[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

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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.