    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [July 10, 1996]
    [Pages 1101-1109]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the NAACP Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina
    July 10, 1996

        Thank you. Thank you very much. President Mfume, I hope you do get
    your 4 more years. [Laughter] And I hope I get to hang around to work
    with you.
        Madam Chair, Bishop Graves, Hazel and other distinguished members--
    [laughter]. Hey, she met me outside and kissed me. [Laughter] Brother
    Williams, thank you for singing for us. Reverend Hooks, you're looking
    young and handsome, I'm glad to see.
        Ladies and gentlemen, last year I know the First Lady came to visit
    with you, and she had a wonderful time. And she is completing a trip
    that she made on behalf of our country after the meeting of the G-7
    industrial countries in France. She went to a lot of the nations that
    used to be part of the Soviet empire, that were once Communist and are
    now free. And she's had a wonderful trip. Last night I talked to her.
    She was in Finland, and so far north the Sun never really goes down at
    this time of year. So I knew she wouldn't be mad when I woke her up at 2
    o'clock in the morning to talk. [Laughter] And she asked me to give you
    her best.
        I also want you to know what I did. The last thing I did before I
    got on the helicopter at the White House to come here today was to meet
    with Mickey Kantor, our Secretary of Commerce, and Michael Brown, Ron
    Brown's son, and the delegation who are leaving today to finish the
    mission Ron Brown started in Bosnia and Croatia. And I was especially
    proud that almost all the companies who lost executives on that terrible
    day sent replacements to go on this mission to finish the work of
    advancing the cause of peace. And I want to thank you, Mr. President,
    and all of you, for the tribute that you gave to Secretary Brown
    yesterday.
        I am honored to be here today because of what the NAACP has meant to
    America. As a young boy growing up in the segregated South, it was the
    NAACP that gave all of us hope that there could be a better day. I told
    Myrlie--I don't think she quite believed it--that in early 1974, when I
    started my political career, I actually purchased a membership at the
    Mallalieu A.M.E. Church in Fort Smith, Arkansas. I came to a meeting one
    Sunday afternoon and bought myself a membership card. I hate to say that
    because I'll get a letter from Kweisi next week pointing out that I have
    not kept up my renewals over the last 20 years. [Laughter]

    [[Page 1102]]

