[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[September 14, 1996]
[Pages 1570-1574]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 1570]]


Remarks at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Dinner
September 14, 1996

    Thank you, Congressman Payne. He was up here talking about me and 
our administration and laying it on so thick, it sounded so good I 
wasn't quite sure who he was talking about. [Laughter] And Alexis 
Herman, sitting over there with me--and he got down to the end, she 
said, ``He's talking about you. This is your introduction. Stand up; 
stand up.'' [Laughter] Thank you so very much.
    Thank you, Congressman Don Payne, for your leadership of the 
Congressional Black Caucus and for your passion for the people of 
America and indeed for people around the world. Thank you, Congressman 
Bill Jefferson, for chairing this dinner for 2 years in a row. 
[Applause] That is worth more than applause, folks. Thank you for being 
my friend for so long and way back in the beginning when only you and my 
mother thought I could be elected President. [Laughter]
    Thank you, LeBaron Taylor, for chairing the Congressional Black 
Caucus Foundation. To all the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, 
Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, honored guests. I'd also like to recognize 
and thank for their service the retiring members of the CBC: Kweisi 
Mfume, Cardiss Collins, Cleo Fields, Barbara Rose Collins, and my 
neighbor Harold Ford from Tennessee. Please give them all a big hand. 
They have served our country well. [Applause]
    We have a lot of members of our administration here tonight: our 
Energy Secretary, Hazel O'Leary; the Commerce Secretary, Mickey Kantor; 
Assistant Attorney General Deval Patrick--thank you for sticking up for 
the civil rights of all Americans, Deval; Federal Highway Administrator 
Rodney Slater; Assistant to the President for appointments Bob Nash. If 
you get one, credit me; if you don't, blame him. [Laughter]
    I'm glad to see my friend Mayor Dinkins here tonight. The Director 
of the office of drug policy control in the White House, General Barry 
McCaffrey; former deputy chairman of the African National Congress 
Walter Sisilu is here. Thank you, Walter. And the future Speaker of the 
House of Representatives is here, Dick Gephardt, and we're glad to see 
him.
    This is my fourth CBC dinner. I enjoy each one better than the last. 
I thank all of you for coming up here to shake my hand, and I apologize 
for everyone I didn't get to see.
    Let me begin by recognizing your outstanding awardees tonight. Thank 
you, first of all, for honoring Alma Brown and for what you have done 
also to honor the memory of Ron Brown, who was clearly the greatest 
Commerce Secretary in my lifetime, perhaps in the history of the United 
States. I congratulate Mary Frances Berry, Ingrid Saunders Jones, Toni 
Fay, Elaine Jones, Congressman John Conyers, Congressman Donald Payne, 
LeBaron Taylor, Wade Henderson, and my good friend Andy Young. All of 
you in your own way have moved our country toward greater justice, 
equality, and opportunity. Not only the members of this foundation and 
the people at this dinner but all Americans are in your debt, and we 
congratulate you.
    Ladies and gentlemen, last Monday I had the privilege of awarding 
the highest honor our Nation can bestow on any citizen, the Medal of 
Freedom. One of the honorees, John Johnson, is clearly a legend in the 
African-American community, a man who started with nothing in my home 
State, moved to Illinois, and made a pretty good career for himself. I 
enjoyed seeing him there, and I was glad to honor him.
    But unfortunately, because of Hurricane Fran, one awardee did not 
make it to the White House to receive her award in person. So earlier 
this evening, in a ceremony in the Oval Office, I presented the 
Congressional Medal of Freedom to a woman whose quiet dignity ignited 
the most significant social movement in the history of the United 
States, Rosa Parks. At this time I'd like to ask Congressman Bill 
Jefferson and Congressman Don Payne to escort Rosa Parks to the stage so 
that we can present her to you on this great night of her recognition.
    I would like to read the citation which I presented to Rosa just a 
couple of hours ago, along with this magnificent medal. Please be 
seated. It says, ``On December 1, 1955, going home from work, Rosa Parks 
boarded a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and with one modest act of 
defiance, changed the course of history. By refusing to give up her 
seat, she sparked the

[[Page 1571]]

