Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr11/wh930512.zip/5-12B.TXT

Internet Message Format | 1993-06-05 | 13KB

From @lex-luthor.ai.mit.edu:[e-mail]  Wed May 12 17:55:53 1993
Date: Wed, 12 May 1993 14:47-0400
From: The White House <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail],
Subject: President's Remarks to Civil Rights Conference  5.11.93

                           THE WHITE HOUSE

                    Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                               May 11, 1993


                       REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
               TO LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE ON CIVIL RIGHTS

                         Hyatt Regency Hotel
                           Washington, D.C.


8:00 P.M. EDT

         THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President,
for that wonderful introduction and for being such a great partner in
the campaign of 1992 and in this administration.

         I think it fair to say that Vice President Gore has
already exercised a larger role in this administration than perhaps
any Vice President in the history of this country.  And I hope he
will continue to do so.  (Applause.)

         I'm honored to be here with Ralph Neas and with my
longtime friend, Benjamin Hooks.  (Applause.)  Don't you just love to
hear Ben talk?  (Laughter.)  I mean, really, I could here him intone
those points from now until tomorrow morning.  (Laughter.)  Reminding
me of the rhythms of my childhood and the faith of our parents.

         I'm proud to be here with all of you tonight, not only
because of what you have done for the last four decades and more, but
because of what together we must do now.  I'm proud of your
commitment to civil rights.  I'm proud to be here with our Attorney
General Janet Reno, who is the embodiment of that.  (Applause.)

         I thank you for the vote of the national board of the
Leadership Conference today to support the nomination of Lani Guinier
to be assistant attorney general for civil rights.  (Applause.)

         I want to say a special word of support for Lani
Guinier.  I went to law school with her and I announced at the
Justice Department the other day when we announced all of our
assistant attorneys general that she had actually sued me once.
(Laughter.)  Not only that, she didn't lose.  (Laughter.)  And I
nominated her anyway.  (Laughter.)  So the Senate ought to be able to
put up with a little controversy in the cause of civil rights and go
on and confirm her so we can get about the business of America.
(Applause.)

         I want to say, too, how honored I am to be here with
your honorees, my friend, Dorothy Height from the freedom schools in
Mississippi to the Black Family Reunion.  (Applause.)  What a guiding
spirit she has been to all of us.  I want to take my hat off to Raul
Yzaguirre for his leading voice.  (Applause.)

         Over 20 years ago, I first came in contact with La Raza
as a movement and a commitment.  And I have watched them over these
years help people all across the country with the practical problems
of life which give real meaning to the idea of civil rights, when you
can actually live in a decent house and have a decent job and know
your kids are going to get a decent education, and know that you're
going to be treated fairly no matter what your race is.

         I want to say, too, how very much I admire Justin Dart
-- (applause) -- for all the work that he's done as Chair of the
President's Commission on Employment of People with Disabilities and
leader in making the Americans with Disabilities Act come to life.
You know, Justin, every time we went anywhere in the campaign and had
a rally, we always had a section for people with disabilities.  Today
I went to a suburb north of Chicago, in a heavily Republican
community, as it turned out, to meet with a bunch of students from
the high school that I was visiting and other high schools and people
in the community.  And we had a big section there for the students
with disabilities.  And I was thinking as I was coming over here
tonight, a lot of those kids are where they are today because of what
you did.  And you ought to be proud of that.  (Applause.)

         Sitting in the front of the row so they can ask the
President their questions and shake hands with the President; instead
of being overlooked, being uplifted.  I say that to you to make one
introductory point.  I've been here for 100 days and a some, fighting
to break the gridlock in Washington.  And sometimes I think the
biggest gridlock of all is the gridlock in our minds.  (Applause.)
The hold that foolish notions have on our imaginations.

         I have been roundly attacked by people on the extreme
right trying to make me look like some radical left-winger because I
had this crazy notion that I ought to have an administration that
would have some diversity and give women as well as men and people of
color as well as people that look like me the chance to serve if they
could meet high standards of excellence.  And there are people who
say, well -- and I see these relentless articles in the paper, oh,
that's why no appointments are being made.  Well, so in 100 days I
show up at the Justice Department and I ask for the totals -- pass me
the envelope, please.  (Laughter.)  And it turns out that in spite of
my commitment to diversity and excellence, after 100 days my
predecessor had made 99 appointments, his predecessor, President
Reagan, had made 152 appointments, and I'd made 173.  Where are they?
(Applause.)

         And I expected to see the shameless right in sack cloth
and ashes, saying that we had falsely accused this poor President in
promoting gridlock.  (Laughter.)  But they have no shame.  (Laughter
and applause.)  And the people who are promoting these ideas -- let
me tell you something:  Today when I was in Illinois, a young,
handsome, fine looking Hispanic man stood up and said, "I have joined
the United States Army.  And I'm proud that I'm going to serve my
country.  And I know we've got to cut the military budget, but I want
to know if you're going to cut it so much that I can't give my whole
career to my country if I want to."

