[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 39 (Monday, September 29, 1997)]
[Pages 1423-1426]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Interview With Tom Joyner, Tavis Smiley, and Sybil Wilkes on the Tom 
Joyner Morning Show in Little Rock

September 26, 1997

    Q. Mr. President, good morning.
    The President. Good morning. You're having a lot of fun there for 
this early in the morning. [Laughter]
    Q. And you're having a lot of fun, too, aren't you? Now that Chelsea 
is gone you all are having some fun. [Laughter]

[[Page 1424]]

    The President. That's what Hillary says.

Desegregation of Central High School

    Q. Mr. President, when this happened 40 years ago, how old were you?
    The President. Eleven.
    Q. And what was going through your mind when you saw all this, what 
happened here in Little Rock?
    The President. I thought it was a bad thing. I didn't understand why 
people were so upset. But as I said yesterday, most of the white kids 
didn't think about it one way or the other until it actually happened. 
Until the Little Rock Nine were turned away, I think most people didn't 
think about it one way or the other. Children are basically self-
absorbed in their own lives. It's part of the privilege of childhood.
    But then, all of a sudden, kids that had never thought about it 
before, it's all they talked about for weeks. And everybody then had to 
decide really how they felt about it. And it seemed obvious to me that 
sooner or later this was going to have to be done; it might as well be 
done soon.
    But I also--I was always amazed at how there was an element in the 
South and probably in the rest of the country, too, of people that 
were--they always just needed somebody to hate, needed somebody to look 
down on. But it's no way to run a country and no way to run a life. 
Sooner or later, to me, it was obvious it had to change.
    Q. Mr. President, there seems to be so much symbolism to the fact 
that you were opening the door yesterday for the members of the Little 
Rock Nine coming through, as well as this year that you have stepped 
before the Nation, before the world, and telling them that you are 
taking this step into the 21st century and making a difference in terms 
of race relations. This is a year in which you are just really making us 
aware and bringing these things out to us. And I commend you for that.
    The President. Well, thank you. I think part of the symbolism 
yesterday was that--thank you very much. I think yesterday, part of the 
importance of the symbolism was that political leaders closed the doors 
and stood in the doors in the fifties and sixties and kept people out of 
the doors. And apparently, that idea to open the door came from the 
students at Central High themselves. It was a great, wonderful idea, and 
I was glad to be a part of it.
    Q. Mr. President--first of all, to the affiliates of 93 stations 
around the country on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, as you can tell, we 
are running long. We're going to go right through the break. We want you 
to hang with us.
    Mr. President, you said that what happened 40 years ago really 
developed your idea of what race relations in this country should be 
about. At 11 years old, you were thinking race relations?
    The President. Well, it was discussed in my home because my 
grandparents were interested in it. That's what I said yesterday. So I 
had a chance to think about it earlier just because my grandfather 
expressed himself very strongly about it. He had once been a grocer and 
had a lot of black customers, and he knew a lot about black people as 
human beings and about the troubles they were facing and the problems in 
their lives and the potential they had. He thought it was wrong.
    My grandmother was a nurse and she had a lot more contact with black 
people in the fifties than most white people did, and she thought it was 
wrong. And they just had a big impact on me, and they talked about it a 
lot. And even though my grandfather died in 1957, and everybody was 
talking about this happening in the 2 years coming up to that, I still 
remember as a little boy, 9, 10 years old, sitting around the table, 
having him walk through this with me and telling me that this was 
something that had to be done.
    Q. Mr. President, Sybil asked you a moment ago about the symbolism 
of yesterday. I want to ask you about the substance, if I can. As you 
know, the two issues that are facing this country, certainly facing 
black America, with regard to education as we talk about this incident 
40 years ago are the issue of school vouchers and this whole issue of 
resegregation of schools. You know, the NAACP was even considering 
earlier this summer reassessing their position on school integration. 
What are your thoughts specifically on how the issue of school vouchers 
and the issue of school integration are impacting