        What a difference a year makes. Last year you announced your new
    leadership, a new sense of partnership, a new spirit of commitment to go
    into the 21st century. You elected Myrlie Evers as your chairman. You
    elected this great former Member of Congress--[applause]--that's right,
    give her a hand. You elected this great Member of Congress as your new
    president and CEO, Kweisi Mfume. As you might imagine, given the way
    things are around here in Washington, I miss him more than ever. I was
    riding in with Congressman Mel Watt from Charlotte today, from the
    airport, and we were talking about--where's Mel? He's here somewhere I
    think, Congressman Watt. And we were talking about what a great voice
    Kweisi was in the Congress. But I think we gained a greater leader in
    the struggle for equality and progress in America when he changed jobs.
        I want to thank you for making your voice heard again for economic
    justice, for the empowerment of all voters, for educational excellence
    for our children. And I want to thank you especially for your effort to
    bring young people back into this organization and into the spirit of
    citizenship in America. We need these young people. After all, they have
    more tomorrows than yesterdays. [Laughter] There are some days when I
    resent that, but it's true. [Laughter]
        And we can't remake our yesterdays, we can only make tomorrows. And
    we can't afford to have young people saying, ``Well, oh, this doesn't
    matter. It doesn't matter whether I am involved in the NAACP. It doesn't
    matter whether I vote. It doesn't matter whether I'm in a community
    group to try to help save my peers from drugs and gangs and give them a
    bright future and a better life.'' It does matter. It matters.
        And because of the dedication of Mr. Mfume to the young people of
    his congressional district and to the young men in his own family, he
    brought that conviction that he could inspire young people to his work
    here. And in a way, it may be the lasting legacy of this period of
    reform of the NAACP that you brought the young blood of America back
    into this organization, fighting for the future and working together.
    And I hope he will stay with it. I'm glad that us gray-haired people
    still have a role in it, however. [Laughter]
        My fellow Americans, our Nation, as you all know, is at a
    crossroads. We are only 4 years away now from a new century in a new
    millennium. Anytime you change the calendar in that way, people start to
    think in bigger ways. They start to imagine the great significance of
    the moment. But it happens to be true now, for we are undergoing a
    sweeping change in the way we work, the way we live, the way we relate
    to the rest of the world.
        We are leaving the cold war that dominated most of our lives behind
    and moving into a new global village, if I can use my wife's term, with
    lots of opportunity and a lot of troubles, some of them new and some of
    them very old. We are moving away from the industrial age into a new era
    dominated by information and technology, where more people will have
    more opportunities than ever before, but unless they have the capacity
    to seize those opportunities, they'll be left behind faster than ever
    before. So when I sought this office, I did so because I wanted to get
    our country ready for the 21st century, because I thought there were
    three simple things that we had to do.
        One is to make sure we enter the next century with the American
    dream alive for everybody who is willing to work for it, without regard
    to their race, their gender, their region, or where they start out in
    life: high, low, or somewhere in the middle.
        Secondly, I thought we had to find a way to resist these destructive
    winds that are blowing in so many other countries to divide people by
    race and religion and ethnicity and, instead, come together in a greater
    sense of community, to bridge our divisions, respect our diversity,
    extol our shared values, and make America stronger because of our
    diversity, not weaker because of it.
        And the third thing I wanted to do is to make sure that in this new
    world our country continues to be the world's strongest force for peace
    and freedom and prosperity. It matters in Haiti. It matters in South
    Africa. It matters in Northern Ireland. It matters in the Middle East.
    It matters in all these countries, but it matters to us here at home,
    when we can work with the Russians to reduce our nuclear arsenals, when
    we can work with other countries to stop the proliferation of dangerous
    weapons, when we can cooperate with other countries to prevent terrorist
    incidents before they occur. It matters that America is a force for
    peace and freedom and prosperity. It matters to every single one of you.

    [[Page 1103]]