         And I thought to myself, why doesn't somebody point out
to all these people who have attacked us for trying to open the doors
of opportunities that the number one, most successful institution in
the United States of America for giving opportunities to women and
people of color are the United States military branches.  (Applause.)
They have done it with a commitment to excellence and opportunity.
And what we've got to do is to prove that the rest of us can do so as
well.  And we ought not to make this a partisan issue, and the
guardians of gridlock should stop trying to use it to move arguments
around that indicate that there's somehow something wrong with the
President who believes that everybody who can serve ought to have the
chance to do so.  (Applause.)

         This administration is committed to the enforcement of
the civil rights laws.  This administration is also committed to
programs like national service that give everybody the possibility of
being part of a new era of civic responsibility.  This administration
is committed to guaranteeing that every American is entitled to a
fair chance at the brass ring, but even more important, to empowering
people to seize those opportunities; to moving beyond the incredible
gridlock in the mind of this town that you either have to give
somebody something for nothing or take it all off the table.

         Why don't we behave in Washington the way people behave
in their normal lives?  We need opportunity and responsibility.
(Applause.)  Why don't we stop making these nutty arguments that
imply that everything in life is an either-or proposition -- we're
either going to write somebody a check and bust the government
budget, or we're just going to stick it to them and walk away?
That's not the way life works.

         You know, civil rights should embody a country that
works.  We don't want to guarantee everybody equal employment
opportunities when there are no jobs.  Does that mean that we have to
sacrifice one and not the other?  No, it means you should have a
President who will pursue both -- walking and chewing gum at the same
time.  (Applause.)  That's what this is about.  Is that right?
(Laughter.)

         We want to guarantee everybody an equal opportunity to
get an education, but wouldn't it be nice if the education you're
getting is also better?  (Applause.)  It's not either-or.  We want to
guarantee everybody the right to health care and family security
through health care.  But wouldn't it be nice if you live in a rural
area or in the heart of a big city if there happen to be a clinic to
visit.  (Applause.)

         I just am amazed after 100 days to find that a lot of
the gridlock that had gripped this city for so long is in the
imposition of what one writer had called false choices on all of us
who are supposed to make policy.  It never occurred to me that I
should appoint somebody who wasn't qualified to a job.  (Laughter.)

         You know, I don't wake up in the morning thinking, you
know I need to find some female Latino who is totally unqualified to
put in a job.  (Laughter.)  Or neither did it ever occur to me that
every white man I appoint is going to hit a home run every day.  But
that is the kind of rhetoric you see running beneath so much of the
characterization when we try to change 12 years of attitudes.  The
same people that were criticizing the previous administrations for
being insensitive to civil rights immediately turned around and say,
oh, there's too much -- too much -- attention being given to
ethnicity and gender.

         And that's why no appointments are being made.  So the
record comes in and I'm still waiting for the acknowledgement.  I
tell you, folks, I refuse to believe that we cannot go forward
together.  That we cannot set an example; that we cannot make
progress.  I refuse to believe that you can't be committed to civil
rights and to civic responsibility.  I refuse to believe that we
can't create economic opportunity by empowering people to seize
control of their destiny and changing the government's policies.

         And I think that if this Leadership Council should have
any mission today, it should be to break through those barriers that
push us all into one extreme camp or the other and make us mute in
the face of reality and common sense.  Surely we can bring the
experience of our own lives and the lives of our fellow Americans
beyond the borders of this city to the policy-making process that
will dominate Washington for the next year.  That is what we ought to
do if we want civil rights to come alive in this country.
(Applause.)

         You know, when I ran for this job I spent a lot of time
in African American churches because I always had -- and because I
felt at home.  When I got this job and I sought to protect the
religious and civil liberties of every American, it was because I
wanted mine protected and because I have a sharp memory of what it
was like to live in a society where half the people I knew, because
of their color, were treated as second-class citizens.

         I also have a sharp memory of those who had the courage
to try to change that position.  And now that I am President, I want
you to know that I'll make my mistakes from time to time, but I'm
going to keep trying to move the ball forward.  I believe we can make
advances.  I don't believe that our fights are over.  I know that
there are still civil rights battles to be fought, but I know that
they need to be fought today in the context of making a real
difference in real people's lives.  And we should not be intimidated,
those of us who believe in the cause of civil rights for all
Americans, into thinking that somehow that can be separated from the
fight for economic justice, and economic progress, and making our
free enterprise system work better.  (Applause.)

         And we should not let people who basically don't care
whether we make progress in civil rights think that you can separate
civil rights from the fight for substantive improvements in education
and for meaningful advances in health care, or any other area of our
national life.  Let us resolve tonight that we're going to spend the
next four years breaking down the gridlock by starting, by tearing
down the artificial barriers in people's minds to bringing us
together, saying we don't have a person to waste, and lifting up
everybody's God-given potential, and doing what we can to see that
they achieve it.

         Thank you very much and God bless you.

                                 END                    8:16 P.M. EDT