[[Page 1425]]

the African-American community? Where do you come down on that debate on 
those issues?
    The President. Well, let me say, first of all, school vouchers--that 
is, giving people money that used to go to the school district that they 
can then use and spend in the school district or they can use it to 
defray the cost of tuition to private schools--school vouchers are the 
most extreme version of more school choice for parents and students. I 
have supported for years and years giving students and parents more 
choice for the public schools their kids attend and also the national 
charter school movement which allows groups of teachers and parents to 
organize schools on their own and be more loosely affiliated with public 
school districts and to meet the special needs of the community, and 
then they can have a lot of freedom from the rules and regulations of 
the school districts and the State as long as they meet high standards.
    I support the school uniform movement which a lot of private schools 
have and which have made a big difference in a lot of school districts. 
The reason I have opposed school vouchers is that I think if you look at 
the facts, it's a relatively small financial contribution if you give 
somebody, for example, what the Federal Government gives to a school 
district, but if you take it away, you can have a big adverse impact on 
the school districts without helping any individual children very much.
    Now, I will say this. I believe that sooner or later there will be a 
lot of people who will try going beyond Milwaukee and, I think, 
Cleveland unless we can prove that the public schools can work for 
children again. But I think, from my point of view, particularly with 
the Federal dollars, I simply don't believe that we should be diverting 
resources when our schools have been relatively under-funded on the 
whole. Instead, we ought to be concentrating on making them excellent.
    On the other hand, there ought to be some competition there. The 
parents ought to have some say, which is why I think they ought to have 
more choice over the schools their kids attend, and they ought to have 
the right to participate in new schools that are outside a lot of the 
bureaucratic rules that burden school districts.
    On the resegregation, I think that my own view is that we ought to 
continue to try to have integrated schools. We ought to recognize that 
segregated neighborhoods and different patterns in who has children of 
school age in various places have led to a resegregation of a lot of our 
schools. We still ought to try to integrate these neighborhoods and mix 
them not only racially but economically. We still ought to have, where 
reasonable, transportation plans that work and aren't too burdensome for 
the kids. But we shouldn't use the fact that a school is not especially 
integrated at this moment as an excuse not to give those kids an 
excellent education and do the very best we can.
    Q. Ten years ago, Mr. President, there was a 30-year celebration for 
the Little Rock Nine that you helped organize when you were Governor 
here in the State of Arkansas. It was a lot smaller celebration than the 
one we had this week, huh?
    The President. It was a lot smaller. I think they enjoyed it, but 
some of them--I'm not sure, you'd have to ask them--but I think there 
were a couple that hadn't been back to Arkansas very much before then. 
But everybody gathered. I wanted them to be able to come to the 
Governor's Mansion because it was the symbol of opposition to their 
efforts, and it was the place where a lot of the plotting was done to 
keep them out of school. I thought it would be a good thing if they came 
into the house that had once shut them out.
    Q. If you were one of them back then, do you think you could have 
had the courage to do what they did, in all that adversity?
    The President. I don't know. Boy, I'd like to think I would have. I 
think we all would like to think we would have. But I think, to be 
honest, none of us can know. You don't know until you're in a situation 
like that. I wish I could say yes because I certainly would like to have 
been a part of it, and I can tell you this: I'm glad they did. I'm 
certainly glad they did.
    Q. I'll tell you, the President--smooth, ain't he? Pretty smooth.
    Q. And you know, Mr. President, I think your grandfather would be 
very proud of you

[[Page 1426]]

for what you have done in terms of stepping forward not only yesterday 
but, as I said before, with taking people and making us take stock of 
ourselves and our relationships with others, people that don't look like 
us. And you've done that certainly in your Cabinet and on your staff of 
people who look like a lot of us that listen to the Tom Joyner Morning 
Show as African-Americans.
    Q. Thank you, sir. And we're all FOB's.
    Q. Yes, we are.
    Q. We're FOB's.
    The President. Thanks. [Laughter]

Chelsea

    Q. So how is Chelsea doing in school? Has she called for money?
    The President. Well, not for money yet. We've talked to her a couple 
of times, and she's having a good time.
    Q. Well, tell her if she needs some campus fashion, Ms. Dupree has 
got some cousins who can hook her up. [Laughter]
    Q. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you for being a guest on the 
show, and thank you for being a part of all the celebration here for the 
40th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine. Thank you, sir.
    The President. Thank you. Goodbye, everybody. Thank you.

Note: The interview began at 8:45 a.m. The President spoke from a 
private residence to the interviewers in the Clinton Ballroom of the 
Excelsior Hotel in Little Rock. A tape was not available for 
verification of the content of this interview.