Montgomery bus boycott and helped launch the civil rights movement. In 
the years since, she has remained committed to the cause of freedom, 
speaking out against injustice here and abroad. Called the `first lady 
of civil rights,' Rosa Parks has demonstrated, in the words of Robert 
Kennedy, that each time a person strikes out against injustice, she 
sends forth the tiny ripple of hope, which, crossing millions of others, 
can sweep down the walls of oppression.'' Presented at the White House 
in Washington, September 9, 1996, to you, Rosa Parks. Thank you, and God 
bless you.
    Even one of the photographers said, ``You're lovely, Ms. Parks.'' 
[Laughter] You guys never say anything like that to me. [Laughter]
    Ladies and gentlemen, in the last couple of weeks, as you may have 
noticed, I have been out in the country meeting with our fellow 
Americans. I took a train to the convention in Chicago. And by the way, 
to all of you who are here from Chicago, thank you for a magnificent 
convention, for all you did.
    We started in West Virginia and went into Kentucky, all through 
Ohio, through Michigan, ending up in Indiana. Then afterward, Hillary 
and I and Al and Tipper Gore took a bus trip from Missouri back into 
southern Illinois, across into Kentucky, down through Tennessee. And I 
went up to Wisconsin for Labor Day. I have just been in Arizona and 
California.
    Everywhere I go the crowds are large and enthusiastic, full of hope 
and conviction. It is so different from 4 years ago when we had high 
unemployment, the slowest job growth since the Depression, stagnant 
wages, rising crime, a country that was becoming even more cynical about 
the political system, with rising division. I said then that I wanted to 
create a country in which we had opportunity for all, responsibility 
from all, and a community that includes all Americans. I said that I 
thought that Washington had become too caught up in the politics of who 
is to blame and we'd forgotten that what the main purpose of our work 
here, which is not to say who is to blame but to ask what are we going 
to do about it?
    Thanks to a lot of the people who are in this room, we have been 
trying to do something about it for 4 years now. And after 4 years, as 
Don Payne said, we've got 10\1/2\ million new jobs, 4\1/2\ million new 
homeowners, a record number of new small businesses, including in every 
year record numbers of new businesses owned by women and minorities. We 
have for the first time since before the Civil War cut the deficit in 
each one of the 4 years of my Presidency. And we did it without gutting 
Medicare, Medicaid, education, the environment, and our commitment to 
the proposition that everybody in this country is entitled to be treated 
fairly and justly.
    Last year the African-American unemployment rate was in single 
digits for the first time in two decades. Crime has gone down for 4 
years in a row. Twelve million Americans can take some time off when 
their babies are born or when their parents are sick without losing 
their jobs because of the family and medical leave law. Fifteen million 
American families got a tax cut to stay off welfare because they were 
working hard with children under the earned-income tax increase that was 
passed by the Members of Congress in this room today.
    Forty million Americans have had their pensions protected. We shut 
down more toxic waste dumps in 3 years than were shut down in the 12 
years before. Fifty million Americans are breathing cleaner air. We have 
standards for safer food. We've increased the immunization of children. 
We've increased the number of children with Head Start. Our health care 
reform--the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill--now says to 25 million Americans you 
can't lose your health insurance anymore just because somebody in your 
family got sick; that's what insurance is for.
    Even though I was roundly criticized for it in the most amazing 
quarters to me, in the so-called progressive quarters of this community 
when I became President, saying that I wanted to prove we could have 
diversity and excellence and that I thought we had an obligation to try 
to construct a Government that would look like America, could relate to 
America, and could work with America, I think it's worked out pretty 
well. Forty-two African-Americans have been nominated to the Federal 
court since I became President. We've nominated more women and 
minorities to the Federal bench by far than any President in history, 
and they have the highest ratings collectively from the American Bar 
Association of any nominees in history. Don't let anybody tell you you 
can't have excellence and diversity. It is not true.
    I'm grateful for the service of people like Hazel O'Leary, Jesse 
Brown, Frank Raines, our new Director of the Office of Management and

