[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 29 (Monday, July 21, 1997)]
[Pages 1092-1101]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With the National Association 
of Black Journalists in Chicago, Illinois

July 17, 1997

    The President.  Thank you very much. I must say, when Arthur was 
speaking, I thought to myself that he sounded like a President. 
[Laughter] And I said to myself, if I had a voice like that, I could run 
for a third term, even though the--[laughter].
    I enjoyed meeting with your board members and JoAnne Lyons Wooten, 
your executive director, backstage. I met Vanessa Williams, who said, 
``You know, I'm the president-elect; have you got any advice for me on 
being president?'' True story. I said, ``I do. Always act like you know 
what you're doing.'' [Laughter]
    I want to say to you, I'm delighted to be joined here tonight by a 
distinguished group of people from our White House and from the 
administration, including the Secretary of Labor, Alexis Herman, and the 
Secretary of Education, Dick Riley, and a number of others from the 
White House. Where is my White House crew? Would you all stand up--
everybody here from the administration, Department of Education, 
Department of Labor.
    I don't know whether he is here or not, but I understand Congressman 
Bobby Rush was here earlier today, and I know there are some other local 
officials from Chicago who are here. And this is a great place to come. 
Chicago is such a wonderful city that there was an article this morning 
in the New York Times bragging on Chicago. And I saw the mayor today; he 
said, ``I know we have finally arrived. If they're bragging on us in New 
York, we have made it.'' And I congratulate all the people here on the 
remarkable improvements they've made in this magnificent city in the 
last few years.
    I'd also like to say a special word of thanks to Reverend Jesse 
Jackson. I see him here in the audience, and I know he's here. Thank 
you. I always kind of hate to speak when Jesse is in the audience. 
[Laughter] You know, I mean, every paragraph gets a grade. [Laughter] 
Most of them aren't very good. I can just hear it now--all the wheels 
turning.
    I want to thank Reverend Jackson for agreeing to cochair, along with 
the Secretary of Transportation, Rodney Slater, an American delegation 
to an economic conference in Zimbabwe, where he'll be going next week. 
And I know you all wish him well on that. We are doing our best to have 
a major initiative reaching out to Africa, recognizing that more and 
more countries in Africa are becoming functioning, successful democ

[[Page 1093]]

racies; that half a dozen countries in Africa have had growth rates of 7 
percent or more last year and will equal that again this year; and that 
this is an enormous opportunity for us not only to promote better lives 
for the millions and millions of people who live on that continent but 
also better opportunities for Americans and better partnerships with 
Africa in the years ahead.
    Well, you heard your president say that I promised to come here in 
1992 if I got elected. And I'm trying to keep every promise I made. And 
I'm sure glad I got a second term so I didn't get embarrassed on this 
one. [Laughter]
    In the years since I assumed office, I have worked very hard to 
create an America of opportunity for all, responsibility from all, with 
a community of all Americans, a country committed to continuing to lead 
the world toward greater peace and freedom and prosperity. And that 
begins with giving every person in this country the chance to live up to 
his or her God-given abilities. Many of you chose to become journalists 
because you thought it was the best way to use your God-given talent, 
your gift with words, your knack for asking tough questions, which some 
of us find maddening--[laughter]--and for getting the answers, your 
instincts with a camera or a microphone, your ability to connect with 
people and get them to understand what it is you're trying to get 
across. And you did it not just to make a living but to make a 
difference. I thank you for that. And I think that all of us want that 
opportunity for everyone in this country.
    Last month in San Diego I called upon Americans to begin a dialog, a 
discussion over the next year and perhaps beyond, to deal with what I 
think is the greatest challenge we'll face in the 21st century, which is 
whether we really can become one America as we become more diverse, 
whether as we move into a truly global society, we can be the world's 
first truly great multiracial, multiethnic, multireligious democracy. I 
asked the American people to undertake a serious discussion of the 
lingering problems and the limitless possibilities that attend our 
diversity. I came here tonight to talk a little more about this 
initiative, to

ask each of you to examine what role you can play in it and the vital 
contributions as journalists and as African-Americans you might make in 
leading your news rooms, your communities, and our Nation in the right kind 
of dialog.