        My strategy to achieve that vision was remarkably simple. I thought
    we had to reassert the basic bargain in American citizenship: more
    opportunity for everyone and responsibility from all, and the
    understanding that that responsibility includes our common
    responsibility not just to make the most of our own lives and our family
    lives but to be good citizens for our communities and for our country.
        At this time of decision, that's what I hope the discussion will be
    about in this election year. We've come a long way in the last 4 years,
    but we've got a long way to go. Four years ago when I became President,
    the economy was stagnant. We had the slowest job growth since the Great
    Depression. The deficit was spiraling. We had quadrupled our national
    debt in only 12 years from what we'd done in the previous 200. We put in
    place an economic plan designed to cut the deficit, expand trade for
    American products on free and fair terms, and invest more in the people
    of this country, wherever they lived and wherever they were starting out
    in life. And 4 years later, it's made a difference.
        I said 4 years ago that if the Congress would adopt my plan I
    thought it would cut the deficit in half and produce 8 million jobs.
    Well, in 3\1/2\ years, we know it's cut the deficit by more than half
    and produced over 10 million jobs. That is a good beginning for the
    American people.
         For much of the last 4 years the African-American unemployment rate
    has been in single digits for the first time in 20 years. There are
    100,000 new African-American-owned businesses. After falling by $2,000
    in the previous 4 years, median income for African-American families has
    increased by $2,400, or 11 percent, in just the first 2 years of this
    administration. Average wages are going up now for the first time in a
    decade. Homeownership is the highest in 15 years; there are 3.7 million
    new American homeowners. The growth of homeownership among African-
    Americans is higher than the national average. And one reason is we have
    a Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in Henry Cisneros that has
    worked to cut the closing costs on those homes by $1,000 for first-time
    homebuyers.
         So we're moving in the right direction. But we have to keep working
    until all of our people can reap the rewards of this time of change,
    including those that have not been reached by the recovery, those that
    have been downsized in competition, those that are stuck in place
    because they don't have the education and the skills to move up. So we
    have to keep working on balancing this budget because that keeps the
    interest rates down, the investments coming, and takes the burden off
    these young people you're trying to get interested in their own future.
         But we have to do it in a way that recognizes our obligations to
    each other, that keeps the community together. Yes, reform Medicare, but
    don't create a two-class system and make the oldest, the poorest, and
    the sickest seniors more vulnerable. Yes, slow the inflation rate in
    Medicaid, but don't give up the guarantee that we have a national
    responsibility to take care of poor pregnant women, poor infant
    children, people with disabilities in families all over this country,
    and elderly people who have to go into nursing homes. I think that's our
    common responsibility. We don't have to give that up. Neither should we
    reduce our commitment to excellence in education and to the environment
    in the name of balancing the budget, because that's not necessary to be
    done.
        We have to go on with the cause of health care reform. There's still
    too many people in this country that don't have health insurance or that
    lose it. That's what the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill is all about. It simply
    says you don't lose your health insurance if you lose your job, you're
    moving from job to job, or if someone in your family has been sick--a
    simple little guarantee that could immediately benefit over 8 million
    Americans who are working in this country trying to support their kids
    and hold their families together. And I hope the Congress will pass it
    without delay.
         I was very happy that yesterday the Senate voted to pass a 90-cent
    increase in the minimum wage, something we need very much. Ten million
    of our hardest-pressed workers will get a raise. And I urge Congress to
    go on and pass it now. It's passed the House and passed the Senate.
    Let's go on and pass it just as soon as possible. Get it on up here so I
    can sign that bill and we can give people a raise.
         In addition to the minimum wage, there's some other provisions in
    that bill that I'm very proud of that have, to be fair, bipartisan
    support. One is--and for all of you in small businesses, it will matter
    a lot--we're going to increase the expensing provision of small
    businesses, their writeoff capacity, from $17,500 to $25,000 a year.
    That's important for a lot of you here

    [[Page 1104]]

    in this room. It was only $10,000 when I took office, and the small-
    business community said it ought to be 25. If that bill gets to my desk,
    it will be 25.
         The other thing that I think is very important is that this bill
    contains a package of pension reforms which will make it easier for
    people who work for small businesses and people who are self-employed,
    and especially for people who have to change jobs a lot--people who are
    out there selling computer software or otherwise have to move from job
    to job--to take out a pension, to keep it when they're unemployed, and
    to keep it when they move from job to job without being interrupted.
    People ought to be able to save for their family and save for their own
    retirement even if they're working in little businesses, even if they're
    self-employed, even if they have to move across the country, even if
    they have to change jobs. That is in there with the minimum wage bill,
    too.
         Four years ago we had a lot of rhetoric on crime but not a lot of
    action, and the crime rate was at unbelievably high levels. But there
    was a quiet change going on in many of our communities, who recognized
    that we had to have more police on the street trying to prevent crime,
    not just catch criminals; relating to people in the communities; working
    with the parents; working with the children. They recognized that in
    addition to tougher punishment for serious offenders, we needed more
    prevention programs for community activists who wanted to help save
    these kids.
         And when I became President I asked the Congress to pass that kind
    of crime bill, and they did. And now we're putting 100,000 police back
    on the street. We're taking guns off the street with the assault weapons
    ban and the Brady bill. We're increasing penalties for people who should
    be punished more, but also giving our young people something to say yes
    to.
         Under the direction of General McCaffrey, who this week is chairing
    a conference in El Paso, Texas, on how to stop drugs at the border, we
    are targeting a drug strategy to help young people. We cannot let
    another generation of our young people fall into the trap of drugs and
    gangs and crime.
         We're working with communities all over this country with
    innovative strategies, not telling people what to do but saying, ``If
    you want to do this, we'll help you.'' School uniform policies in places
    like Long Beach, California, or Las Cruces, New Mexico. We're working on
    enforcing the truancy laws--kids ought to be in school, not on the
    street during school hours, I think--and helping people do that. We're
    working on community-based curfews. And I'm holding up to this country
    especially the example of New Orleans, where they had a huge drop in
    juvenile crime not only because they imposed a curfew system but because
    when they caught a young person out after curfew, instead of just
    punishing the person, they took these young people to a curfew center
    and said, ``Tell me about your life. What's going on in your life? What
    are your problems? What can we do to help?'' It was a positive as well
    as a disciplinary move. And the juvenile crime rate is going down
    dramatically.
         These things are working all across America. We set up a framework
    in Washington, but all we're really trying to do is help people at the
    community level come together and take responsibility for their own kids
    and their own future. And we are now seeing the 4th year in a row where
    the crime rate is going down. And that's something to be proud of.
         Now, having said that, you'd be cheering from the rafters but for
    two things. Instead of polite applause, we'd get a roaring cheer, but
    there's two things that keep you from giving a roaring cheer. What are
    they? Number one, the crime rate's still too high. So what if it's
    lower? It's still way too high. And that means it's important. We dare
    not turn back on a strategy that's working. We've got to keep
    strengthening our community efforts, putting more of these people out on
    the street who can be community police officers.
         I won't be satisfied with this crime problem until we can meet this
    test--we will never purge the country completely of crime because you
    can't--at least the President doesn't have the power to alter human
    nature. The preachers here can call on a higher power, but I can't. So
    we'll always have some crime. What will be the test for you, when you
    know that the crime rate is at a manageable, acceptable level in a
    civilized country? When you go home at night after a long day at work
    and you flip on the evening news, and the lead story is not a crime
    story, or if it is, you're surprised instead of deadened by it. You're
    really surprised. Then you will know that we've got the crime rate going
    in the right direction for good.

