[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[September 13, 2000]
[Pages 1807-1809]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on Hate Crimes Legislation
September 13, 2000

    Mr. Holder, thank you for your 
leadership. Commander O'Malley, thank you for 
coming back and for being the embodiment of someone who has changed his 
position on this and been courageous enough to say so.
    And Mrs. Byrdsong, I cannot even 
imagine the courage it must take for you to have made this journey from 
your home, to stand up in front of us, to say what you have said. I 
thank your pastor for joining you here. And 
I think I speak for all of us and for all Americans: We thank you for 
trying to turn your pain into a positive gain for America. We thank you.
    I'd like to thank Justin Dart and Mary 
Frances Berry and so many other advocates 
of human rights and civil rights for being in this room today. I would 
like to thank the members of the Interfaith Alliance who are here and, 
of course, the members of our DC city council.
    Many Members of Congress wanted to be here, but they are actually 
voting now, and in the House they're voting on this, on amendments to 
this very proposal. So we're here at a very important time. The first-
ever vote on comprehensive hate crimes legislation is scheduled in the 
House of Representatives for later today after the amendments have been 
dealt with. That would enable us to clear the last legislative hurdle to 
final passage of hate crimes.
    In June, with the Vice President 
standing watch in case a tie had to be broken, the Senate passed a 
strong bipartisan hate crimes bill. I was very moved by many of the 
things that were said there, but I want to say a special words of thanks 
publicly to Senator Gordon Smith from Oregon, 
an evangelical Christian Republican, for the speech that he gave on that 
occasion, reminding us that this is not a partisan issue. I hope the 
House will follow suit.
    As I have said many times over the last couple of years, it is for 
me a sad and painful irony that at the beginning of a new century I have 
done so much to try to fill with opportunity for the American people and 
to bring full of hope to the rest of the world, with all the modern 
gadgets we enjoy, we are still bedeviled by mankind's oldest failing, 
the fear of the other, which so quickly can lead to distrust, then to 
dehumanization, then to the kind of violence that ended the lives of 
Matthew Shepard and Ricky Byrdsong far, far before their time.
    We may not ever fully conquer the disease that seems to afflict 
human hearts everywhere, the compelling need to define ourselves up by 
defining someone else down. But at least we can do more to make sure 
that no one in our country is violated simply because of who they are. 
That's why we're here today. I would also like to point out that there 
is a connection between the two ways that throughout history, and if you 
just look at the last century, hate crimes have manifested themselves.
    Here we talk about sad people, twisted inside, who somehow felt they 
could fill a hole in their own lives by taking the lives of other people 
away, people who had somehow been convinced

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that they were so superior to other people, they could shoot at them, 
kill them. What possessed that person in California to shoot at all 
those little kids walking into the Jewish community school?
    I saw--one person said that when he killed a Filipino postal worker, 
he thought he had a double success; he'd killed an Asian and a Federal 
employee. What makes people think that way? There are all kinds of 
explanations, but we know that it's profoundly wrong to believe that you 
can ever lift yourself up by putting someone else down.
    The point I want to make, just briefly, is that it's not very far 
from there to the awful examples we've seen in our time of political 
leaders who try to get one group of people in the majority in the 
country to blame all their problems on another group of people in the 
minority. And then you have a Holocaust, or you have a Kosovo, where a 
whole country is just flushed out.
    So this is very important. It is just not true that hate crimes are 
like other crimes. It is not even true that every crime is a hate crime. 
And that is fundamentally at the heart of this debate.
    We had the first-ever conference at the White House on this 3 years 
ago. Since then, we've increased the number of Federal agents working on 
these cases, prosecuted successfully a number of quite serious ones, 
formed local hate crimes groups with local U.S. attorneys' offices 
around the Nation, and worked with more and more police officers to 
identify the signs of hate crimes.
    This coming year, one of the things in our budget I hope the 
Congress will adopt involves funds for extensive training for local law 
enforcement officials in this area. But we have to do more. The Deputy 
Attorney General told you quite eloquently, precisely, and clearly why 
we need a Federal hate crimes law that allows the Justice Department to 
do so much more than it can now. Commander O'Malley told you the devastating financial consequences that 
can come to local law enforcement from simply trying to do the right 
thing without the necessary Federal support.
    But underneath it all, and far more important than everything else, 
are the stories: the life young Matthew Shepard had and the one he might 
have had; the wonderful life Ricky Byrdsong had and the one he might 
have had. Last year, or in 1998--that's the last year we have figures--
there were--listen to this--7,755 reported hate crimes, nearly one every 
hour of every day.
    More importantly, we know this is only the tip of the iceberg. Today 
we have new evidence that confirms what many have long suspected, and 
that is that hate crimes are underreported. A survey conducted by 
Northeastern University found that as many as 6,000 law enforcement 
agencies may have encountered hate crimes over the past year but failed 
to report them to the FBI.
    We also learned that 85 percent of law enforcement officers 
responding to the survey agree with Commander O'Malley's belief that 
hate crimes--hate-motivated crimes are more serious than similar crimes 
not motivated by bias.
    That's why I'm directing the Justice Department today to work with 
local authorities to develop a plan within 120 days to make sure we 
report all hate crimes so we'll know what the scope of the challenge is. 
It will examine a number of strategies, from pilot programs in States 
suspected of underreporting, to increasing training to help local 
officials identify such crimes.
    This is all very important, but only Congress can do what really 
should be done here. That's why the House must vote yes on the hate 
crimes legislation offered by Congressman Conyers today, and yes on sending me the final hate crimes 
legislation before they adjourn for the year. Both yeses are important. 
[Applause] Thank you.
    I also ask Congress to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act 
before it's too late, so that we can continue to build on its success.
    You know, over the last several decades, over and over again, when 
it came down to protecting the lives of innocent Americans, Congress has 
been willing to take bipartisan action to do the right thing. I hope and 
believe it will do nothing less with hate crimes legislation and the 
Violence Against Women Act.
    Let me just close with this. One of the cruelest aspects of the 
systematic hate crimes that were perpetrated by the Nazis is their 
attempt to prove that somehow it was justified by science, by some sort 
of innate superiority. One of the happiest aspects of most recent 
scientific developments in biology is that we can now scientifically 
confirm what faiths have always

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taught, that the most important fact of our common existence on this 
Earth is our common humanity.
    The human genome research project has documented that we are 
genetically 99.9 percent the same. Furthermore, that the differences 
among people within the same ethnic or racial groups are greater than 
the genetic differences between profiles of different racial groups.
    Now, this is a stunning thing. In other words, this is not an affair 
of the body. It is an affair of the heart, of the spirit. It is, 
therefore, an even more dangerous kind of infection. I don't think any 
of us believe we can ever root it out just by punishing people. But the 
most important thing is that we do have the tools we need to take a 
strong stand before these things spread even wider. That's what 
Sherialyn said, and that's why she came.
    We've got a chance here to reaffirm America at its best. And I hope 
we can do it, because the most important thing, if we want to make the 
most of all this modern, wondrous economy we have, is to get rid of our 
oldest demons and build one America.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 2:48 p.m. in the East Room at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Commander David O'Malley, Laramie 
Police Department, WY, who investigated the murder of Matthew Shepard; 
Sherialyn Byrdsong, widow of Ricky Byrdsong; Justin Dart, Jr., chairman 
and founder, Justice For All; and Rev. David S. Handley, senior pastor, 
First Presbyterian Church of Evanston, IL.