    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [July 19, 1995]
    [Pages 1106-1114]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1106]]

    Remarks on Affirmative Action at the National Archives and Records
    Administration
    July 19, 1995

        Thank you very much. To the Members of Congress who are here,
    members of the Cabinet and the administration, my fellow Americans: In
    recent weeks I have begun a conversation with the American people about
    our fate and our duty to prepare our Nation not only to meet the new
    century but to live and lead in a world transformed to a degree seldom
    seen in all of our history. Much of this change is good, but it is not
    all good and all of us are affected by it. Therefore, we must reach
    beyond our fears and our divisions to a new time of great and common
    purpose.
        Our challenge is twofold: first, to restore the American dream of
    opportunity and the American value of responsibility and, second, to
    bring our country together amid all our diversity into a stronger
    community, so that we can find common ground and move forward as one.
        More than ever these two endeavors are inseparable. I am absolutely
    convinced we cannot restore economic opportunity or solve our social
    problems unless we find a way to bring the American people together. To
    bring our people together we must openly and honestly deal with the
    issues that divide us. Today I want to discuss one of those issues,
    affirmative action.
        It is, in a way, ironic that this issue should be divisive today,
    because affirmative action began 25 years ago by a Republican President
    with bipartisan support. It began simply as a means to an end of
    enduring national purpose: equal opportunity for all Americans.
        So let us today trace the roots of affirmative action in our never-
    ending search for equal opportunity. Let us determine what it is and
    what it isn't. Let us see where it's worked and where it hasn't and ask
    ourselves what we need to do now. Along the way, let us remember always
    that finding common ground as we move toward the 21st century depends
    fundamentally on our shared commitment to equal opportunity for all
    Americans. It is a moral imperative, a constitutional mandate, and a
    legal necessity.
        There could be no better place for this discussion than the National
    Archives, for within these walls are America's bedrocks of our common
    ground, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of
    Rights. No paper is as lasting as the words these documents contain, so
    we put them in these special cases to protect the parchment from the
    elements. No building is as solid as the principles these documents
    embody, but we sure tried to build one with these metal doors 11 inches
    thick to keep them safe, for these documents are America's only crown
    jewels. But the best place of all to hold these words and these
    principles is the one place in which they can never fade and never grow
    old, in the stronger chambers of our hearts.
        Beyond all else, our country is a set of convictions: ``We hold
    these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that
    they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that
    among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.'' Our whole
    history can be seen first as an effort to preserve these rights and then
    as an effort to make them real in the lives of all our citizens.
        We know that from the beginning there was a great gap between the
    plain meaning of our creed and the meaner reality of our daily lives.
    Back then, only white male property owners could vote. Black slaves were
    not even counted as whole people, and Native Americans were regarded as
    little more than an obstacle to our great national progress. No wonder
    Thomas Jefferson, reflecting on slavery, said he trembled to think God
    is just.
        On the 200th anniversary of our great Constitution, Justice Thurgood
    Marshall, the grandson of a slave, said, ``The Government our Founders
    devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a
    civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of
    constitutional government and its respect for the individual freedoms
    and human rights we hold as fundamental today.''
        Emancipation, women's suffrage, civil rights, voting rights, equal
    rights, the struggle for the rights of the disabled, all these and other
    struggles are milestones on America's often rocky but fundamentally
    righteous journey to close the gap between the ideals enshrined in these
    treasures here in the National Archives and the reality of our daily
    lives.

    [[Page 1107]]