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Budget, the first African-American ever to hold that position. I'm 
grateful for those who went before them in our Cabinet, of course Ron 
Brown but also Lee Brown and Mike Espy. I'm grateful for the difference 
that people like Deval Patrick and Jim Joseph and Rodney Slater make. 
I'm grateful that for the first time ever there are three top assistants 
to the President in the White House who are African-American, Alexis 
Herman, Maggie Williams, and Bob Nash.
    I'm proud to announce tonight that the Clinton/Gore campaign has 
appointed to serve as honorary campaign chairs Alma Brown and 
Congressman John Lewis, along with Terry McAuliffe; Senator David Pryor; 
Governor Roy Romer; the former Governor of Texas, Ann Richards; and 
Linda Chavez-Thompson. They will lead our effort to spread the message 
and organize our reelection efforts around the country. Thank you, John, 
and thank you, Alma.
    Now, that is a pretty good start. I guess I should also mention what 
Don Payne said, that we had to say no to some things we couldn't just 
say yes to. We said no to the attempts to balance the budget by raising 
taxes on poor working people, raiding workers' pension funds, breaking 
our commitments to education, breaking our commitment to poor little 
children, seniors in nursing homes, families with disabilities by 
essentially ending Medicaid's guarantee; no to the effort to create a 
two-tier system of Medicare which would have hurt the oldest and the 
poorest and the sickest of our seniors; no to the attempts to undermine 
25 years of bipartisan support for environmental protection.
    But that is not enough. We have to do more. We have come a long way, 
if you look at where we are now compared to where we were 4 years ago. 
Then wages were dropping; now they're rising. There are lots of things 
that are better. But every one of you knows that we are not yet prepared 
for the enormous transition to the 21st century that we're all facing.
    And we will not be prepared until we can honestly say with a clear 
head and a clear conscience that every single person in this country who 
is willing to work for it can achieve the American dream. Until we can 
say that, until we can say, ``We know we're still going to be the 
strongest force for peace, freedom, and prosperity in the world,'' until 
we can say, ``And we know that our American community is not going to go 
the way of all these other countries where people spend all their time 
fighting each other because of their racial, their ethnic, their 
religious, their tribal differences--in this country, all you've got to 
do is believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the 
Declaration of Independence and show up. And we're for you, you're a 
part of our America, and you're walking on our bridge into the 21st 
century,'' until we can say that, we have work to do.
    So I ask you to support our efforts to balance the budget and keep 
the economy growing and keep those interest rates down but to do it in a 
way that continues to invest in the people and the places that still 
don't fully participate in the promise of America. And I ask you to 
support a tax cut, but it ought to be the right kind, focused on 
childrearing and education and health care and buying that first home. 
And it ought to be paid for. And people like me who don't need it 
shouldn't get it, blow up the deficit, and turn right around and go back 
to the past and what we did before, which caused our wreckage in the 
economy and drove the unemployment rate up and left too many of our 
people behind. So I want you to help me to build the right kind of 
bridge to that 21st century.
    I want to build a bridge where every 8-year-old can read a book on 
his or her own, where every 12-year-old in every classroom in America 
can log in on the Internet. And for the first time, I want the kids in 
the poorest urban classroom and the most isolated rural classrooms to 
have the same educational opportunity at the same level of quality in 
the same time as the children in the richest classes in America can. And 
we will do it in the next 4 years if we can build the right bridge to 
the 21st century.
    I want you to help me build a bridge where we make 2 years of 
college just as universal in 4 years from now as a high school education 
is today. Now, that's a tax cut worth giving. Give people a tax cut for 
the cost of community college tuition. Let them have those 2 years of 
education. We will see the incomes go up. We will see people getting 
good jobs. And it will make a difference if we build the right kind of 
bridge to the 21st century. And I hope you'll help me do that.
    I also want you to help me in this election period to remind America 
that for all of our 10\1/2\ million new jobs, there are still people in 
places that have been left behind. I want you to remind America that you 
can't require

