my Puerto
Rican friends tell me that we're still a colonial power in Puerto
Rico.

I think that this is an important issue, and I can't think of anybody
that's more equipped to lead the country in this education than
yourself.

I remember very clearly the event that you had in Little Rock between
the time that you were elected and the time you were inaugurated. We
had a summit on economics and you spent a whole day, from 7:00 in the
morning till late at night, teaching the country about the
fundamentals of economics.

Let me suggest that if you did something like that around this issue
-- and, by the way, I hope we can get beyond the term "Race
Initiative," because it has a narrower connotation. But this
initiative that has to do with how do we live with each other, how do
we promote each individual's own potential to its fullest extent. That
merits the kind of attention and the kind of time that you gave to the
economy in Little Rock. Those would be my suggestions, Mr. President.

MR. ECHOHAWK: Mr. President, I'd like to thank you for inviting me to
participate as a representative of the Native American community.
We're impacted by these issues of racial discrimination just like
other minorities. We probably suffer worse from unemployment and low
educational attainment levels than anybody. We're involved in the race
commission. We're pleased to become involved. There is a panel of
tribal leaders participating in the race commission board meeting
tomorrow out in Arizona, and they will be talking further with the
commission members about these issues.

As you know from your own experience with the tribes and your policy
relative to native Americans, the most important issue to native
American people, of course, is protection of their legal and political
status as sovereigns, as recognized by the laws and the Constitution
of this country. That status as tribal governments is very important
to us in combating these problems that we have.

The biggest issue that I think we face is the one that Raul and Roger
have referenced, and that's basically the ignorance of the American
people about the legal and political status of our people and the fact
that we've got three levels of government in this country -- the
federal, the state, and the tribal.

Your native American policy recognizes this and you've got all the
departments and agencies working on policy statements about how
they're going to implement this government-to-government relationship,
which is of course the way that historically we did business and we
still ought to business that way, because that's the law. But a lot of
people just are ignorant of that. They don't understand that. And as
part of your initiative, there is this learning process going on in
the departments and the agencies about our governmental status, and
things are starting to happen there. You've got all kinds of people
that we had never seen now talking with us about our governmental
status and how to work with us in these departments and agencies, and
that's terrific.

What we need to do and what I would suggest is that, as has been
mentioned, we need an educational effort that you could help lead that
would help educate the American public about our political status as
governments in this country as part of the American federal system. I
think that would be a tremendous help in terms of dealing with the
problems that we face, and it's something that the race commission
could really help with, and it goes back to this need of our country
to understand its history and to make that history a living part of
everybody's consciousness here today.

THE PRESIDENT: Let me just say very briefly on this subject, I think
it's also quite important -- and we've been working at this steadily
for five years, and I thank Senator Daschle, particularly -- I want to
thank him because he knows a lot about these issues. But the Native
American tribes have a -- I don't want to tie the analogy too tight,
but they have experienced in the last several decades a situation in
dealing with the United States that is not unlike that experienced by
the District of Columbia.

I always tell people, the problem that D.C.'s had -- one problem that
D.C. has is sort of the "not quite" place. It's not quite independent
and it's not quite dependent. It's not quite a state, but it's not
quite a city that we treat like a city. It's sort of not quite. And
we've had a policy that if it had an honest label -- an honest label
-- toward Native American tribes would be something like sovereign
dependence, or dependent sovereignty.

And what I have tried to do is not only to recognize the sovereignty
of the tribes when it came to national resource and environmental
issues and even issues where I maybe didn't always agree because it
wasn't my place to decide -- some of the gaming issues and other
things, the law gives it to the tribes to decide. I think there is
this whole other sort of super structure of the way the federal
government dealt with Native Americans relating mostly to their
economic needs and their educational needs, which in my view was not
focused enough toward economic and educational and health care and
other empowerment issues, where I think we could -- we'll never have
the right sort of sovereignty relationship until the tools for success
are there.

And I really -- we worked at this for five years. We haven't quite got
it down yet exactly right, but I think we're making a lot of progress.
And I appreciate the help you've given us.

