    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [April 30, 2000]
    [Pages 798-803]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the NAACP Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner in Detroit, Michigan
    April 30, 2000

        Thank you. Well--I don't know what to say. [Laughter] I will tell
    you that this magnificent work of African art will be up in our
    Residence at the White House before I go to bed tonight. I thank you for
    it.
        Reverend Anthony, thank you for an
    introduction the likes I have never had and never will have again.
    [Laughter] Thank you for spreading the caring arms of this branch of the
    NAACP from East Grand Boulevard all the way to Africa. [Laughter] And
    thank you for being my true friend.
        Thank you all, ladies and gentlemen, for honoring Secretary
    Cuomo. I am delighted that he and his wife,
    Kerry, are here with me, and he deserves the
    honor you gave him. You know, he and Secretary Slater make me look good every day. [Laughter] And too often I
    get the credit when they deserve more. I thank them for being here.
        I thank Thurgood Marshall, Jr.,
    for being here; Maria Echaveste, all the
    people from the White House that prove the truth that we have given you
    an administration that looks like America. I thank all your elected
    Representatives who are here for their support and solidarity with the
    NAACP. Thank you, Governor Engler, Senator
    Levin, Senator Abraham, Congressman Dingell,
    Congresswoman Kilpatrick.
    Congresswoman Stabenow, thank you for
    running and proving that you believe in democracy. And thank you, thank
    you, thank you, my friend John Conyers,
    and thank you for giving him the award that he so richly deserves.

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        Thank you, Mayor Dennis Archer, and
    thank you, Trudy, for being Hillary's friend
    and my friend for so many years. Long before you were a mayor, back when
    you were a judge and above such things as petty politics, we were
    friends. [Laughter] I have enjoyed watching the success of Detroit and
    enjoyed helping on occasion you to contribute to it. I thank you all.
        I bring you--I also want to offer my condolences to the family and
    many friends of Bill Beckham, who passed away
    last week, who devoted his life to improving the lives of others in this
    great city. And I bring you greetings from two people who are not here:
    the First Lady, Hillary, who said she
    wished she could be here, but she is otherwise occupied in New York
    tonight; and the Vice President, who is
    otherwise occupied somewhere in America tonight, who loved being here.
        Now, I am told this is the largest sit-down dinner anywhere in the
    whole world. And I can honestly say, it's the only one I've ever
    attended that had four head tables--[laughter]--the only one I've ever
    attended when I didn't shake hands with everyone at the head tables--
    [laughter]--and I learned tonight that I was the first sitting President
    ever to attend this great banquet. I will say this: If this encounter
    gets anything like the press coverage it deserves, I am quite certain I
    will not be the last President to be at this banquet tonight.
        More than anything else, I came tonight to say a simple thank you.
    Thank you for being my friends; thank you for being there for me in good
    times and bad; thank you for being there in our journey to help America
    go forward together.
        For more than 90 years now, the NAACP has been America's friend, the
    conscience of a nation struggling and too often failing to live up to
    its ideals, challenging always all of us to look into the mirror, to
    face our faults and right our wrongs. I have proceeded these last 7
    years and 3 months with a simple philosophy that I believe is your
    philosophy: I believe everybody counts, everybody should have a chance,
    everybody has a role to play, and we all do better when we help each
    other.
        Dr. King once said our lives begin to end the day we become silent
    about things that matter. The NAACP has never been silent about the
    things that matter, and the life of this organization is just beginning.
    For all the progress we have made together, there is still much to do.
        I am grateful for your support and the role you and your work have
    played in the progress we have made together for America. I am grateful
    that we have the lowest unemployment and welfare rates in 30 years, the
    lowest poverty rates in 20 years, the lowest minority unemployment ever
    recorded, the lowest female unemployment in 40 years, the highest
    homeownership in history, and the longest economic expansion in history.
    I am grateful for that.
        I am grateful that under the Vice President's leadership, we've created empowerment zones in Detroit
    and many other cities and set up community financial institutions to
    loan money to people that couldn't get loans otherwise, and done so many
    other things. I am grateful for that. I am grateful that we have a
    healing social fabric, that the homicide rate is the lowest in 30 years
    and gun crime's down 35 percent and adoptions are up 30 percent. I am
    grateful for all of that. I am grateful that 21 million Americans have
    taken family and medical leave and that 5 million families have
    benefited from our HOPE scholarship to help pay for college.
        I am grateful that 150,000 young Americans, including at least one I
    saw here tonight, have served our country in AmeriCorps in their
    communities. I am grateful that over 90 percent of our children are
    immunized for the first time from serious childhood diseases, and 95
    percent of our schools are hooked up to the Internet, as compared with
    16 percent when the Vice President and I set out to hook them all up 6
    years ago. I'm grateful for all that.
        I'm grateful that, as Wendell said so much more eloquently than I
    could, we have appointed more minorities and women to more positions in
    the Government and on the bench than any administration in history by a
    good long ways. I'm grateful for that.
        I am profoundly touched by your prayers, your friendship, and your
    support. I reminded Secretary Slater when
    Reverend Anthony was up here preaching--
    [laughter]--that I went home with him last week to a memorial service
    for Daisy Bates, the great Arkansas heroine of the civil rights movement
    who shepherded those nine children through Little Rock Central High
    School 43 years ago and who just died a few months ago. Daisy's
    minister, Reverend Rufus Young, who is a
    gentleman way up in his eighties with a frail walk, with a strong voice,