        I first came to this very spot where I'm standing today 32 years ago
    this month. I was a 16-year-old delegate to the American Legion Boys
    Nation. Now, that summer was a high-water mark for our national journey.
    That was the summer that President Kennedy ordered Alabama National
    Guardsmen to enforce a court order to allow two young blacks to enter
    the University of Alabama. As he told our Nation, ``Every American ought
    to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one
    would wish his children to be treated.''
        Later that same summer, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin
    Luther King told Americans of his dream that one day the sons of former
    slaves and the sons of former slaveowners would sit down together at the
    table of brotherhood, that one day his four little children would be
    judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their
    character. His words captured the hearts and steeled the wills of
    millions of Americans. Some of them sang with him in the hot sun that
    day. Millions more like me listened and wept in the privacy of their
    homes.
        It's hard to believe where we were just three decades ago. When I
    came up here to Boys Nation and we had this mock congressional session,
    I was one of only three or four southerners who would even vote for the
    civil rights plank. That's largely because of my family. My grandfather
    had a grade school education and ran a grocery store across the street
    from the cemetery in Hope, Arkansas, where my parents and my
    grandparents are buried. Most of his customers were black, were poor,
    and were working people. As a child in that store, I saw that people of
    different races could treat each other with respect and dignity. But I
    also saw that the black neighborhood across the street was the only one
    in town where the streets weren't paved. And when I returned to that
    neighborhood in the late sixties to see a woman who had cared for me as
    a toddler, the streets still weren't paved. A lot of you know that I am
    an ardent movie-goer. As a child, I never went to a movie where I could
    sit next to a black American. They were always sitting upstairs.
        In the 1960's, believe it or not, there were still a few courthouse
    squares in my State where the restrooms were marked ``white'' and
    ``colored.'' I graduated from a segregated high school 7 years after
    President Eisenhower integrated Little Rock Central High School. And
    when President Kennedy barely carried my home State in 1960, the poll
    tax system was still alive and well there.
        Even though my grandparents were in a minority, being poor Southern
    whites who were pro-civil rights, I think most other people knew better
    than to think the way they did. And those who were smart enough to act
    differently discovered a lesson that we ought to remember today:
    Discrimination is not just morally wrong, it hurts everybody.
        In 1960, Atlanta, Georgia, in reaction to all the things that were
    going on all across the South, adopted the motto, ``The city too busy to
    hate.'' And however imperfectly over the years, they tried to live by
    it. I am convinced that Atlanta's success--it now is home to more
    foreign corporations than any other American city, and one year from
    today it will begin to host the Olympics--that that success all began
    when people got too busy to hate.
        The lesson we learned was a hard one. When we allow people to pit us
    against one another or spend energy denying opportunity based on our
    differences, everyone is held back. But when we give all Americans a
    chance to develop and use their talents, to be full partners in our
    common enterprise, then everybody is pushed forward.
        My experiences with discrimination are rooted in the South and in
    the legacy slavery left. I also lived with a working mother and a
    working grandmother when women's work was far rarer and far more
    circumscribed than it is today. But we all know there are millions of
    other stories, those of Hispanics, Asian-Americans, Native Americans,
    people with disabilities, others against whom fingers have been pointed.
    Many of you have your own stories, and that's why you're here today,
    people who were denied the right to develop and to use their full human
    potential. And their progress, too, is a part of our journey to make the
    reality of America consistent with the principles just behind me here.
        Thirty years ago in this city, you didn't see many people of color
    or women making their way to work in the morning in business clothes or
    serving in substantial numbers in powerful positions in Congress or at
    the White House or making executive decisions every day in businesses.
    In fact, even the employment want ads were divided, men on one side and
    women on the other. It was extraordinary then to see women or people of
    color as television news

    [[Page 1108]]