    Five years ago, I talked about how we could prepare our people to go 
into the 21st century, and we've made a lot of strides since then. Our 
economy is the healthiest in a generation and once again the strongest 
in the world. Our social problems are finally bending to our efforts. 
But at this time of great prosperity, we know we still have a lot of 
great challenges in order to live up to our ideals, in order to live up 
to what we say America should mean. And it seems to me that at this time 
when there is more cause for hope than fear, when we are not driven by 
some emergency or some imminent cataclysm in our society, we really have 
not only an opportunity but an obligation to address and to better 
resolve the vexing, perplexing, often painful issues surrounding our 
racial history and our future.
    We really will, whether we're prepared for it or not, become a 
multiracial democracy in the next century. Today, of our 50 States, only 
the State of Hawaii has no majority race. But within 3 to 5 years, our 
largest State, California, where 13 percent of us live, will have no 
majority race. Five of our school districts already draw students from 
over 100 different racial and ethnic groups, including the school 
district in the city of Chicago. But within a matter of a couple of 
years, over 12 school districts will have students from over 100 
different racial and ethnic groups.
    When I was a boy, I knew that a lot of people went from my native 
State in Arkansas to Detroit to make a living because they couldn't make 
a living on the farm anymore. Many of them were African-Americans, and 
they joined the white ethnics, many of whom were from Central and 
Eastern Europe and from Ireland in the Detroit area, working in the car 
plants, getting the good middle class jobs, being able to educate their 
children, looking forward to a retirement. Some of them actually are 
coming back home now and buying land. Nicholas Lehman traced that 
movement in a great book he wrote not so long ago.
    But now Detroit is not just a place of white ethnics and African-
Americans. In Wayne

[[Page 1094]]

County, there are over 145 different racial and ethnic groups 
represented today. So the paradigm is shifting. And so, as part of our 
engagement in this national dialog, we have to both deal with our old, 
unfinished business, and then imagine what

we are going to be like in 30 years and whether we can actually become one 
America when we're more different. Is there a way not only to respect our 
diversity but even to celebrate it and still be one America? Is there a way 
to use this to help us economically and to spread opportunity here? Why are 
there so many people in the Congress in both parties excited about this 
Africa initiative? Because we have so many African-Americans. Even people 
who were never concerned about it before understand this is a great 
economic opportunity for America. Why do we have a unique opportunity to 
build a partnership with Brazil and Argentina and Chile and all the 
countries in Latin America? Because we have people from all those countries 
here in our country. Why do we have the opportunity to avoid having Asia 
grow but grow in a more closed and isolated way, running the risk of great 
new problems 30, 40, 50 years from now? Because we have so many Asian-
Americans who are making a home here in America with ties back home to 
their native lands and cultures. We are blessed if we can make this work.

    We also may have a chance to make peace in other parts of the world 
if we can make peace within our borders with ourselves. But let's not 
kid ourselves; the differences between people are so deep and so 
ingrained, it's so easy to scratch the surface and have something bad go 
wrong. And we see that in countries less privileged than ourselves when 
things go terribly wrong, whether it's between the Hutus and the Tutsis 
in Rwanda and Burundi; or the Catholics and the Protestants in the home 
of my ancestors, Ireland; or the Croats, the Serbs, and the Muslims who 
are, interestingly enough, biologically indistinguishable, in Bosnia; or 
the continuing travails of the Jews and the Arabs in the Middle East.
    If you look through all of human history, societies have very often 
been defined by their ability to pit themselves as coherent units 
against those who were different from themselves. Long ago in 
prehistory, it probably made a lot of sense for people that were in one 
tribe to look at people in another tribe as enemies, because there was a 
limited amount of food to eat or opportunities for shelter, because 
people did not know how to communicate with each other so they had to 
say, ``People that look like me are my friends; people that don't look 
like me are my enemies.'' But why, on the verge of the 21st century, are 
we still seeing people behave like that all over the world? And why here 
even in America do we find ourselves, all of us at some time, gripped by 
stereotypes about people who don't look like we do?
    So we shouldn't kid ourselves. This is not going to be an easy task. 
But there is hardly anything more important, because we know we have a 
great economy; we know we have a strong military; we know we have a 
unique position in the world today with the fall of communism virtually 
everywhere and the rise of market economies and the success that we've 
offered. But we know we also have these lingering inequalities and 
problems in America. And if we can overcome them and learn to really 
live together and celebrate, not just tolerate but celebrate our 
differences and still say, ``In spite of all those differences, the most 
important thing about me is that I am an American,'' that there is no 
stopping what we can do and what our children can become.
    This week in Washington, John Hope Franklin convened the first 
meeting of the advisory board I appointed on racial reconciliation. The 
executive director of that board, Judy Winston, who has been our Acting 
Under Secretary of Education, is also here with me tonight. I am very 
proud that she has agreed to do that and very excited about what has 
happened. The first meeting was full of lively debate and honest 
disagreement. I like that. We should discover quickly that people who 
are honestly committed to advancing this dialog will have honest 
differences and they ought to be aired.
    Earlier today, as your president said, at the NAACP convention in 
Pittsburgh, I reiterated my long-held belief that we will never get to 
our one America in the 21st century unless we have both equality and 
excellence in educational opportunity. We have to give