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people on welfare to go to work unless they have work.
    I want you to help me to spark a vast new round of investments in 
our isolated inner-city areas which have been left behind, help me give 
the mayors and the others the power to create those jobs and create 
those opportunities by cleaning up the environment, creating investment 
incentives, and putting people to work. We cannot ever forget that there 
are still too many Americans who could no more come to this dinner than 
a man in the Moon because they're still looking for a job and they need 
one tomorrow, and we need to do our best to make sure that they have 
their part of 21st century America as well.
    Let me just say, for those of you who don't think we can do that, 
look at what's been done in the empowerment zones that have been 
created. Look at what's happened in Detroit where, when they became one 
of our empowerment zone cities, they raised $2 billion in private 
investment to go with our tax incentives and cash grants, and the 
unemployment rate in 3 years in Detroit--Detroit, a city I used to hear 
was gone--has dropped from 8\1/2\ percent to less than 4 percent in 
Detroit, Michigan.
    We can do this, folks. We can turn this around if you are committed 
and I am committed and, I might say, if we get the kind of Congress that 
will support the kind of policies that will enable us to move this 
country forward.
    And let me say one last thing. I just was with a group of people 
right before I came over here--this is an interesting story--I was with 
a small group of Americans who are from India. And it's very 
interesting, of all the groups in America--they're relatively small, 
only a half a million of them, but they have the highest average 
educational attainment, the highest average income, and the highest 
average incidence of two-parent families of any group of Americans, 
including WASP's like me. But they were supporting what we were trying 
to do, and they were glad I was coming here to be with you, because they 
understand that we have to build a bridge we can all walk across. And 
they understand, unlike some, that in order for them to be really 
successful, it does take a village where we all work together to lift 
all of our children up and give all of our kids a better opportunity.
    And that's the last thing I would like to say to you. Yes, I refused 
to end affirmative action, even though it was a popular thing at the 
moment. I think the popularity has sort of faded now because the few 
incidents of things that didn't work didn't prove that we should throw 
away something that had plainly worked overwhelmingly for so many people 
over the last 25 years and because there is still evidence that we have 
a ways to go.
    I feel the same way about any form of discrimination. And I think if 
we're going to stay on the right track we need to make sure we have less 
discrimination, not more of it.
    Just imagine what the future is going to be like. Ten years from now 
those of you who are eating here tonight have children who will be doing 
jobs that have not been invented yet. Just 10 years from now some of our 
children will be doing jobs that have not been imagined yet. Your 
Government is now doing a research project with IBM to build a 
supercomputer that will do more calculations in one second than you can 
do tonight if you go home and pick up a hand-held calculator in--listen 
to this--30,000 years. That is how fast things are changing. That is the 
magnitude of change we are facing.
    And yet there is no nation in the world so well-positioned for the 
21st century as the United States, in no small measure because of you 
and because of the hard, often bitter lessons we have learned in coming 
to grips with the problems rooted in the division of the races from the 
beginning of our country. Why? Because now we are the most diverse big 
country in the world. And if we can maintain our commitment to staying 
on the cutting edge of change and making sure everybody gets a chance to 
go there, no one will do as well as American children will in the 21st 
century if we can just remember that we are blessed by our diversity 
just as much as other countries have been cursed by theirs.
    Today the world is looking at the elections in Bosnia, the first 
halting step to moving from the absence of war--which is what they have 
had since we went in there--to the beginning of peace again. But how 
tragic it is that that little country, where the Muslims and Croats and 
the Serbs are actually biologically indistinguishable and happen to be 
in separate groups because of the developments of history--how sad it is 
that in that little country, for 4 years, after decades of getting 
along, they just set on each other and started killing each other, even 
killing the children. Why? Because the darker

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side of human nature was put on a pedestal. Because they were told the 
most important thing about them is that they weren't the other guys.
    And you look around the world and see where all that's happening. 
Now we're worried about Burundi breaking out again and having what 
happened in Rwanda happen in Burundi. Why? Because the Hutus and the 
Tutsis think the most important thing about them is they're not the 
other guy.
    I went to Ireland a year ago, and the streets were lined with the 
Catholics and Protestants, the young children cheering and yelling 
because they didn't want any more war over there. But the grownups 
didn't have as much sense as the kids did. And they started fighting 
again over things that happened 300, 400, 500, 600 years ago, telling 
the most important thing about them was they weren't Catholic or they 
weren't Protestant.
    How long did South Africa suffer for the same reason? And we have to 
remember--that's why I act so strongly when I see things like the church 
burnings or synagogues or Islamic centers being defaced--any of this is 
wrong. We can never define ourselves as Americans by saying we are so 
good because we are not the other guy. The other guys are us, too. We 
are all Americans.
    And I saw where one of our friends in the other party the other day 
was saying, ``Boy, we really need to jump on this affirmative action out 
in California; we can take the President down on this. This is one of 
those wedge issues.'' Well, let me tell you something, folks, those 
wedge issues nearly did us in. We have had about all the wedge issues we 
need. And I'd like them to take their wedges and go someplace else and 
let those of us who believe in unity get on with the business of making 
America a great place for every American to live in. And I want you to 
help me build that kind of bridge to the 21st century.
    Thank you, and God bless you. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 9:34 p.m. at the Washington Convention 
Center. In his remarks, he referred to Alexis M. Herman, Assistant to 
the President and Director of Public Liaison; David Dinkins, former New 
York City mayor; and Gov. Roy Romer of Colorado.