    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [May 7, 1998]
    [Pages 716-720]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Arab American Institute Conference
    May 7, 1998

        Thank you, Jim. To Elie Abboud and Fuad Ateyeh, all the members
    of the Arab American Institute, the National Arab American Business
    Association, Palestinian American Congress; to Prince Bandar and the members of the diplomatic corps--all of you,
    thank you for coming. My fellow Americans: I like getting advice from
    Jim Zogby's mother. [Laughter] And she has a
    remarkable read on the world. Her son John, a
    renowned pollster, has nothing on her. In fact, I think her numbers are
    better than his for me sometimes. [Laughter] I also want to say a
    special word of appreciation to Jim for his advice over the years. He is
    a remarkable voice

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    for calm and clarity, no matter how heated the issues. But I can tell
    you, he is one of the most forceful, intense, and brutally honest people
    who ever come to the White House to see me. And you should be proud of
    that.
        I understand that I am the first sitting President to address an
    Arab-American conference. [Applause] Thank you. I see Congressman
    Moran in the audience; he came here so the
    Irish would not be alone at the podium. And I thank him for that.
    [Laughter]
        I'm honored to be the first President, but I'm surprised, frankly,
    and also a little disappointed, because the Arab-American community has
    made an enormous contribution to this country with basic values that
    made us great: love of family, and belief in hard work and personal
    responsibility, and a passionate devotion to education, which I hope we
    will see engulf every single ethnic group in America today.
        I congratulate you on the way you have found your voice, on speaking
    out on a wide range of domestic issues and not just on the questions
    involving the Middle East. A record number of Arab-Americans are now
    running for and serving in public office, including the United States
    Congress. But even the newest Yemeni immigrants, once poor farmers, are
    now small-business owners, achieving their rightful share of the
    American dream.
        I wanted to talk with you very briefly tonight about how we can work
    together at home and around the world at the end of this century to
    prepare for the challenges and the staggering opportunities of the one
    about to dawn.
        First, we must help all Americans see our diversity as our greatest
    strength. People ask me from time to time why I feel so passionately
    about this, and they assume rightly it's partly, maybe largely, because
    I'm a southerner and I grew up with the old and still unfinished
    business between black and white Americans. But I also grew up in a very
    unusual town for the South. My hometown had only 35,000 people, but it
    was a national park and a place with healing hot waters, and we had all
    kinds of people coming there to retire. So here I was a little boy
    growing up in the South in a town that had two synagogues--35,000
    people--we had two synagogues, a Greek Orthodox Church, a huge Czech
    community, a Lithuanian community, and just about somebody from
    everywhere.
        But my attitudes about Arab-Americans were first formed because I
    was good friends with a young immigrant named David Zorab who came to my home State after he was orphaned and
    grew up to become the valedictorian of my high school class. And he went
    on to become a brilliant physician in Pennsylvania. And I suppose that I
    always wanted all Americans to enjoy the kind of life I had as a child.
    And yet, a lot of people around me didn't have that life, because they
    were imprisoned by their own prejudices. We have to free this country of
    all those prejudices.
        I know it is true that Arab-Americans still feel the sting of being
    stereotyped in false ways. I have done what I could to warn against
    that. The saddest encounter, I suppose, was when we went through the
    heartbreaking experience of Oklahoma City, and many people were quick to
    rush to judgment. And I remember that terrible day when I urged the
    American people not to do so.
        I am very grateful not only to Jim but to
    others among you who have been an active part of my race initiative. And
    I'm very pleased that you're now working with Jewish-Americans and
    members of several European ethnic groups to organize, I think, six
    regional forums on race and diversity around our Nation over the coming
    year.
        These sorts of things don't often make headlines in the news today
    because they work; therefore, they are not sufficiently contentious. And
    when there is no blood on the floor at the end of the meeting, they are
    often considered not newsworthy. They are profoundly important. And I
    believe that there is a deeper hunger among Americans of all kinds to
    discuss these matters in an honest and open way than even most of us
    appreciate.
        I was amazed, I just got a letter from ESPN. They sponsored sort of
    a townhall on race the other night with athletes and coaches and others.
    And I think they were truly astonished because they had about the same
    viewership as they do for a pro basketball game. And moreover, the
    viewership picked up as the program went on, so the channel surfers saw
    it and decided they ought to hang on for a while. So I would encourage
    you to continue that. Don't let any American have the misfortune of
    never having known an Arab-American. You can do that if you try.
        The second thing we have to do is keep working until we bring the
    spark of enterprise and opportunity to every corner of the Nation. It