DR. FRANKLIN: Well, I really wanted to say, Mr. President, that I very
much appreciate this opportunity -- the opportunity not merely to hear
all of these distinguished colleagues, but also to give me as the
chair of your Advisory Board, to learn a great deal about what our
colleagues are thinking and how important it is for us to absorb this
kind of information.

I'll take it back -- unfortunately, not any of my colleagues on the
board are here -- the Executive Director is here -- we'll be meeting
tomorrow in Phoenix, or the next day -- taking back to these
colleagues and associates these marvelous and very important
suggestions that are made.

Now, I want to make one or two other comments. One is that I don't get
quite as excited about affirmative action as some other people because
I've lived with it all my life, and my parents have lived with it all
their lives. The tables have been turned a bit in recent years, but
when I was a graduate -- when I graduated from college and wanted to
go to graduate school, affirmative action in Oklahoma said that I
could not do it because race-based preferences were in the other
direction, you see. And they could all go, all whites could go to the
University of Oklahoma, but I could not go. Interesting enough, I
could not even be in Norman, Oklahoma after sundown. There was a law
there that prevented my being there.

So affirmative action is what it is in our history and we have to
understand what it is. It's that now since it's been turned just a
bit, there's a great deal of opposition to it. But as long as it was
functioning the other way, there was nothing -- no opposition to it at
all.

The other thing I wanted to observe, Mr. President, is that if somehow
we could get the message out that things are going on now that are
important in this area, that from the time you met with the Advisory
Board in September, each month we've had very important initiatives
that the President and his staff, his Cabinet members, others have
taken. They haven't gotten much notice. The big housing initiative in
September was very, very important. It was right down the line, right
along the line that we wanted to go.

And yet, we haven't -- I talk to people, I say, what about -- do you
know about this? No. It might get one line in the paper, but sometimes
it gets no lines in the paper, particularly if something much more
glamorous takes place that would attract attention.

So I know that you've been given many suggestions today about things
that you can do, and I certainly hope that you will. I only hope that
the communication of what you do will be sufficiently strong so that
the nation will know. I can assure you that the Advisory Board will do
what it can in this area, as in other areas. We'll be continuing to
give whatever suggestions and advice we can not only to you, but the
people in other levels of government.

And as I said, I'm cautiously optimistic that we can achieve something
in this time that you've given us. I want everyone to know here that
we're doing our best; we'll be in -- this time tomorrow, we'll be in
Phoenix, Arizona, working with groups there. And we'll have some very
important conversations with labor and with the corporate leaders.
That's just the beginning.

We're taking this step by step, and I think in the final analysis, we
will have covered many of the basis, if not all of them.

Thank you.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thank you very much. I also want to thank you for
the extraordinary amount of time and energy you've put into this. It's
been humbling to the rest of us.

SENATOR DASCHLE: Mr. President, I appreciate very much your giving me
a chance to join in this discussion this afternoon. I came to learn,
and I've learned a good deal.

We in Congress need to amplify your great leadership. In the time that
I've been in Congress, no President has dedicated more effort and
resources and credibility to the issue of race and the challenges we
face in this diverse society than have you. And I don't think you've
always had the support in Congress in the time that you've been
President that you need to have to do the kinds of things that you
would want to do. So to the extent that it is possible for the
Democratic leadership in the Congress -- and I talked to Dick Gephardt
about this -- to support your efforts, and to be as bold as you are, I
hope we can demonstrate that commitment as effectively as you have.

South Dakota is not a very diverse state. We don't have the luxury of
the rich culture that is so evident in our society. We have nine
Indian reservations, and I can just say from the experience of
reservation life, one doesn't have to visit long to know the
extraordinary difficulties that we're facing, which regard to race, in
every facet we have -- you mentioned North Dakota's unemployment rate.
I wish they would calculate as well the aggregate unemployment rate
when reservations are taken into account, because the irony is that
while we have 1.9 percent unemployment maybe in North Dakota off
reservation, we have 85 percent unemployment on reservation -- within
those same borders.