    anchors or, believe it or not, even in college sports. There were far
    fewer women and minorities as job supervisors or firefighters or police
    officers or doctors or lawyers or college professors or in many other
    jobs that offer stability and honor and integrity to family life.
        A lot has changed, and it did not happen as some sort of random
    evolutionary drift. It took hard work and sacrifices and countless acts
    of courage and conscience by millions of Americans. It took the
    political courage and statesmanship of Democrats and Republicans alike,
    the vigilance and compassion of courts and advocates in and out of
    Government committed to the Constitution and to equal protection and to
    equal opportunity. It took the leadership of people in business who knew
    that in the end we would all be better. It took the leadership of people
    in labor unions who knew that working people had to be reconciled.
        Some people, like Congressman Lewis there, put their lives on the
    line. Other people lost their lives. And millions of Americans changed
    their own lives and put hate behind them. As a result, today all our
    lives are better. Women have become a major force in business and
    political life and far more able to contribute to their families'
    incomes. A true and growing black middle class has emerged. Higher
    education has literally been revolutionized, with women and racial and
    ethnic minorities attending once overwhelmingly white and sometimes all-
    male schools. In communities across our Nation, police departments now
    better reflect the makeup of those whom they protect. A generation of
    professionals now serve as role models for young women and minority
    youth. Hispanics and newer immigrant populations are succeeding in
    making America stronger.
        For an example of where the best of our future lies, just think
    about our space program and the stunning hookup with the Russian space
    station this month. Let's remember that that program, the world's
    finest, began with heroes like Alan Shepard and Senator John Glenn. But
    today it's had American heroes like Sally Ride, Ellen Ochoa, Leroy
    Chiao, Guy Bluford, and other outstanding, completely qualified women
    and minorities.
        How did this happen? Fundamentally, because we opened our hearts and
    minds and changed our ways. But not without pressure, the pressure of
    court decisions, legislation, executive action, and the power of
    examples in the public and private sector. Along the way, we learned
    that laws alone do not change society, that old habits and thinking
    patterns are deeply ingrained and die hard, that more is required to
    really open the doors of opportunity. Our search to find ways to move
    more quickly to equal opportunity led to the development of what we now
    call affirmative action.
        The purpose of affirmative action is to give our Nation a way to
    finally address the systemic exclusion of individuals of talent on the
    basis of their gender or race, from opportunities to develop, perform,
    achieve, and contribute. Affirmative action is an effort to develop a
    systematic approach to open the doors of education, employment, and
    business development opportunities to qualified individuals who happen
    to be members of groups that have experienced longstanding and
    persistent discrimination.
        It is a policy that grew out of many years of trying to navigate
    between two unacceptable pasts. One was to say simply that we declared
    discrimination illegal and that's enough. We saw that that way still
    relegated blacks with college degrees to jobs as railroad porters and
    kept women with degrees under a glass ceiling with a lower paycheck.
        The other path was simply to try to impose change by leveling
    draconian penalties on employers who didn't meet certain imposed,
    ultimately arbitrary, and sometimes unachievable quotas. That, too, was
    rejected out of a sense of fairness.
        So a middle ground was developed that would change an inequitable
    status quo gradually but firmly, by building the pool of qualified
    applicants for college, for contracts, for jobs, and giving more people
    the chance to learn, work, and earn. When affirmative action is done
    right, it is flexible, it is fair, and it works.
        I know some people are honestly concerned about the times
    affirmative action doesn't work, when it's done in the wrong way. And I
    know there are times when some employers don't use it in the right way.
    They may cut corners and treat a flexible goal as a quota. They may give
    opportunities to people who are unqualified instead of those who deserve
    it. They may, in so doing, allow a different kind of discrimination.
    When this happens, it is also wrong. But it isn't affirmative action,
    and it is not legal.
        So when our administration finds cases of that sort, we will enforce
    the law aggressively. The Justice Department files hundreds of cases
    every

    [[Page 1109]]