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    may be hard to believe, since we have the lowest unemployment rate in 28
    years and the lowest inflation rate in over 30 years and the highest
    homeownership in the history of the country and a record number of small
    business starts in the last 5 years, including those started by many
    Arab-Americans, but not every American has had the chance to reap the
    rewards of this remarkable prosperity. You understand clearly the power
    and the dignity that comes from being able to earn a living to support a
    family. We have to bring this kind of opportunity throughout America. I
    have put before the Congress several proposals to close the opportunity
    gaps: empowerment zones, community development financial institutions,
    housing and other development initiatives. I hope they will be
    positively acted upon this year, and I ask you for your support.
        The third thing we have to do is to build the world's finest
    education system. We have done so with our universities, and we are
    blessed to have people not only of all different races and ethnic groups
    in America attend them but people from all over the world. But no one
    would seriously assert that we had today the finest system of elementary
    and secondary education, and yet it is more important than ever before.
        A couple of days ago, I had a fascinating conversation with the head
    of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, and
    we were talking about the phenomenal prosperity our country is enjoying
    and the number of the developments around the world. And he said, ``You
    know, we really are completely now engulfed by an economy based on
    ideas.'' He said that there is an interesting measure of the total
    physical output of a country compared to its wealth. And he said our
    total physical output in terms of mass is hardly increased at all, while
    the stock market and our national wealth has exploded because we have an
    economy based on ideas. In such an economy, it is unforgivable neglect
    to permit children to grow up and go through the school system and not
    be able to participate in that economy because their minds have not
    developed to the point where they can. And it is not necessary.
        Again, I have laid before the Congress a number of proposals that
    will make education our number one priority and result in dramatic
    improvements of our schools: smaller classes, better teaching, higher
    standards, expanded choice, more discipline, greater accountability.
        Today I met with a group of mayors who endorsed my proposal to end
    social promotion but to increase the amount of help we're giving to
    children who are having trouble in school, more after-school help, more
    summer schools, more support. In Chicago, where they are now requiring
    children who don't make the grade to go to summer school, they're seeing
    children in summer school gain as much as 2 years in reading and
    mathematics capacity, just in one intense summer effort.
        So again I say to you--so many of you know you are the living proof
    that education is the key to opportunity. Just across the river from
    here, in Fairfax County, we have a school district with children from
    180 different national and ethnic groups whose native languages number
    in excess of 100. Now, I think that's a good thing. I think that is a
    great thing for America in a global society. But you can only imagine
    what will happen if they're all well-educated, and unfortunately, you
    can only imagine what will happen if vast numbers of them are not well-
    educated.
        So think about what brought you all here tonight and how you came to
    be here. And we have to do this. We have to do it. The Federal
    Government, the President, can only do so much. Parents have to do a
    lot; teachers have to do a lot; the kids have to do the most. But we owe
    it to them, as a society, to provide educational opportunity second to
    none and to make sure that every child's mind has a chance to be
    developed.
        Now, the fourth thing that we have to do is to continue as Americans
    to lead the world toward peace and freedom. If we can set an example and
    live together across all the lines that divide us, not simply respecting
    but actually celebrating our differences and honoring them--not
    tolerating them but honoring them--we clearly have a responsibility to
    do that elsewhere.
        Now that the cold war is over and people are not being drawn like
    magnets to two different economic and political systems, it is natural
    that people would reexamine the premises on which they are organized and
    on which they govern themselves. It is, I suppose, natural--at least it
    is predictable--that we would even have a resurgence of destructive
    ethnic impulses, as we have seen in Bosnia, as we see