And while we have dedicated resources to deal with it, we still have
an unbelievable problem with regard to employment on reservations. I
think probably -- it just blows any other statistic I can think of
away. We all note the importance of education, but when it comes to
community colleges on the reservations, we have a fraction of the
resources on reservation for community colleges. I'm just going to use
rough figures, but it's about 1,000 for community colleges versus
3,000 for other colleges around the country.

We have the highest infant mortality rates. We have the lowest rates
of overall life expectancy. So we have every extreme statistic one can
imagine right in our own backyards on reservations throughout the
Midwest. And so the need is great, and your willingness to take on
each and every one of these challenges with the diverse leadership
that we find at this table is very moving to me and I very much
appreciate being a part of it.

THE PRESIDENT: Before we go I'd like to just leave you with this
thought, just sort of food for thought to keep you churning on this.
First, I'll make a request. I would like for anything you can do to
help us get more things that work in to the commission staff, so we
can put it on the Internet and get it out, let people see that there
are -- people always write or they e-mail us and say, what can we do?
We'd like to say, here's something that's working somewhere. Why don't
you do it? That's important.

Anything you can do to help us recruit any kind of new leadership to
enlist in this cause, we'd like to have your help on that. But anyway,
let me finish. Here's the thing I'd like to leave you with, just sort
of as food for thought, to continue this discussion and try to narrow
it further. And I may be unfairly summarizing someone else's work, so
I'll try not to -- I hope I'm not being unfair. Bill Raspberry had an
interesting column the other day in which he said this race effort is
a big deal, and there are three things involved in it, and maybe
nobody could ever deal with all three things. He said, first of all,
there's the feeling of racial prejudice, how people feel about each
other. And secondly, he said, there is the existence of illegal
discrimination that our laws prohibit. And thirdly, there is the
existence of outcomes which are dramatically different by race; your
life chances and education, income, employment and ownership and
health care, among other things, are dramatically different based on
your race.

He said, I once thought we could fight all three of them in the '60s
because we had an enemy, the Southern white people, and everybody else
was on the same side. Now, at least when it comes to -- maybe
everybody feels some discrimination towards somebody else or -- he
says, now the problem is if we're all responsible for all this, it's
hard to get enough allies to work on what really counts, which is
changing the life experiences of the people, in terms of their
outcomes. Most leaders of any group would give anything just to end
whatever the disparities are in education and health care and
employment, income, and ownership. And I'm sort of amplifying, but I
think this is a fair representation of what he said.

So he made these suggestions. He said, what we need to do is get
everybody on the same side, to start out, and then see if we can work
back to -- so the logical extension -- this was not in there, but the
logical extension of the argument was if you could get everybody
working on the same side on what to do about job outcomes, maybe you
would come back and have a broader consensus on an affirmative action
program than you think, or at least the people who are against it
would then recognize their moral responsibility to put something
credible in its place.

I thought that was an interesting argument, when you deal with -- if
you just deal with the three things I mentioned. It doesn't get you
out of the primary obligation to enforce the laws against
discrimination adequately, but it was an interesting way to think
about it. If you ask everybody -- for example, if you ask everybody
who is on both sides of this English as a second language issue in
California to start with the disparate educational outcomes and work
back, you might get to a different place.

One of the things that always bothers me about all these litmus test
issues -- and I'm not innocent in this, so I'm not casting a stone --
is that dependent of which side of the litmus test you're on, if once
you figure out your crowd's winning, then you go on and worry about
something else. Then when you figure out -- when you realize your
side's losing, you can't worry about anything else; but you can't have
an honest conversation, because you're trying too hard to keep from
getting killed in the next referendum or whatever.