[[Page 1095]]

every American access to the world's best schools, best teachers, best 
education. And that means we have to have high standards, high 
expectations, and high levels of accountability from all of us who are 
involved in it.
    But I want to say to you, we know our children can learn. For years 
and years, ever since 1984, when the Nation at Risk--1983--when the 
Nation At Risk report was issued, people said, well, you can't expect 
American education to compete favorably with education in other 
countries because we have a more diverse student body and because we 
have so many more poor children and so many immigrants and because, 
because, because, because.
    This year, on the International Math and Science Tests given to 
fourth and eighth graders, for the first time since we began a national 
effort to improve our schools over a decade ago, our fourth graders--not 
all of them, but a representative sample, representative of race, 
region, income--scored way above the international average in math and 
science, disproving the notion that we cannot achieve international

excellence in education even for our poorest children. It is simply not 
true. This year, again, our eighth graders scored below the international 
average, emphasizing the dimensions of the challenge, because when the kids 
who carry all these other burdens to school every day, the burden of 
poverty, the burden of crime and drugs in their neighborhoods, the burden 
of unmet medical needs, often the burden of problems at home--when they hit 
adolescence and when they are pressured and tempted to get involved in 
other things, it gets to be a lot tougher.

    So we haven't done everything we need to do. But the evidence is 
here now; it is no longer subject to debate that we can't compete. And 
that's good, because we need to, and because our children, however poor 
they are, are entitled to just as much educational opportunity as 
anybody else.
    Now, I believe that we made a big mistake in the United States not 
adopting national standards long before this. And I believe our poorest 
children and our minority children would be doing even better in school 
had we adopted national standards a long time ago and held their schools 
to some measure of accountability. It is not their fault; it is the rest 
of our faults that we are not doing it.
    So when I say by 1999 we ought to test all our fourth graders and 
all our eighth graders--the fourth graders in reading, the eighth 
graders in math--it's not because I want the individual kids to get a 
grade, it's because everybody ought to make that grade. If you have a 
standard, everyone ought to clear the bar. And if they're not, there is 
something wrong with the educational system that ought to be fixed. And 
you can't know it unless you understand what the standard is and hold 
people to some accountability. But don't let anybody tell you that these 
kids can't do it. That is just flat wrong. They can do it.
    Today I did announce one new initiative that I think is very 
important, and that is a $350 million multiyear scholarship program 
modeled on the National Medical Service Corps. You know, a lot of us 
come from places that have a lot of poor rural areas that are medically 
underserved. We got doctors into those areas, into the Mississippi 
Delta, because we said, hey, if you'll go to medical--we'll help you go 
to medical school, but you've got to go out to a poor underserved area 
and be a doctor to people who need you. Then later you can go make all 
the money you want somewhere else. But if we help you go to medical 
school, will you go out here and help people where they don't have 
doctors? And the National Health Service Corps has done a world of good.
    So what I proposed today, and what we're going to send up to Capitol 
Hill with the reauthorization of Higher Education Act, is a series of 
scholarships that will go to people who say, ``I will teach in a poor 
area for 3 years if you will help me get an education.''
    This is the first specific policy to come out in connection with our 
yearlong racial reconciliation initiative. There will be more policies. 
But it's not just a matter of public policy. There will also be local 
actions, private actions which will have to be taken. And we also need 
the dialog, the discussion. It is about the mind and the heart. And 
therefore, I say again, your voices and your observations are going to 
be very valuable.
    In the communities where we have a constructive, ongoing dialog, 
where people not