    [[Page 1105]]

        The other thing that bothers people is that even though the crime
    rate's going down in the country as a whole, the rate of crime and
    violence by people under 18 is going up. We've still got too many
    innocent kids being killed in crossfires by drive-by shootings. We still
    have too many kids that are out there raising themselves in the streets,
    so they wind up in gangs because everybody wants to be part of
    something. Most people can't just live wandering around as hermits all
    alone. So if you put people out there on the street and they have to
    raise themselves, they wind up in gangs because people don't want to be
    alone. There's not another compelling alternative. We have to fill that
    gap. And we have to do the things that are responsible, those of us who
    are responsible for the future. We cannot lose another generation to
    gangs and guns and drugs. We cannot waver on it.
        We cannot show weakness, and we dare not cater to special interest
    groups on this. We are determined to stand by the ban on 19 deadly
    assault weapons. It was the right thing to do. We are determined to
    stand by the Brady bill's requirement of waiting periods.
        Let me just tell you, I know when we passed the Brady bill and when
    we passed the assault weapons ban in 1994--and Mr. Mfume will tell you
    this--we lost some Members of Congress who actually lost their seats in
    Congress because they voted for these bills. People went into their
    districts, called voters on the telephone, sent them letters, ran ads
    saying, ``These people are trying to take your guns away from you.
    They're trying to end your ability to go out in the country and hunt.''
    That's what they said. And, you know, most people who work hard don't
    have time to keep up with what's going on every day. A lot of people
    didn't know, and they went right in and dutifully voted against these
    Members of Congress. And some of them gave up their seats.
        But you know what? It's been 2 years now--two deer seasons--
    [laughter]--two duck seasons, two turkey seasons, two quail seasons, two
    squirrel seasons, and everybody in this whole country that likes to do
    that is still shooting at those animals with the same gun they had
    before we passed the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban. Every
    single soul. So they didn't tell the truth. But I'll tell you who
    doesn't have guns. Because of that Brady bill, 60,000 felons, fugitives,
    and stalkers have not been able to get handguns to pull the trigger on
    innocent American citizens. We were right, and they were wrong about
    that, and we've got to stand tough on it.
        Now, this year, we've gone through a great debate about whether or
    not to repeal the assault weapons ban. I couldn't believe it. Just 4
    months ago the House of Representatives actually voted to repeal the
    assault weapons ban. They want to take Uzis out there and shoot at the
    deer. [Laughter] Wild turkey fly fast; you need lots of bullets.
    [Laughter] I'm kind of laughing to keep from crying about this.
        And let me say, there's now a lot of talk about, you know, where the
    major candidates will stand on this repeal of the assault weapons ban,
    who will push for it, and won't, and whatever. But I will say one thing
    that the Republican candidate for President has not said and probably
    will not and cannot say. I will veto any attempt to repeal the assault
    weapons ban or the Brady bill. I will veto it.
        We should stand with law enforcement. We should stand with the
    victims of crime. You can't tell me it doesn't make any difference. I'll
    never forget a handsome young business man from northern California I
    met a couple of years ago when we were fighting this battle. He had a
    beautiful young daughter, but his beautiful young daughter no longer had
    her beautiful young mother, because the beautiful young mother just
    happened to be in a highrise one day when a madman happened to walk in
    and cut loose with an assault weapon.
        Now, people go crazy; these things happen. But if he'd had a
    revolver instead of an assault weapon, there wouldn't be so many people
    dead in that building. And this is important. This is an important
    issue. So I ask you all to think about this and talk about this.
        And let me just tell you something that makes, again, Kweisi's
    attempt to bring all the young people in here so important. Just
    starting in grade school now, we have the largest group of young
    Americans--more diverse than ever before in terms of their racial and
    ethnic backgrounds--the largest group of young Americans entering our
    school system since the baby boomers entered right after World War II.
        It was thought for a long time we would never have a group of
    youngsters that large again. This group is larger. They are more likely
    to be people of color. They are quite likely to come from families with
    difficult situations, or at least dif-