In terms of the affirmative action referendum, all I can tell you is,
I made a couple of statements in California on 209, and maybe I could
have done more, and I think if the thing had gone on three more weeks,
it would have come out differently on 209. I'm glad I was asked to be
a part of the effort against the repeal in Houston and it succeeded;
it's the only one that has. But the real issue is if you left it alone
and no one ever debated it again, we've had enough experience to know
that it is insufficient to change the disparate outcomes. So what if
we started on trying to figure out how we could close the gaps and
work back, we might find that we had a lot more agreement than we
thought.

Now, in the initial polling -- I think this will change a lot, as the
referendum is debated. And I confess, I have not read exactly what --
the initial polling in California, on the English, the bilingual
education initiative, is deeply troubling to defenders of bilingual
education because the initial polling has 70 percent of Hispanic
voters voting for the initiative.

Now, what does that mean? That doesn't necessarily mean that they
understand the implications of this initiative and they want to vote
for it. But what it does mean is that Hispanic parents are concerned
about whether their children stay in the programs for too long, or
whether the programs are sufficiently effective to let them learn
everything else as well as they need to learn.

So instead of getting into the fight, could we at least start with
dealing with what people's perception of the problem is, then work
back to the solution; then if you do that, you've got some alternative
to put in place if you want to fight the initiative. In other words,
you don't have to play their game; you don't have to let it be a wedge
issue if you decide to articulate it in a way that forces everybody
else to come talk to you about what the real issue is -- which is, you
want all these children whose first language is not English to be able
to learn everything they need to learn on time as much as possible,
and to be English-proficient, if they're going to live in this
country, as quickly as they can be.

But there are -- depending on what age you come here and what you're
situation is and what your native language is, and how difficult it is
and what the subject is, it is more or less difficult to learn certain
things in English within certain time periods. In other words, it's a
complicated issue. But there is a broad perception that the bilingual
services have become, if you will, institutionalized in a way that
carry kids with them longer than they should be and may make them too
dependent on it.

So why don't we analyze the facts and find out what they are, and then
try to work back from that, instead of immediately joining the issue;
but do it quickly enough so that the people of California have some
chance of having an honest debate. It isn't just history that people
are deprived of; very often they are deprived of what the facts are on
the issues they're debating. So all they can do is go on what they
think their basic values are and their basic instincts.

And we get so caught up -- and, believe me, I share the frustration
that Dr. Franklin said about what the voters don't know. It's very
hard to pierce through the public consciousness and to do a sustained
public education campaign in the absence of some great conflict.

I'll never forget, 10 days before our congressional debacle in 1994, a
man I didn't know very well who was a pollster just spontaneously sent
me this survey he did -- or at least I wasn't working with him at the
time, and I was shocked. He said, here are 10 things that if all the
voters knew them would change the outcome of this congressional
election, which is about to be terrible for you, if they just -- maybe
there were eight things on the list. But anyway, there were more than
five things that we had done that absolutely nobody knew about. So
this is a generic problem in a society as big and complex as ours
being bombarded from all edges.

But I just ask you to think about that. Suppose we did that with
health care. Suppose we did that with education. For example, on the
education issue, some people say, well, maybe this 10 percent solution
that Texas adopted would work on the affirmative action. Well, the
answer is it might well work in most states for admission to college,
but it wouldn't do anything on the graduate school front. So what's
your answer on graduate school?

There are a lot of these things that I'd just like to see -- I'd like
to see more, instead of throwing barricades over the wall at one
another, if we could start with what the problem is and work back, I
really believe we can make an enormous amount of progress in this
country, because most Americans who get caught in the middle on these
referendums, where their values are pulling them one way and you're
trying to -- and the rhetoric is pulling them one way, and you're
trying to cram information as quickly as you can before election time
comes and all that kind of stuff. Most Americans really don't like the
fact that we have disparate outcomes, and most Americans think anybody
that's working hard and needs a hand up ought to get it to have a fair
chance.

So I think, to go back to what you said about talking to the Speaker
on this issue, I think I'm going to try to follow this tack in dealing
with our friends who disagree with us on so much. Let's see if we
can't start with that and work back and see how much agreement we can
make. I think we may do better than people think.

Thank you. This is great.

(end transcript)