[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.