[[Page 1096]]

only talk together but work together across racial lines, there are 
already stunning stories that stir the heart and give us hope for the 
future. There is nothing people can't do. Most people are basically 
good. Their leaders have to give them a framework in which the best can 
come out and the worst can be repressed. And that's what we have to do 
here. We've got to learn how to deal with a fundamentally new and 
different situation as well as deal with a lot of old, unresolved 
problems in our past that dog us in the present.
    As journalists, you have experienced firsthand both the progress and 
the continuing challenge of race in our country. Some of you in this 
audience are pioneers in your field, perhaps the first people of color 
ever to claim a desk, a phone, a typewriter in the news rooms of our 
big-city papers and stations. Some of you, when you were beginning your 
careers, knew that it was hard enough to find just one editor who would 
consider your work, let alone the hundreds of newspaper and broadcasting 
executives who this week have descended on this job fair that you 
sponsored to recruit the young people who are here today. They've come 
here not just because they recognize the value of a diverse and racially 
representative staff but also because they know from experience that 
they'll find some of the best talent in American journalism here at this 
convention.
    But our news rooms are like all of our other working environments: 
They've come a long way; they've still got a ways to go. Just as in 
other workplaces in America, minority representation on many staffs and 
mastheads is not what it ought to be. Wide gaps continue to exist in the 
way whites and minorities perceive their workplaces and in the way they 
perceive each other.

We have to bridge this gap everywhere in America.

    But it is especially important in the press because you are the 
voice and, in some ways, the mirror of America through which we see 
ourselves and one another. I encourage you to continue to reach out to 
your colleagues, to listen to each other, to understand where we're all 
coming from, to lead your organizations in the writing, the editing, the 
broadcasting fare and the thought-provoking stories about the world we 
live in and the one we can live in. We have a lot to do to build that 
one America for the 21st century, but I believe we're up to the 
challenge, and I know that you are up to the challenge.
    Thank you very much.
    Arthur Fennel. Thank you very much, Mr. President. As is customary 
in these forums here at our national convention, at this time, we bring 
forth our questioners. We are journalists, after all, and you knew this 
was coming. [Laughter] We have selected four journalists who will ask 
the questions of the day: Eric Thomas, reporter and anchor at KGO-TV in 
San Francisco; Chinta Strausberg, reporter of the Chicago Defender; 
Cheryl Smith, a reporter at KKDA-Radio, Grand Prairie, Texas----
    The President. I know where that is.
    Mr. Fennel. Yes. And Brent Jones, our student representative, a 
junior at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
    To the questioners.

Federal Funding for Mass Transit

    Ms. Strausberg. Chinta Strausberg, the Chicago Defender newspaper. 
Mr. President, do you support an $8 billion superhighway, NAFTA 
superhighway at a time when Congress has reduced funding for mass 
transit in Chicago as well? And if that superhighway is built, sir, will 
black contractors be a major part of it as a downpayment on reparations?
    The President. What superhighway? Say it again? Did I--what's this 
project?
    Ms. Strausberg. It's a proposed congressional plan--$8 billion NAFTA 
superhighway that would connect the United States with Canada and 
Mexico, and it is being discussed in Congress.
    The President. Well, I don't know that I'm familiar enough with the 
project. I do believe we need to continue to improve our infrastructure. 
Secretary Slater and I have argued that we should not underfund mass 
transit and urban transportation. And indeed, in the transportation bill 
I sent to the Congress, we asked for several hundred million dollars 
more directly targeted to help people on welfare who are required to go 
to work, get to where the jobs are if their jobs aren't within walking 
distance. Only about 10 percent of the people on public assistance own

[[Page 1097]]

their own cars. And we believe we need more investment in mass transit 
in the cities. So--and I don't think it should be an either/or 
situation.
    And in terms of contracting, I support affirmative action programs 
generally in employment, in education, and in economic development. And 
I've done everything I could to fix what were the generally recognized 
shortcomings of some of the programs, to graduate out the firms that may 
not need it anymore but to continue it where I think it is appropriate. 
So I continue to support that.
    And I think it is a mistake for us not to have initiatives to help 
create minority-owned businesses. I think we should--as a matter of 
fact, let me just back up and say, when I was in San Francisco at the 
mayors conference not very long ago, I said to them that I thought we 
ought to develop a private-sector, job-related model for high 
unemployment areas in our cities and--because there was no way the 
government social services could ever create enough economic opportunity 
for people. And I thought, if we couldn't do it when the national 
unemployment rate was the lowest in 23 years, when could we do it?
    So I think we need to do more to help people organize and start 
their own businesses, to help build economic clusters of activity, to 
help give people models as well as opportunities to work, to see that we 
can do this. I don't think we're doing nearly enough in this area, and I 
think we have a new opportunity to do it because the unemployment rate 
is low in the Nation.
    As I've heard Reverend Jackson say for 20 years, the biggest 
undeveloped market in America are the poor unemployed and underemployed 
people in our inner cities and our rural areas. Now is the time we 
should be creating more businesses there, not having fewer businesses. 
That's what I believe.