    [[Page 1106]]

    ficult economic situations. We must turn this problem of juvenile
    violence and gangs around before they reach their adolescent years if we
    don't want to reap the whirlwind of this.
        One way we have to do it is with the right kind of welfare reform.
    Three-quarters of the people in America on welfare are already under
    welfare reform experiments because of the action our Government has
    taken to encourage strategies to move people from welfare to work.
        My criteria is simple. I don't mind being tough on requiring people
    to work, but we ought to want for people on welfare what we want for
    ourselves. What do we want? We want to succeed at home and at work. We
    want to be good parents, and we want to be good from 9 to 5. We want to
    feel good about ourselves when we come home from work, but we want to
    feel good about ourselves when we leave home with our kids behind. That
    is the simple test. So I say, tough on work, yes; tough on kids, no way.
    Be good to the kids. Invest in child care.
        And we've had time enough now to see who is right. We have 1.3
    million people less on the welfare rolls today than the day I took the
    oath of office as President of the United States. That's the way to move
    people from welfare to work: support them with child care and then
    require those work requirements.
        And the most important thing we can do is make a wholesale
    commitment to educational excellence and educational opportunity in this
    country. We have got to do more. People say we've done a lot on that in
    the last 15 years. Not nearly enough. We've expanded Head Start but not
    enough. We've worked to shrink class sizes and help teachers be
    retrained. We've worked to encourage States to set high standards and to
    give them the flexibility they need to meet the standards. We've worked
    to open the doors of college wider than ever, increasing the Pell
    grants, changing the student loan program so that people could borrow
    the money at lower costs with less hassle and then have the option to
    pay it back as a percentage of their income, so that no young person
    should ever drop out of school because of the burden of a student loan.
        But we have to do more. I am determined to see every classroom and
    every library in every school in the United States of America hooked up
    to the Internet by the year 2000 so the poorest kids can get the richest
    education and have access to all the information that any student
    anywhere in the world has.
        I believe that the best tax cut we could give the American people is
    a tax deduction for the cost of college tuition up to $10,000 a year. I
    believe that we ought to make at least 2 years of college after high
    school just as universal as a high school education is today. I think
    everybody ought to have access to it. That's why I have proposed a
    $1,500 refundable tax credit, enough to pay the entire tuition cost at
    the typical community college in the United States, so that everybody of
    any age can at least go back and get 2 years of college so they can do
    well in the world toward which we're going.
        If you want to inspire young people of the future, you at least
    ought to be able to tell them--you at least ought to be able to tell
    them--you ought to be able to look them right in the eye and say, you
    will go to college if you do this. That's the least that we can do in
    Washington to help those of you who are out there in our neighborhoods
    help to rescue this generation of young people and give them something
    to say yes to and a bright future to embrace.
        So these are the things that I think we ought to be focusing on:
    things that help people make the most of their own lives--not a
    guarantee but an opportunity; things that help build strong families;
    things that help build strong communities. They'll build a strong
    country. And it's one thing to preach to people that they ought to be
    responsible--and I'm for that--but if they are responsible, they ought
    to be rewarded with opportunity. The two things should go together as a
    bargain.
        Let me say one other thing. Now that the cold war is over, we have,
    unfortunately, not a world free of danger. We've got a lot of security
    problems. You know it as well as I do. We just dealt with it with a
    terrible, terrible loss of our Air Force personnel in Saudi Arabia.
        What is leading to all this terrorism around the world? What does it
    have in common, when the Hutus and the Tutsis just slaughter each other
    in Rwanda or Burundi? What does that have to do with people rioting in
    Northern Ireland? What does it have to do with the Bosnians, the
    Muslims, the Croats, and the Serbs and what they did to each other for 4
    years after living together in peace for decades? What does it have to
    do with the continuing tensions in the Middle East?