    year attacking discrimination in employment, including suits on behalf
    of white males. Most of these suits, however, affect women and
    minorities for a simple reason, because the vast majority of
    discrimination in America is still discrimination against them. But the
    law does require fairness for everyone, and we are determined to see
    that that is exactly what the law delivers.
        Let me be clear about what affirmative action must not mean and what
    I won't allow it to be. It does not mean and I don't favor the
    unjustified preference of the unqualified over the qualified of any race
    or gender. It doesn't mean and I don't favor numerical quotas. It
    doesn't mean and I don't favor rejection or selection of any employee or
    student solely on the basis of race or gender without regard to merit.
        Like many business executives and public servants, I owe it to you
    to say that my views on this subject are, more than anything else, the
    product of my personal experience. I have had experience with
    affirmative action, nearly 20 years of it now, and I know it works.
        When I was attorney general of my home State, I hired a record
    number of women and African-American lawyers, every one clearly
    qualified and exceptionally hardworking. As Governor, I appointed more
    women to my Cabinet and State boards than any other Governor in the
    State's history and more African-Americans than all the Governors in the
    State's history combined. And no one ever questioned their
    qualifications or performance, and our State was better and stronger
    because of their service.
        As President, I am proud to have the most diverse administration in
    history in my Cabinet, my agencies, and my staff. And I must say, I have
    been surprised at the criticism I have received from some quarters in my
    determination to achieve this.
        In the last 2\1/2\ years, the most outstanding example of
    affirmative action in the United States, the Pentagon, has opened
    260,000 positions for women who serve in our Armed Forces. I have
    appointed more women and minorities to the Federal bench than any other
    President, more than the last two combined. And yet, far more of our
    judicial appointments have received the highest rating from the American
    Bar Association than any other administration since those ratings have
    been given.
        In our administration, many Government agencies are doing more
    business with qualified firms run by minorities and women. The Small
    Business Administration has reduced its budget by 40 percent, doubled
    its loan outputs, dramatically increased the number of loans to women
    and minority small business people, without reducing the number of loans
    to white business owners who happen to be male, and without changing the
    loan standards for a single, solitary application. Quality and diversity
    can go hand-in-hand, and they must.
        Let me say that affirmative action has also done more than just open
    the doors of opportunity to individual Americans. Most economists who
    study it agree that affirmative action has also been an important part
    of closing gaps in economic opportunity in our society, thereby
    strengthening the entire economy.
        A group of distinguished business leaders told me just a couple of
    days ago that their companies are stronger and their profits are larger
    because of the diversity and the excellence of their work forces
    achieved through intelligent and fair affirmative action programs. And
    they said, ``We have gone far beyond anything the Government might
    require us to do because managing diversity and individual opportunity
    and being fair to everybody is the key to our future economic success in
    the global marketplace.''
        Now, there are those who say, my fellow Americans, that even good
    affirmative action programs are no longer needed, that it should be
    enough to resort to the courts or the Equal Employment Opportunity
    Commission in cases of actual, provable, individual discrimination
    because there is no longer any systematic discrimination in our society.
    In deciding how to answer that, let us consider the facts.
        The unemployment rate for African-Americans remains about twice that
    of whites. The Hispanic rate is still much higher. Women have narrowed
    the earnings gap, but still make only 72 percent as much as men do for
    comparable jobs. The average income for an Hispanic woman with a college
    degree is still less than the average income of a white man with a high
    school diploma.
        According to the recently completed glass ceiling report, sponsored
    by Republican Members of Congress, in the Nation's largest companies
    only six-tenths of one percent of senior management positions are held
    by African--

    [[Page 1110]]

    Americans, four-tenths of a percent by Hispanic-Americans, three-tenths
    of a percent by Asian-Americans. Women hold between 3 and 5 percent of
    these positions. White males make up 43 percent of our work force but
    hold 95 percent of these jobs.
        Just last week, the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank reported that black
    home loan applicants are more than twice as likely to be denied credit
    as whites with the same qualifications and that Hispanic applicants are
    more than 1\1/2\ times as likely to be denied loans as whites with the
    same qualifications.
        Last year alone the Federal Government received more than 90,000
    complaints of employment discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or
    gender; less than 3 percent were for reverse discrimination.
        Evidence abounds in other ways of the persistence of the kind of
    bigotry that can affect the way we think, even if we're not conscious of
    it, in hiring and promotion and business and educational decisions.
        Crimes and violence based on hate against Asians, Hispanics,
    African-Americans, and other minorities are still with us. And I'm sorry
    to say that the worst and most recent evidence of this involves a recent
    report of Federal law enforcement officials in Tennessee attending an
    event literally overflowing with racism, a sickening reminder of just
    how pervasive these kinds of attitudes still are.
        By the way, I want to tell you that I am committed to finding the
    truth about what happened there and to taking appropriate action. And I
    want to say that if anybody who works in Federal law enforcement thinks
    that that kind of behavior is acceptable, they ought to think about
    working someplace else.
        Now, let's get to the other side of the argument. If affirmative
    action has worked and if there is evidence that discrimination still
    exists on a wide scale in ways that are conscious and unconscious, then
    why should we get rid of it as many people are urging? Some question the
    effectiveness or the fairness of particular affirmative action programs.
    I say to all of you, those are fair questions, and they prompted the
    review of our affirmative action programs about which I will talk in a
    few moments.
        Some question the fundamental purpose of the effort. There are
    people who honestly believe that affirmative action always amounts to
    group preferences over individual merit, that affirmative action always
    leads to reverse discrimination, that ultimately, therefore, it demeans
    those who benefit from it and discriminates against those who are not
    helped by it.
        I just have to tell you that all of you have to decide how you feel
    about that, and all of our fellow country men and women have to decide
    as well. But I believe if there are no quotas, if we give no
    opportunities to unqualified people, if we have no reverse
    discrimination, and if, when the problem ends, the program ends, that
    criticism is wrong. That's what I believe. But we should have this
    debate, and everyone should ask the question.
        Now let's deal with what I really think is behind so much of this
    debate today. There are a lot of people who oppose affirmative action
    today who supported it for a very long time. I believe they are
    responding to the sea change in the experiences that most Americans have
    in the world in which we live. If you say now you're against affirmative
    action because the Government is using its power or the private sector
    is using its power to help minorities at the expense of the majority,
    that gives you a way of explaining away the economic distress that a
    majority of Americans honestly feel. It gives you a way of turning their
    resentment against the minorities or against a particular Government
    program, instead of having an honest debate about how we all got into
    the fix we're in and what we're all going to do together to get out of
    it.
        That explanation, the affirmative action explanation, for the fix
    we're in is just wrong. It is just wrong. Affirmative action did not
    cause the great economic problems of the American middle class. And
    because most minorities or women are either members of that middle class
    or people who are poor who are struggling to get into it, we must also
    admit that affirmative action alone won't solve the problems of
    minorities and women who seek to be a part of the American dream. To do
    that, we have to have an economic strategy that reverses the decline in
    wages and the growth of poverty among working people. Without that,
    women, minorities, and white males will all be in trouble in the future.
        But it is wrong to use the anxieties of the middle class to divert
    the American people from the real causes of their economic distress, the
    sweeping historic changes taking all the globe in its path and the
    specific policies or lack of