Affirmative Action

    Mr. Thomas. Mr. President, Eric Thomas with KGO-TV in San Francisco. 
Mr. President, your scholarship proposal notwithstanding, there is still 
an assault on affirmative action in this country. In my home State of 
California, in the wake of Proposition

209 and last year's vote by the University of California Board of Regents, 
minority applications and enrollment in the UC system this year are down. 
There will be not one new black student enrolled at the prestigious Bolt 
Hall School of Law at the University of California this fall. What specific 
programs, scholarship program notwithstanding, do you propose to stem this 
tide and make sure that there is diversity in higher education in this 
country?

    The President. First of all, I think we need to make sure that we 
continue to use Federal law to the maximum extent we can to promote an 
integrated educational environment so that we have to review, whether in 
the Education Department, in the Justice Department, whether there are 
any further actions we can take legally to promote an integrated 
educational environment in higher education in the States where these 
actions have been taken.
    Secondly, I think we need to look at whether there is some way by 
indirection to achieve the same result. I know that the legislature in 
Texas, in an attempt to overcome the impact of the Hopwood decision in 
Texas, just passed what they call the ``ten percent solution,'' which 
would be to guarantee admissions to any Texas public institution of 
higher education to the top 10 percent of the graduating class of any 
high school in Texas. And because of the way the African-Americans' and 
Hispanics' living patterns are in Texas, that may solve the problem. 
Whether that would work in California, I don't know. I haven't studied 
the way the school districts are organized enough. But I think we have 
to come up with some new and fairly innovative ways to do that.
    Thirdly, I think, on the professional schools, my own view--I'm a 
little stumped here. We have to really--we're going to have to reexamine 
what we can do. I don't know why the people who promoted this in 
California think it's a good thing to have a segregated set of 
professional schools. It would seem to me that, since these 
professionals are going to be operating in the most ethnically diverse 
State in the country, they would want them to be educated in an 
environment like they're going to operate. I don't understand that.

[[Page 1098]]

    But there may be some ways to get around it, and we're looking at it 
and working on it. But I think it's going to be easier to stop it from 
happening at the undergraduate level than at the professional school 
level. And we're going to have to really think about whether there is 
some way around it, whether it would be some sort of economic 
designation or something else. But we're working on that.
    And finally, let me say, I think we need to continue to provide more 
resources, because one of the real problems we have is, even in the last 
5 years, when we've had economic recovery, the college enrollment rates 
of minorities in America have not gone up in an appropriate way. And in 
this budget that I'm trying to get passed through Congress, we've got 
the biggest increase in education funding in 32 years, the biggest 
increase in Pell grant scholarships in 20 years, another huge increase 
in work-study funds, and the tax proposals, as we structured them, 
would, in effect, guarantee 2 years of college to virtually everyone in 
America and help people with 2 more years of college.
    We've got a huge dropout problem in higher education among 
minorities that I think is having an impact on then what happens in the 
graduate schools and in the professional schools. I don't think there is 
a simple answer. And I think, frankly, the way 209 is worded, it's a 
bigger problem even than the Hopwood case in Texas. But I can tell you 
we're working on it: First, is there anything the Justice Department or 
the civil rights office of the Education Department can do? We're 
examining that. Second, is there a specific solution like the Texas 
``ten percent solution'' that would overcome it at least in a specific 
State. Third, come up with some more funds and some more specific 
scholarship programs to try to overcome it.
    It's a great concern to me, and I think it is moving the country in 
exactly the wrong direction. And I might say, if you look at the 
performance of affirmative action students, it doesn't justify the 
action that was taken. That's another point that ought to be made.
    So the one thing that I believe is, I believe that the rather 
shocking consequences in the professional schools in both Texas and 
California will have a deterrent impact on other actions like that in 
other States. And I believe you will see more efforts now to avoid this. 
I think a lot of people who even voted for 209 have been pretty shocked 
at what happened, and I don't believe the people of California wanted 
that to occur. And I think the rhetoric sounded better than the reality 
to a lot of voters.
    So I can tell you that, while I'm very concerned about it, I think 
if we all work on it, we can reverse it in a matter of a couple of 
years. And we just have to hope we don't lose too many people who would 
otherwise have had good opportunities because of it. But it is an urgent 
matter of concern to me.