    [[Page 1107]]

        Well, I think it has to do with human nature being vulnerable every
    day to taking the easy way of defining ourselves in terms of who we're
    not, instead of who we are; defining ourselves in terms of who we can
    look down on, instead of what we can look up to. What leads to an
    Oklahoma City bombing? What were those people thinking in that group in
    Arizona where our Federal officials broke it up the other day before--
    when they had that massive weapons cache and all those--at least they
    have been charged with plans to blow up all kinds of Federal facilities?
    What are they thinking about when they burn all those churches and
    synagogues or, in a few cases, mosques and Islamic centers? What are
    they thinking about?
        I'm telling you, it's something endemic to human nature, something
    you have to teach your kids about all the time, something we all have to
    fight. It's almost like, every day you wake up and the scales are going
    inside you, you know, hope and fear, hatred and reconciliation. But
    there are people all over the world that look like they just can't exist
    unless they go out and kill somebody who is different from them--or at
    least keep them at arm's length.
        And nobody has ever perfectly solved this problem. There are no
    perfect answers because, again, it deals with the human spirit and the
    things that are endemic to human nature. But that's why I know that even
    though we desegregated our schools and threw racism out of public
    facilities and elected African-Americans and Hispanics and Asian-
    Americans to Congress, passed civil rights laws, this job is a never-
    ending job, here and around the world. It's a never-ending job.
        That's why, notwithstanding the political movement of the moment,
    after I studied it for several months I thought we could and should make
    some changes in the affirmative action laws, but that we should mend
    them and not end them. I thought it would be a mistake to end them and
    walk away. I think it's a mistake not to try to keep working for voting
    rights and greater impact of voting rights. And notwithstanding the
    recent Supreme Court decisions which, of course, we will all honor, we
    still have to be on a mission of making sure that the Congress of the
    United States represents the American people in a fair and plural way.
        And it's why we have to keep standing against this rash of church
    burnings. You know, it's hard to think of anything an American could do
    that didn't kill a lot of people that would offend our sense of decency
    more than burning a house of worship. This whole country got started in
    part by people coming here so they could build their own churches and
    worship God in any way they pleased, and they wouldn't be oppressed
    here. That's how we got started.
        In the darkest hours of our country, when we lived with the awful
    curse of slavery and then later with the problems associated with the
    attempt to escape it, if it had not been for the African-American
    church--if it had not been for the African-American church, what would
    have happened? We might have plunged this country into an orgy of
    violence and killing and lost tens of thousands more people and hardened
    our hearts against one another in ways that it would have taken a
    century or more to overcome.
        An attack on a house of worship, whether it's a big old Southern
    Baptist church or a big old black Baptist church or a tiny synagogue or
    a Muslim mosque that only a few people ever frequent, is an attack on
    the whole idea of America. And it represents our problem in dealing with
    this curse of hatred based on race and religion and ethnicity that is
    sweeping the world and fueling so much of this terrorism.
        I want to thank you for what you have done. The NAACP has worked
    with law enforcement and government and business and religious leaders
    to help us catch and prosecute people, and to help us rebuild, and to
    help us prevent these burnings. You know that my administration stands
    behind you. We created a national task force on these church burnings,
    headed, I might add, very ably by two of the finest African-Americans in
    our administration: Deval Patrick, the Assistant Attorney General for
    Civil Rights, and Jim Johnson, the Assistant Secretary of Treasury for
    Enforcement. We've got over 200 FBI and ATF agents working to solve
    these crimes, going through the evidence, doing the investigations. And
    we're making arrests. In just the last 3 weeks, arrests have been made
    in connection with fires in Missouri, North and South Carolina, Texas,
    Virginia, and Washington. And just this past Monday, while you were
    here, two members of the KKK were charged with the burning of the Mount
    Zion A.M.E. Church in Greeleyville, South Carolina, where I visited just
    last month.