    [[Page 1111]]

    them in our own country which have aggravated those challenges. It is
    simply wrong to play politics with the issue of affirmative action and
    divide our country at a time when, if we're really going to change
    things, we have to be united.
        I must say, I think it is ironic that some of those, not all but
    some of those who call for an end to affirmative action also advocate
    policies which will make the real economic problems of the anxious
    middle class even worse. They talk about opportunity and being for equal
    opportunity for everyone, and then they reduce investment in equal
    opportunity on an evenhanded basis. For example, if the real goal is
    economic opportunity for all Americans, why in the world would we reduce
    our investment in education from Head Start to affordable college loans?
    Why don't we make college loans available to every American instead?
        If the real goal is empowering all middle class Americans and
    empowering poor people to work their way into the middle class without
    regard to race or gender, why in the world would the people who advocate
    that turn around and raise taxes on our poorest working families, or
    reduce the money available for education and training when they lose
    their jobs or they're living on poverty wages, or increase the cost of
    housing for lower income working people with children? Why would we do
    that? If we're going to empower America, we have to do more than talk
    about it. We have to do it. And we surely have learned that we cannot
    empower all Americans by a simple strategy of taking opportunity away
    from some Americans.
        So to those who use this as a political strategy to divide us, we
    must say no. We must say no. But to those who raise legitimate questions
    about the way affirmative action works or who raise the larger question
    about the genuine problems and anxieties of all the American people and
    their sense of being left behind and treated unfairly, we must say yes,
    you are entitled to answers to your questions. We must say yes to that.
        Now, that's why I ordered this review of all of our affirmative
    action programs, a review designed to look at the facts, not the
    politics, of affirmative action. This review concluded that affirmative
    action remains a useful tool for widening economic and educational
    opportunity. The model used by the military, the Army in particular--and
    I'm delighted to have the Commanding General of the Army here today
    because he set such a fine example--has been especially successful
    because it emphasizes education and training, ensuring that it has a
    wide pool of qualified candidates for every level of promotion. That
    approach has given us the most racially diverse and best qualified
    military in our history. There are more opportunities for women and
    minorities there than ever before. And now there are over 50 generals
    and admirals who are Hispanic, Asian, or African-Americans.
        We found that the Education Department targeted on--had programs
    targeted on under-represented minorities that do a great deal of good
    with the tiniest of investments. We found that these programs comprised
    40 cents of every $1,000 in the Education Department's budget.
        Now, college presidents will tell you that the education their
    schools offer actually benefit from diversity, colleges where young
    people get the education and make the personal and professional contacts
    that will shape their lives. If their colleges look like the world
    they're going to live and work in and they learn from all different
    kinds of people things that they can't learn in books, our systems of
    higher education are stronger.
        Still, I believe every child needs the chance to go to college,
    every child. That means every child has to have a chance to get
    affordable and repayable college loans, Pell grants for poor kids and a
    chance to do things like join AmeriCorps and work their way through
    school. Every child is entitled to that. That is not an argument against
    affirmative action, it's an argument for more opportunity for more
    Americans until everyone is reached.
        As I said a moment ago, the review found that the Small Business
    Administration last year increased loans to minorities by over two-
    thirds, loans to women by over 80 percent, did not decrease loans to
    white men, and not a single loan went to an unqualified person. People
    who never had a chance before to be part of the American system of free
    enterprise now have it. No one was hurt in the process. That made
    America stronger.
        This review also found that the Executive order on employment
    practices of large Federal contractors also has helped to bring more
    fairness and inclusion into the work force.
        Since President Nixon was here in my job, America has used goals and
    timetables to preserve opportunity and to prevent discrimination,