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    in Kosovo even tonight, in other parts of the world; as we saw in the
    tragedy where somewhere between 700,000 and a million people were killed
    in Rwanda in the short space of 100 days, and without weapons of mass
    destruction, so that it had to be done in the grizzliest, most inhumane
    way.
        But we can do better. In Northern Ireland, representatives of all
    the major parties have reached an historic agreement that I hope and
    pray will be ratified by the voters of Northern Ireland and the Republic
    of Ireland in just a few days. I think all of us, and especially all of
    you, should take a special measure of pride that those talks in Northern
    Ireland were chaired by George Mitchell,
    the former majority leader, who is, of course, also of Lebanese descent.
        Today I met with members of a group of Irish people who had all lost
    sons or husbands or brothers in the Troubles. They are now working to
    help each other and others like them work for peace, both inner peace
    and peace among the Irish. And I suppose, in every part of the world,
    you can hardly have one without the other.
        We are now also, as all of you know, working very hard to regain the
    momentum for peace in the Middle East. The last year has been so
    frustrating for the people of the Middle East, so frustrating for the
    peace-loving people in the Palestinian areas and in Israel, that it's
    easy to forget how far we have come in the last few years. We've had the
    Oslo accords, the Washington peace signing in September of `93, the
    Hebron agreement, unprecedented security cooperation, the open dialog
    that had been established; all these things were quite important. They
    have brought the possibility of peace closer than ever before. All I'm
    trying to do is to regain that momentum. We have an opportunity to get
    this process moving again and to move forward.
        It has been my experience in life--and I've lived long enough now to
    see it--that in almost every area of human endeavor, opportunities do
    not last forever; they must be seized. And I hope this one will be
    seized. Difficult choices have been made--will have to be made--by
    Palestinians and Israelis alike. And we cannot impose a solution because
    we--even you--will not have to live out the consequences. But we must--
    we must--try to help find enough common ground to return to the dialog.
    Keep in mind, what we are trying to do is to get the parties over a
    hurdle so they can get into these final status talks, so we can stay on
    the timetable established a few years ago by both the Palestinians and
    the Israelis to finish the whole thing by this month next year. Now, I
    am sending Ambassador Dennis Ross back to
    Israel tonight to go the extra mile to help the parties seize this
    opportunity.
        All of you know what invaluable benefits peace can bring to the
    people of the region. All of you know how much suffering has been
    undergone by people because of the absence of peace. All of you know how
    much extra suffering has been borne every time there is an interruption
    of normalcy. We have got to get this done. I am doing the very best I
    can, and I know you are, too.
        I have given a lot of thought to what makes people get into downward
    spirals. We see it in horrible terms when violence occurs and life is
    lost, not just in the Middle East but anyplace--in Bosnia, where we were
    able to end a war, in other places. We see it in less violent ways when
    people in positions of public responsibility get into a downward spiral
    of destructive attempts to hurt each other for political reasons that
    have no larger public purpose.
        We all have to struggle every day. I used to tell my daughter when
    she was at home that it's almost like all of us get up every day with an
    inner scale inside, with lightness and constructive, positive behavior
    on one side and all our darkest fears on the other. And the scales are
    always shifting in balance, and every day you have to get up and push
    the scale down on the right side. We all have to fight it. And when I
    get very discouraged about it, and I think, well, we're all just going
    to run up against a dead end, I try to remember the examples of people
    who have overcome more than I can imagine. I'll never forget the first
    time I talked to Nelson Mandela about how he
    actually made himself overcome his hatred of his oppressors so that he
    could wait and endure 27 long years until he could bring it all
    together. And he said, ``You know, they took a lot from me when I was in
    prison. I never saw my children grow up. I lost my personal life. I was
    brutalized. I was humiliated. Finally, it occurred to me they could take
    everything away from me but my mind and my heart. Those things I would
    have to give away. I decided not to give them away.''

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        I ask you to remain resolute and to remain passionate, but always to
    be large. Do not give away the best part of your own lives. Do not give
    away the best part of your hopes. We will prevail.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:35 p.m. at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. In his
    remarks, he referred to Elie Abboud, president, National Arab American
    Business Association; Fuad Ateyeh, president, Arab American Congress;
    Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, Saudi Arabian
    Ambassador to the United States; James J. Zogby, president, Arab
    American Institute, and John J. Zogby, president, Zogby International,
    and their mother, Celia Zogby; and President Nelson Mandela of South
    Africa.