Education

    Mr. Jones. Brent Jones, University of Florida. Good afternoon, Mr. 
President.
    The President. Good afternoon.
    Mr. Jones. My question also has to do with education for more at a 
high school and middle school level. The dropout rate, crime, and drugs 
are more prevalent in inner-city schools than in suburban schools, 
consequently leading to a lower quality education in many inner-city 
schools. What will your administration do through Government-aided 
programs or initiatives to combat these problems and ensure everyone in 
America is receiving a comparable education?
    The President. I want to answer your question, but first I'd like to 
start with a compliment to the African-American community. Last year the 
high school graduation rate nationally among African-Americans was well 
above 80 percent and almost at the level--almost equal to the level for 
white Americans. And it's a little known and appreciated fact. And it's 
a great tribute, since, as you pointed out, people who are in inner-city 
schools, particularly where there's a lot of violence, a lot of drugs, a 
lot of problems, have to struggle harder to stay in, get through, and 
come out. It's a stunning achievement that the differential in 
graduation rates is now only about 4 percent. That's a stunning thing. 
That's very, very good.
    Now, I'll tell you what we're trying to do. We're trying to do 
several things. We're trying, first of all, to help these schools work 
better with helping the teachers and the principals to operate drug-free 
and weapon-free

[[Page 1099]]

schools, with supporting juvenile justice initiatives like the one in 
Boston where, I might add, not a single child has been killed by a 
handgun in nearly 2 years in Boston, Massachusetts. So we've got to 
create a safe and drug-free environment.
    Then we're trying to support more parents groups in establishing 
their own schools. For example, I met with a number of Hispanic leaders 
recently--a lot of you are familiar with the group La Raza. They are 
operating--La Raza is operating 15 charter schools, where the parents 
have been permitted to work with teachers to establish their own schools 
within the public school system and set up the rules which govern them 
and make sure that they're good for the kids.
    There are a number--there's no magic bullet here, but what we're 
trying to do is to take the lessons from every public school that is 
working in a difficult environment where there's a low dropout rate and 
a high performance rate, and say, they all have five or six common 
elements, and then we're trying to provide the funds and the

support to people all over America to replicate that.

    I want to take my hat off to the people of Chicago here who have had 
a very difficult situation in their schools, and they have been turning 
it around and raising student performance quite markedly in the last 
couple of years with the involvement--aggressive involvement of parents 
and students. There's a student who sits on the local board governing 
the schools here now. And I think that's--I guess the last thing I'd say 
is, I would favor having communities have someone like you on their 
governing boards because I think if they'd listen more to the young 
people about what it would take to clean up and fix up the schools, I 
think we'd be ahead.
    Let me just make two other comments. I think there are some places 
where money will make a difference. I mentioned one in trying to get 
good teachers there. We're going to have to replace 2 million teachers 
within the next decade, 2 million, with retirements and more kids coming 
to school. Another is old school buildings. I was in Philadelphia the 
other day. The average age of a school building in Philadelphia is 65 
years of age. The school buildings in Philadelphia should be drawing 
Social Security. That's how old they are. [Laughter] Now, a lot of those 
old buildings are very well-built and can last for another 100 years, 
but they have to be maintained. We have school buildings in Washington 
where they're open--where there are three stories in the school 
building, and one whole floor has to be shut down because it's not safe 
for the kids to be there. So we've got to be careful about that. We need 
an initiative to help repair the school buildings.
    And finally, let me say that I think technology offers young, lower 
income kids an enormous opportunity. If we can hook up every classroom 
in America to the Internet by the year 2000, get the computers in 
there--a lot of you do things with computers that people who are in your 
line of work couldn't even imagine 5 years ago. When I go on a trip now 
on Air Force One, I go back and watch the photographers send their 
pictures over the computer back to the news room. If we can hook up 
every classroom to the Internet, have adequate computers, adequate 
educational software, properly trained teachers, and then involve the 
parents in the use of this to keep up with the schoolwork and all that 
and get to the point where the personal computer is almost as likely to 
be in a home--even a below-income person has a telephone--we can keep 
working in that direction.
    I think technology will give young Americans the chance, for the 
first time in history, whether they come from a poor, a middle class, or 
a wealthy school district, the first time ever, to all have access to 
the same information, at the same level of quality, at the same time. 
That has never happened in the history of the country. So if we do it 
right and the teachers are trained to help the young people use it, it 
will revolutionize equality of educational opportunity at the same time 
it raises excellence in education. So those are basically some of my 
thoughts about this.
    And thank you for asking and for caring about the people that are 
coming along behind you.
    Ms. Smith. Mr. President, Cheryl Smith, KKDA-Radio, Dallas, Texas. 
Every 4 years, African-Americans cast their votes for a Pres