    [[Page 1112]]

    to urge businesses to set higher expectations for themselves and to
    realize those expectations. But we did not and we will not use rigid
    quotas to mandate outcomes.
        We also looked at the way we award procurement contracts under the
    programs known as set-asides. There's no question that these programs
    have helped to build up firms owned by minorities and women who
    historically had been excluded from the old-boy networks in these areas.
    It has helped a new generation of entrepreneurs to flourish, opening new
    paths to self-reliance and an economic growth in which all of us
    ultimately share. Because of the set-asides, businesses ready to compete
    have had a chance to compete, a chance they would not have otherwise
    had.
        But as with any Government program, set-asides can be misapplied,
    misused, even intentionally abused. There are critics who exploit that
    fact as an excuse to abolish all these programs, regardless of their
    effects. I believe they are wrong, but I also believe, based on our
    factual review, we clearly need some reform.
        So first, we should crack down on those who take advantage of
    everyone else through fraud and abuse. We must crack down on fronts and
    passthroughs, people who pretend to be eligible for these programs and
    aren't. That is wrong. We also, in offering new businesses a leg up,
    must make sure that the set-asides go to businesses that need them most.
    We must really look and make sure that our standard for eligibility is
    fair and defensible. We have to tighten the requirement to move
    businesses out of programs once they've had a fair opportunity to
    compete. The graduation requirement must mean something: It must mean
    graduation. There should be no permanent set-aside for any company.
        Second, we must and we will comply with the Supreme Court's Adarand
    decision of last month. Now, in particular, that means focusing set-
    aside programs on particular regions and business sectors where the
    problems of discrimination or exclusion are provable and are clearly
    requiring affirmative action. I have directed the Attorney General and
    the agencies to move forward with compliance with Adarand expeditiously.
        But I also want to emphasize that the Adarand decision did not
    dismantle affirmative action and did not dismantle set-asides. In fact,
    while setting stricter standards to mandate reform of affirmative
    action, it actually reaffirmed the need for affirmative action and
    reaffirmed the continuing existence of systematic discrimination in the
    United States. What the Supreme Court ordered the Federal Government to
    do was to meet the same more rigorous standard for affirmative action
    programs that State and local governments were ordered to meet several
    years ago. And the best set-aside programs under that standard have been
    challenged and have survived.
        Third, beyond discrimination we need to do more to help
    disadvantaged people and distressed communities, no matter what their
    race or gender. There are places in our country where the free
    enterprise system simply doesn't reach; it simply isn't working to
    provide jobs and opportunity. Disproportionately, these areas in urban
    and rural America are highly populated by racial minorities, but not
    entirely. To make this initiative work, I believe the Government must
    become a better partner for people in places in urban and rural America
    that are caught in a cycle of poverty. And I believe we have to find
    ways to get the private sector to assume their rightful role as a driver
    of economic growth.
        It has always amazed me that we have given incentives to our
    business people to help to develop poor economies in other parts of the
    world, our neighbors in the Caribbean, our neighbors in other parts of
    the world--I have supported this when not subject to their own abuses--
    but we ignore the biggest source of economic growth available to the
    American economy, the poor economies isolated within the United States
    of America.
        There are those who say, ``Well, even if we made the jobs available,
    people wouldn't work. They haven't tried. '' Most of the people in
    disadvantaged communities work today, and most of them who don't work
    have a very strong desire to do so. In central Harlem, 14 people apply
    for every single minimum-wage job opening. Think how many more would
    apply if there were good jobs with a good future. Our job has to connect
    disadvantaged people and disadvantaged communities to economic
    opportunity so that everybody who wants to work can do so.
        We've been working at this through our empowerment zones and
    community develop banks, through the initiatives of Secretary Cisneros
    of the Housing and Urban Develop-

    [[Page 1113]]

    ment Department, and many other things that we have tried to do to put
    capital where it is needed. And now I have asked Vice President Gore to
    develop a proposal to use our contracting to support businesses that
    locate themselves in these distressed areas or hire a large percentage
    of their workers from these areas, not to supplement what we're doing in
    affirmative action--not to substitute for it but to supplement it, to go
    beyond it, to do something that will help to deal with the economic
    crisis of America. We want to make our procurement system more
    responsive to people in these areas who need help.
        My fellow Americans, affirmative action has to be made consistent
    with our highest ideals of personal responsibility and merit and our
    urgent need to find common ground and to prepare all Americans to
    compete in the global economy of the next century.
        Today, I am directing all our agencies to comply with the Supreme
    Court's Adarand decision and also to apply the four standards of
    fairness to all our affirmative action programs that I have already
    articulated: No quotas in theory or practice; no illegal discrimination
    of any kind, including reverse discrimination; no preference for people
    who are not qualified for any job or other opportunity; and as soon as a
    program has succeeded, it must be retired. Any program that doesn't meet
    these four principles must be eliminated or reformed to meet them.
        But let me be clear: Affirmative action has been good for
    America.Affirmative action has not always been perfect, and affirmative
    action should not go on forever. It should be changed now to take care
    of those things that are wrong, and it should be retired when its job is
    done. I am resolved that that day will come. But the evidence suggests,
    indeed, screams that that day has not come.
        The job of ending discrimination in this country is not over. That
    should not be surprising. We had slavery for centuries before the
    passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. We waited another 100
    years for the civil rights legislation. Women have had the vote less
    than 100 years. We have always had difficulty with these things, as most
    societies do. But we are making more progress than many people.
        Based on the evidence, the job is not done. So here is what I think
    we should do. We should reaffirm the principle of affirmative action and
    fix the practices. We should have a simple slogan: Mend it, but don't
    end it.
        Let me ask all Americans, whether they agree or disagree with what I
    have said today, to see this issue in the larger context of our times.
    President Lincoln said, ``We cannot escape our history.'' We cannot
    escape our future, either. And that future must be one in which every
    American has the chance to live up to his or her God-given capacities.
        The new technology, the instant communications, the explosion of
    global commerce have created enormous opportunities and enormous
    anxieties for Americans. In the last 2\1/2\ years, we have seen 7
    million new jobs, more millionaires and new businesses than ever before,
    high corporate profits, and a booming stock market. Yet most Americans
    are working harder for the same or lower pay, and they feel more
    insecurity about their jobs, their retirement, their health care, and
    their children's education. Too many of our children are clearly exposed
    to poverty and welfare, violence and drugs.
        These are the great challenges for our whole country on the
    homefront at the dawn of the 21st century. We've got to find the wisdom
    and the will to create family-wage jobs for all the people who want to
    work, to open the door of college to all Americans, to strengthen
    families and reduce the awful problems to which our children are
    exposed, to move poor Americans from welfare to work.
        This is the work of our administration, to give people the tools
    they need to make the most of their own lives, to give families and
    communities the tools they need to solve their own problems. But let us
    not forget affirmative action didn't cause these problems. It won't
    solve them. And getting rid of affirmative action certainly won't solve
    them.
        If properly done, affirmative action can help us come together, go
    forward, and grow together. It is in our moral, legal, and practical
    interest to see that every person can make the most of his own life. In
    the fight for the future, we need all hands on deck, and some of those
    hands still need a helping hand.
        In our national community we're all different; we're all the same.
    We want liberty and freedom. We want the embrace of family and
    community. We want to make the most of our own lives, and we're
    determined to give our children a better one. Today there are voices of
    division who would say forget all that. Don't you dare.

    [[Page 1114]]

    Remember we're still closing the gap between our Founders' ideals and
    our reality. But every step along the way has made us richer, stronger,
    and better. And the best is yet to come.
        Thank you very much, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:40 a.m. in the Rotunda. In his remarks,
    he referred to Gen. Dennis J. Reimer, USA, Chief of Staff, Army.