    [[Page 1108]]

        This morning before I left the White House, I met with a bipartisan
    group of congressional leaders to thank them for quickly and unanimously
    passing bipartisan legislation to make it easier to prosecute arson
    attacks against houses of worship. Also, that legislation authorizes a
    $10 million Department of Housing and Urban Development loan guarantee
    program to be used for church rebuilding, to work with the money that's
    been raised by the National Council of Churches, the guarantees of
    volunteers that have been given by Habitat for Humanity and others.
        But we must do more. Two weeks ago, I began to convene religious
    leaders and Governors and others in the White House to talk about what
    else we can do. I asked the head of the Federal Emergency Management
    Agency, James Lee Witt, who's used to working with local community
    groups when we have natural disasters, to work with the Justice and
    Treasury Departments, with the Governors to frame a national prevention
    initiative.
        One of the big problems here in preventing these crimes is that
    you've got so many of these little churches that are out on country
    roads, and they're old wooden structures, and they don't even have a
    full-time staff, so they can't afford to have full-time people there as
    night watchmen. Keep in mind, so far there's no evidence of a national
    conspiracy. Most of these people are not armed when they sneak in in the
    middle of the night to do this. If you just had bright lights and
    somebody hanging around most of the time, it wouldn't happen. Last week
    I transferred $6 million to local communities in 13 States across the
    South. That's enough to pay for one new police officer in a county to
    drive around on these back roads to patrol the churches at night or for
    lighting or for whatever else they want to use it for to try to
    prevent--prevent--the fires from occurring in the first place.
        And tomorrow the Vice President is meeting with leaders of the
    insurance industry at the White House to build on their pledge to work
    in partnership with all of us to prevent these crimes and to make sure
    that we can still get insurance for these churches. I've heard a lot
    about that from people, and it's important.
        So we're going to do everything we can to stop these fires, to catch
    who is doing it, to rebuild. But I say again, this work we're doing here
    is dealing with a flaw in the human spirit that all of us have to fight
    always. We cannot--we cannot--let significant numbers of the American
    people turn into cowards acting in the dark of night on racial, ethnic,
    or religious bigotry. We cannot do that. We cannot let people in this
    country develop terrorist cells to manifest their hatred of their own
    Government in the greatest experiment in self-government in human
    history.
        If we are going to continue to be a force against terrorism and
    against hatred in the rest of the world, we have to continue to purge
    ourselves of it. That's why earlier this month I signed a proclamation
    designating July as the National Month of Unity for Americans. I asked
    religious leaders of all faiths and citizens from all walks of life to
    reach out to one another, to strengthen the ideals that light our way
    and keep this country strong.
        We have not always lived up to our promise. We're people; we're
    human; we make mistakes; we're imperfect. But we have never stopped
    trying. And we have never stopped moving. And as we enter this great new
    century, we have got to say that we're going to stamp out the fires of
    hatred and bigotry. We have got to say we are going to find a way to
    reject intolerance and heal our divisions. We have got to find a way to
    say, as your president has said, this is the new day begun.
        I just want to leave you with this thought. A couple of nights ago I
    met with a group of business people to talk about a number of issues,
    and one of them said to me--he said, ``Mr. President, I've been in
    business for over 30 years. I've built facilities in more than 25
    nations. I have seen this world changed a lot.'' He said, ``There is no
    country in the world today in better shape for the next century than the
    United States.'' And he said, ``Our diversity, the fact that we are all
    so different, is an enormous asset in a global economy where information
    and ideas have to be exchanged at a rapid rate and people have to
    understand each other and deal with each other.'' He said, ``That's why
    it's so important that we learn how to work together and be together,
    because if we do, there is no stopping this country.''
        I've said several times in the last few weeks--I'll just close with
    this. It seems like my life as your President has been dominated by fire
    in the last couple of weeks, arguably for longer than that. But I mean,
    literally, on the one hand there's the church fires, which are the
    symbol

    [[Page 1109]]

    of everything that is wrong, that we want to reject when it occurs in
    our country. And on the other hand, there is the fire that burns in the
    Olympic flame that's making its way to Atlanta.
        And I'm sure every one of you has read as this flame has moved
    through your States of all these community heroes who are picked to
    carry the torch for a kilometer. Some of them were in wheelchairs and
    had to roll along; some of them were very old and had to walk along;
    some of them were great athletes and could fly along so fast the flame
    almost went out. But every one of them had one thing in common: They
    were picked to carry that torch because they were, first and foremost,
    great citizens.
        There was a 74-year-old woman in Nevada that had taken 100 kids in
    who had been abandoned, so she took them in. There was a man who came in
    in Washington, one of the torchbearers at the White House, probably
    about 60, African-American man, who had devoted his life to rescuing the
    lives of children. And he walked up with 12 of his kids, and they were
    white, black, brown, and Asian-Americans. He had given his life to them.
    There was a Catholic nun who had devoted her whole life to fulfilling
    the Catholic social ministry in her community. There was the deaf
    president of Gallaudet University, our Nation's deaf university, who is
    in his late fifties. And when he left what he was doing with us, he was
    going that week to run a 100-mile race. There was a young woman who
    played basketball at the University of Tennessee whose body was crushed
    in an accident, and she thought her life was nearly over, her athletic
    career was certainly over. But by sheer force of will, she got herself
    back into shape, resumed her basketball career, helped them win a
    national championship, and is one of the leaders on our basketball team.
        All of these people shared one thing in common--they're all
    different races, all different religions, all different backgrounds.
    They lived their citizenship. They bridged the differences between us.
    They were looking for the future. They saw themselves in terms of who
    they were, not in terms of what they weren't; in terms of what they
    could become, not who they were supposed to hate; in terms of what kind
    of partnerships and teamwork they could build, not how they could be
    divided.
        That is the mission that the NAACP will carry, with great success
    and energy and commitment and conviction, to the hearts and minds of
    these young people into the 21st century. That is the mission we must be
    on. And that is what I hope and pray we will be discussing in this
    election season: How can we give to our children the kind of America
    they deserve to have.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:30 p.m. at the Charlotte Convention
    Center. In his remarks, he referred to Bishop William Graves, Christian
    Methodist Episcopal Church, Memphis, TN; Hazel Dukes, planning committee
    chair, and J.R. Williams, organist, NAACP 87th convention; Rev. Benjamin
    Hooks, former executive director, NAACP; and the late Ronald H. Brown,
    former Secretary of Commerce.