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    got up and looked up at me, and he said, ``Mr. President, the only
    reason you've survived is that so many of us black folks were praying
    for you so hard.'' [Laughter]
        What I hope now is, we will turn our prayers and energies toward
    tomorrow. For when people gather together, even though it's important to
    remember the past, in my wife's words, it's even more important to
    imagine the future. And I guess what I would like to ask you is, in this
    millennial election season, as a citizen--forget about party, forget
    about anything else--what do you as a human being believe that America
    should be doing?
        I have waited a long time for my country to be in the position to
    create the future of our dreams for our children. I watched for a long
    time America just being paralyzed by these assumptions of what we could
    not do. When I got elected President, I think most people thought we
    could never get rid of the deficit, much less run a surplus, but we
    have. I think most people thought the crime rate would always go up and
    never go down, but it's gone down for 7 years in a row now. I think most
    people thought that people on welfare didn't really want to work, but
    that turned out to be wrong. Almost 7 million have moved out of welfare.
    They were wrong about that.
        I think most people thought a lot of things couldn't get better. And
    now we don't have any excuses, because we know when we get together and
    work together, things can get better. And so what I want to ask you is,
    what do you propose to do about it?
        A great country can make mistakes not only when times are tough but
    when times are good. I look out here in this sea of faces, and I wonder
    how many thousand stories there are here tonight--stories of triumph and
    heroism and struggle against the odds to overcome some racial or
    economic or other handicap--how many of you have lost a loved one to
    violence or other tragedies. And now, what I want to say to you is, we
    know things can be better; what do you propose to do about it?
        We have choices to make. I believe that we should keep on going with
    this economic recovery until we have brought economic opportunity to all
    those neighborhoods, all those little rural towns, all those Indian
    reservations, all those people who have still been left behind and don't
    know there's been a recovery because they haven't felt it. And we can do
    it now in a way that we've never been able to do before.
        I believe we should keep going until all of our children understand
    how to use computers and can make the most of it. I believe we should
    keep going until we find a way to guarantee health care rights to all
    Americans who are willing to work and do the right thing or who need
    help because they can't. I believe we should keep going until every
    American who wants to can go to college.
        Let me tell you something else a lot of people don't know; even a
    lot of African-Americans don't know this. Last year, for the first time
    in history, the percentage of African-Americans graduating from high
    school equaled the percentage of the white majority children graduating
    from high school. Now, we ought to keep going until the percentage going
    on to college equals that and then the percentage graduating. But we
    have to open the doors of college to everyone. We've made a lot of
    progress, but we've got more to do.
        And we've got more to do in so many other areas. I just want to
    mention two more before I leave. One is, in this whole business of
    sharing the bounty of America's public service. You know, I never
    thought about this in the way--my appointment of people of color and
    lots of women to important positions--in the way most people think about
    it. I always figured we'd do a better job if our Government was more
    representative of the rest of the people in the country. I always
    thought we would make better decisions. I always thought empowering
    people and communities was a positive good. I never thought it was
    something I was doing for somebody else. I just thought I was trying to
    make democracy work.
        And we made a lot of progress. But I want you to know, there's one
    real problem we've still got that directly affects Michigan. When it
    comes to appointing judges, the United States Senate is not doing what
    it ought to be doing, especially with regard to women and minority
    appointees.
        Hey, I need your help on this. A blue ribbon study found that during
    the 105th Congress, women and minority judicial nominees took much
    longer to be considered than white males. It found that minority
    nominations failed at a much higher rate than the nominations of whites.
    Last year there was a disgraceful rejection of an African-American State
    supreme court

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    judge from Missouri named Ronnie White,
    solely on the basis of party politics.
        I have nominated two people from Michigan to the sixth circuit, and
    neither one of them have even gotten a hearing so far. Judge Helene
    White, a highly qualified Michigan appellate
    judge, has been waiting for a hearing from the Senate Judiciary
    Committee for 3 years, longer than any other pending nominee.
        My other sixth circuit nominee, Kathleen McCree Lewis, the daughter of Wade McCree, is here tonight.
    She would become the first African-American woman ever to serve on the
    sixth circuit. I think the Senate ought to give Helene White and Kathleen McCree Lewis hearings. Vote them up or
    down. Tell the American people how you stand. Let us hear from you.
    Don't hide behind having no hearing.
        I had to work and work and work to get a distinguished Hispanic
    judge and a female attorney appointed out in California. They made him
    wait 4 years. Now, why did they do that? Because they didn't want to put
    him on the court. They just didn't want you to know they didn't want to
    put him on the court. [Laughter] So if you don't want to do something,
    but you don't want the people to know you don't want to do something,
    instead of saying no, you just never get around to it. [Laughter]
        Now, we're going to have a new election in November. And we'll have
    a new President and a new Senate, and I hope a new House, with
    John as the Chairman of the House
    Judiciary Committee. But I want you to know this: I am proud of the fact
    that my party has never been guilty of delaying nominees to this extent
    and particularly putting the burden on women and people of color. And
    it's a shame, and we ought to do something about it. And I hope you'll
    help me do something about it.
        Now, let me just mention one other thing, because we have lots of
    choices this year. You will have choices about whether to keep on
    changing in accord with this economic policy and bringing everybody into
    it while we keep paying down the debt, investing in education, give
    families tax cuts we can afford, or going back to the economic policy we
    had before I came in, with even bigger tax cuts that, once I get out of
    office, would benefit primarily people like me. [Laughter] But we won't
    have any money for education, and we'll start running deficits again.
        We'll have choices about education policy, health policy,
    environmental policy, a lot of other things. But I want you to think
    about the things that we choose that really define us as a community.
    John Conyers talked about one. I'm proud that gun crime is down 35
    percent. Anybody that thinks that America is safe enough is free to walk
    out on my speech right now. But we know we can make America safer, and
    we know the best way to do it is by preventing crime in the first place.
    That's why we want to close the gun show loophole and do other things to
    keep guns out of the hands of children and criminals. That's why we want
    more community police on the street. That's why we want more after-
    school and summer school programs for our kids, to give them something
    to say yes to.
        But when three-quarters of the people in the penitentiary are people
    of color and they're more likely to be in the penitentiary than they are
    to go to college, there's something wrong still. I don't think we've
    done as much as we can. I think we can make America safer and have more
    of our kids going to college at the same time. But we have a choice to
    make.
        I think we ought to pass the hate crimes legislation. There are
    still people in this country who are shot, who are abused, who are
    killed because of their race, their religion, just because they're gay.
    We've seen it over and over again, tragically. We saw it just this week:
    five people in a suburb of Pittsburgh shot and killed for no other
    reason, it appears, than the color of their skin or the way they worship
    God.
        Now, you will hear all kinds of arguments about this hate crime
    business, but I have studied this. It is simply not true that we do not
    need national legislation making hate crimes against people, because of
    race or because of sexual orientation or because of disability or
    because of religion, a Federal crime. We do.
        And I have looked into the eyes of the brother and the sister of
    that Filipino postal worker that was gunned down in California. I have
    seen one of those little Jewish children that was wounded, and his
    family, at that community center in Los Angeles. I have talked to the
    widow of the African-American former basketball coach at Northwestern
    who was shot walking in his neighborhood. I have put my arms around the
    parents of Matthew Shepard, who was stretched out on a rack in Wyoming
    because he was gay. And I have seen the brother and sister of James

    [[Page 802]]

    Byrd, who was dragged to death in Texas because he was black.
        Now, if we want to be one America and we don't want any politics in
    it, the easiest way that we can do that is to join hands and unanimously
    say, ``We can argue about a lot of things, but one thing we're never
    going to argue about again is our common humanity. Here is this hate
    crimes bill. It is who we are. It is what we stand for. It is what we
    believe.''

        You know, we do have a lot of bridges to cross. As long as there are
    people without economic opportunity and we can give it to them, we ought
    to do it. As long as there are people who don't have access to world-
    class education and we can give it to them, we ought to do it. As long
    as there are working families who can't take care of their children, we
    ought to do it. As long as there--we ought to give them child care
    support and access to health care they can afford. We ought to do these
    things.

        There are so many challenges out there, but the main thing I want to
    tell you is this: If the good Lord came to me tonight when I walked out
    of this room and said, ``Mr. President, now I'm not going to let you
    serve the end of your term. I'm taking you home tonight, and I'm no
    genie. I'm not going to give you three wishes, but I will give you one.
    What do you want?'' I would wish for our country to be truly one
    America.

        I would wish for us to be able--you know, I have--you may have heard
    me tell this story on television, but I'm going to tell it one more
    time. I have got, on a table in the Oval Office--when you see me there
    with a world leader, and you see two chairs and two big couches and a
    table there--right on that table, you look next time--standing on that
    table in a vacuum-packed glass container is a rock that Neil Armstrong
    took off the Moon in 1969. That rock is 3.6 billion years old. And when
    people come in to see me, and they get all riled up, and they get all
    mad at each other, and they're thinking about little things, and they're
    all torn up and upset, ever since I've got that, I say, ``Wait a minute,
    look at that rock. You see that rock? That is 3.6 billion years old. Now
    chill out. We're all just passing through here.'' [Laughter]

        And I say that to remind you that, whether you're President of the
    United States or somebody serving us this dinner tonight, the most
    important things about us are not the differences between me and the
    people serving you dinner but the things we have in common.

        And when life is all said and done, the stories we really will be
    thinking about in our last moments were who liked us and who loved us
    and what moved us and the springtimes we remember and the moments of
    personal drama and courage and meaning that came into our lives. The
    purpose of public life, the purpose of citizenship, the purpose of the
    NAACP is to give people a sense of our common humanity and our common
    cause. You know, Wendell said that I learned that from my grandparents,
    and that's true. But I learn it every day from all the stories of all
    the people I see.

        You have given me a memory tonight I will never forget. Your support
    has meant more to me than I can ever say. The people of Detroit and the
    State of Michigan have been with me through thick and thin. But the only
    thing that really matters now is, what are you going to do tomorrow?
    What do you propose to do with this magic moment?

        Let me tell you this: The last time we had an economy this good was
    in the 1960's. We broke the record of the 1960's for economic
    expansions. There are a lot of young children here who weren't alive
    back then, but I was. And I graduated from high school in 1964 in the
    middle of that great economic expansion, low unemployment, low
    inflation, high growth, everything booming. We thought the civil rights
    problems would be handled in Congress and the courts. We never dreamed
    we'd be caught up in Vietnam. We thought we would win the cold war, no
    sweat. We thought we were on automatic, marching into the future. And
    what happened? What happened?

        Within 4 years, when I graduated from college, it was 2 days after
    Senator Kennedy was killed, 2 months after Martin Luther King was
    killed, 9 weeks after President Johnson, the great civil rights
    President, couldn't even run for reelection because the country was so
    divided over Vietnam. And within a few months, the longest economic
    expansion in history was itself history.

        Life is fleeting. Things change. I have been waiting for 35 years,
    not as President, as an American citizen, for my country to be in the
    position you're in tonight, to build the future of our dreams for our
    children. That should

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    be the mission of the NAACP in this millennial year.

        Thank you, and God bless you all.

     Note:  The President spoke at 7:10 p.m. in the Cobo Convention Hall. In
    his remarks, he referred to Rev. Wendell Anthony, president, NAACP
    Detroit Branch; Gov. John Engler of Michigan; and Mayor Dennis W. Archer
    of Detroit, MI, and his wife, Trudy.