[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 40 (Monday, October 6, 1997)]
[Pages 1462-1463]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks Prior to a Meeting With the President's Advisory Board on Race

September 30, 1997

    Thank you very much, Dr. Franklin, members of the board, ladies and 
gentlemen. First let me, again, thank the board for its willingness to 
serve. And to those of you who came to Little Rock last week for the 
40th anniversary of the integration of Central High, I thank you for 
coming there. It was a very important occasion, I believe, and one that 
all of us who were there felt was immensely rewarding.
    I want to talk today about how we go forward from here. When I was 
at Little Rock Central High School, after we had this magnificent 
ceremony celebrating the 40th anniversary of the event and the original 
nine students went into the school, I went back outside and spent quite 
a long while talking to the students and the young people who were 
there. And all they talked to me about was how we were going to go 
forward. And I just listened to them.
    I think you made a very important beginning by urging that we focus 
on education and economic opportunity, things which cut across racial 
lines but are necessary to bring us together.
    One of the young men in the audience said to me that--he said, ``I 
don't think they had these gang problems 40 years ago, and I'm worried 
about that now.'' It was very touching, you know. So I think it's very 
important that we throw this into the future now, we begin to focus on 
it, and I agree that we should begin with education and economic 
opportunity.
    But if I could go back to the original mission of the board, I also 
think it's important that we have the facts. So this afternoon, I know 
you're going to hear from noted scientists and demographers who will 
share their research on our changing population patterns and attitudes 
on race, and I think that's an important thing.
    Secondly, I think it's important that we continue this dialog. I got 
as much out of the hour or so I spent after the ceremony in Little Rock 
just listening to the young people talking as I worked my way down the 
lines of people who were there as anything else. I'm going to have a 
town hall meeting on this subject on December the 2d, and I will 
continue to do what I can to support you in reaching out to Americans of 
all backgrounds and actually discussing this so that we build bridges of 
mutual understanding and reconciliation.
    But, finally and in the end, we have got to decide what it is we are 
going to do. This summer I announced the first of what I hope will be a 
long series of actions consistent with the work we are doing here with 
the board when I said that we would have an initiative to send our most 
talented teachers to our most needy school districts by offering them 
scholarships for their own education of they would, in turn, teach in 
those districts for a number of years. I think that will be very 
helpful.
    Later today, our Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Andrew 
Cuomo, will

[[Page 1463]]

announce new efforts to end housing discrimination in America. First, 
HUD will issue $15 million in grants to 67 private, nonprofit housing 
groups, State and local governments to combat housing discrimination and 
to promote fair housing practices. And then Secretary Cuomo will double 
the number of housing discrimination enforcement actions over the next 4 
years.
    It's clear to me now that there is more housing discrimination in 
America than I had thought there was when I became President, and that 
that has been kept alive too long in too many neighborhoods, keeping, 
among other things, too many families from sending their children to the 
schools of their choice. So I applaud what Secretary Cuomo is doing, and 
I will strongly support him.
    Let me say again, I look forward to today's discussion. I think it's 
important that we build on that--where I thought we were at the end of 
the ceremony in Little Rock, where there was a great sense among the 
people there and I felt around the country who were watching it, a great 
sense that now we have to do things, and that every individual American 
just about is interested in this issue and understands how important it 
is and understands that we'll all have to do our part if we expect to 
come out where we want to be.
    So, Dr. Franklin, I look forward to going on with the discussion. 
And I think maybe the Vice President might like to say a word or two, 
and then we could go forward.

Note: The President spoke at 10:16 a.m. in the East Room at the 
Mayflower Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to John Hope Franklin, 
Chair, President's Advisory Board on Race.