[[Page 1100]]

idential candidate who will hopefully address some of the issues 
affecting black Americans. Do you feel African-Americans should be 
pleased with your efforts thus far? And what can we expect from you in 
the future, especially in the area of judiciary appointments?
    The President. Well, the short answer is, yes. [Laughter] I do. I 
mean, if you look at what's happened to African-American unemployment, 
African-American homeownership; if you look at the fight that I've waged 
on affirmative action and what I've tried to do for access to education 
as well as quality of education; if you look at my record on 
appointments in the administration, in the judiciary, which far 
outstrips any of my predecessors of either party; if you look at the 
larger effort that I've made to try to get Americans to come together 
and bridge the racial divide and to make people understand that we are 
each other's best assets, I would say that the answer to your first 
question is, yes.
    Now, what else do we still have to do? The first thing that I think 
is terribly important is we have to, in addition to what I've talked 
about--I've already talked about education and the racial initiative, so 
we'll put those to the side; I've already talked about them--I think we 
have got to recognize that there is a legacy here which has not been 
fully overcome and that the United States is consigning itself to 
substandard performance as a nation, if we continue to allow huge 
pockets of people to be underemployed or unemployed in our inner-city 
neighborhoods and in our poor rural areas, who are disproportionately 
minority.

At a time when we have a 5 percent unemployment rate, we ought to be able 
to seriously address what it would take to put people to work and to give 
people education and to create business opportunities.

    But let me just give you two examples. We've had a Community 
Reinvestment Act requiring banks to make loans in traditionally 
underserved areas for 20 years. We decided to enforce it. Seventy 
percent of all the loans made under the Community Reinvestment Act have 
been made in the 4\1/2\ years since this administration has been in 
office. In the 20 years, 70 percent of all the loans. That's the good 
news. The bad news is, not enough money has been loaned.
    We set up these community development banks modeled on the South 
Shore Bank here in Chicago. A lot of you are familiar with it if you've 
been around here. In our new budget agreement, we have enough funds to 
more than double that. We set up the empowerment zones and the 
enterprise communities. In our new budget act, we have enough funds to 
more than double that. We have a housing strategy that we believe can 
attract middle class people as well as low income people to have housing 
together in the inner cities so that we can also attract a business base 
here. We know a lot more than we used to about what it would take to 
have a thriving and working private sector in our urban areas. I have 
not done that yet. And that's what you ought to expect me to be working 
on.
    And then there are a lot of unmet social problems that we need to 
deal with. It's still--you know, I got my head handed to me, I guess, in 
the '94 elections because I had this crazy idea that America ought not 
to be the only country in the world where working families and their 
children didn't have health care. It seemed to be a heretical idea, but 
I still believe that, and I'm not sorry I tried. So now we're trying to 
give our children health coverage. And I think you ought to expect all 
the children in the African-American community to be able to go to a 
doctor when they need it. I think you ought to expect us to continue our 
assault on HIV and AIDS. And until we find the cure, I think you ought 
to expect us to stay at the task. I think you ought to expect us to 
continue to make headway on other medical problems which have a 
disproportionate impact in your community.
    These are some of the things that I think that you should expect of 
us: more opportunity, tackling more of the problems, bringing us 
together. I have tried to be faithful to the support I have received, 
not only because it was the support I have received but because I 
believed it was the right thing to do. And I believe that when our 8 
years is over, you'll be able to look back on it and see not only a lot 
of efforts made but a lot of results obtained.
    Thank you very much.

[[Page 1101]]

Note: The President spoke at 7:30 p.m. in the Hyatt Regency Hotel. In 
his remarks, he referred to Arthur Fennel, president, JoAnne Lyons 
Wooten, executive director, and Vanessa Williams, vice president/print, 
National Association of Black Journalists; Mayor Richard M. Daley of 
Chicago; and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson.