[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 21 (Monday, May 29, 2000)]
[Pages 1214-1217]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month

May 25, 2000

    The President.  Thank you. Thank you very much, and good afternoon.
    I want to welcome all of you here. And a special word of welcome to 
a former Congressman, and now our chair of the Commission, Norm Mineta. 
Daphne Kwok, Jin Sook Lee, Karen Narasaki, Senator Akaka, Senator 
Thomas, Representative Becerra, Representative Eni Faleomavaega, 
Representative Underwood, to Bill Lann Lee and all the members of the 
administration who are Asian-Pacific Americans. We just had a picture of 
over 60 of us, about--not quite--90 percent of the total.
    I want to thank those of you who work in the White House and to say 
a special word of appreciation to Laura Efurd, who worked very hard on 
this event. And to our Director of Public Liaison, Mary Beth Cahill, for 
her work and support. And I want to say a special word of appreciation 
to the Asian-Pacific American whom I have known the longest in this 
group, Maria Haley, who helped me put the Commission together. I thank 
her for her work.
    I am very proud that I've had the opportunity to appoint more Asian-
Pacific Americans than any President in history. I am proud of the 
difference you make every day, whether you're enforcing our civil rights 
laws, administering our Medicare program, representing America overseas, 
or in many other countless ways, you make a profound difference.
    This month we celebrate the accomplishments of more than 10 million 
Asian-Pacific Americans in every aspect of our Nation's life from 
engineering to education, science to sports, public service to the 
performing arts. You might be interested to know that one of the 
performing arts is speechmaking, and the speechwriter who prepared this 
was Samir Afridi, one of the Asian-Pacific Americans in our 
administration.

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    You may be fifth-generation Americans or newcomers to our shores, 
but you have all enriched our country and reinforced our values of 
family, work, and community. We should recognize that, not just in one 
month but every day. Thanks to the inventiveness of people like Vinod 
Dham, we celebrate it whenever we use a computer with a Pentium chip. We 
celebrate when we read the works of writers like Amy Tan; when we visit 
the haunting Vietnam Memorial, designed by Maya Lin; when we benefit 
from the pathbreaking medical research of Dr. David Ho; and from 
countless other Asian-Pacific Americans who are leading us to new 
frontiers of science and technology.
    And I also want to say that just as we are enhanced when we tap the 
strengths of all Americans, we are diminished when any American is 
targeted unfairly because of his or her heritage. Stereotyping, 
discrimination, racism have no place. And if we can overcome it, America 
has no limit to what we can achieve.
    I am proud of the progress that we have made together over the last 
7\1/2\ years, both here and around the world. This spring I was the 
first President in over 20 years to visit South Asia. Just yesterday we 
took an historic step toward normalizing trade with China and continuing 
our prosperity at home, and I think most important of all, giving us the 
chance to have a very different 50 years with the Asian-Pacific region 
in the future than the 50 years we have all just lived through.
    I am very proud of the contributions of Asian-Pacific Americans to 
the longest economic expansion in history, to the lowest unemployment 
rate in 30 years. I am proud that we have worked hard to spread these 
benefits more equally across our society--poverty at a 20-year low and 
poverty among Asian-Pacific Americans declining by more than 10 percent 
since I took office.
    Last year the SBA approved loans to Asian-Pacific Americans 
entrepreneurs totaling over $2.1 billion, more than 3\1/2\ times the 
number of loans guaranteed in 1992, the year before we took office.
    We beefed up our commitment to the enforcement of civil rights laws. 
And we know that, in spite of all the successes, we still face 
challenges to building the one America of our dreams. So today I'd like 
to touch on just a few of those, if I might.
    First, we face the challenge of ensuring that every American is part 
of our prosperity. The Asian-Pacific American community is the fastest 
growing racial group in our country--also among the most diverse, with 
more than 30 different ethnic groups, with roots that stretch from 
Pakistan to Polynesia, Thailand to Tonga, Hong Kong to Hawaii. Some have 
referred to your community as a so-called model minority. But that 
label, like any one, while it has its truths and strengths, masks the 
rich diversity and the diversity of challenges and disparities we find 
within the Asian-Pacific American community.
    For example, cervical cancer rates among Vietnamese women are nearly 
5 times higher than those for white women. Why is that, and what can we 
do about it? Over half of South-Asian-Americans have earned a bachelor's 
degree, but less than 6 percent of Cambodian- and Laotian-Americans have 
completed college. Why is that, and what can we do about it? Despite the 
strong economy, almost half of all Cambodian-Americans and two out of 
three Hmong-Americans live in poverty. Why is that, and what are we 
going to do about it?
    Let me say just sort of parenthetically, I was very, very grateful 
that amidst an otherwise very busy week dominated by the news about our 
discussions on China, we announced an historic bipartisan accord, thanks 
to the good work and good faith of the Speaker of the House, between 
Republicans and Democrats to launch an initiative to develop new markets 
in America--to give people the same incentives to invest in poor 
neighborhoods and people and places that have been left behind here, as 
we give them to invest around the world. And I hope the Asian-Pacific 
American community will, number one, help us pass this legislation as 
soon as possible; and number two, close the disparities in educational 
and economic performance within all the groups that make up your richly 
diverse community.
    I signed an Executive order last year establishing the White House 
Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and an Advisory 
Commission headed by Norm Mineta. One particular focus is going to be on 
how

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we can improve our data collection to better identify the specific needs 
of discreet populations. In a larger sense, the work of this commission 
is an extension of the new markets approach.
    We do not have a person to waste in America. We all do better when 
we help each other, and that's what the White House initiative and this 
Commission's work is all about. I want to thank Norm and all the 
Commissioners here and those throughout our Government for being a part 
of it. But a special thanks to those of you who have agreed to serve on 
this Commission. We wish you well, and we're all committed to helping 
you succeed.
    A second challenge we face in building one America is making sure 
that our Government reflects our growing diversity. I am proud to have 
nominated Bill Lann Lee as our Nation's top civil rights enforcer, the 
first Asian-Pacific American in that post. I still hope the Senate will 
do the right thing and confirm him.
    Yesterday I nominated Norman Bay as U.S. Attorney for the District 
of New Mexico. And I also want to say a word about judges. I have 
appointed the most diverse group of Federal judges in history. They have 
garnered the highest percentages of top ratings the ABA has given in 40 
years. We have shattered the myth that diversity somehow diminishes 
quality.
    Today I want to thank the Senate for the progress made yesterday in 
confirming 16 judges. But we still have too many nominees who have 
waited too long. One of them is a woman named Dolly Gee. I met with her 
yesterday. I'm going to embarrass her a little bit now. I nominated her 
for the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
    She has some good news in her life--she got married last weekend. 
The bad news is she's supposed to be on her honeymoon. [Laughter] The 
worst news is her husband is on her honeymoon--[laughter]--in London. 
But because she wanted to be here with you, she sent him there without 
her. [Laughter] And I think every one of you should take it as a 
personal responsibility to try to persuade the Senate to confirm her.
    Dolly, stand up there. [Applause]
    Before I took office, it had been 14 years since the last Asian-
Pacific American had been appointed to the bench. I've had the honor to 
appoint five, and Dolly would be six. Six is a nice round number, and 
she ought to be part of it.
    I thank her for her service in Los Angeles, serving with great 
distinction on the Federal Service Impasse Board helping to mediate 
labor disputes. And again I say, in addition to that, in her 
distinguished career as a civil litigator, she has, nonetheless, 
languished with her nomination for more than a year in the Senate. The 
quality of justice suffers when people like Dolly are denied a hearing 
and a vote. So I hope we will get it.
    Third, building one America means rooting out discrimination in all 
its forms. Part of that means healing the wounds of the past. Our budget 
includes almost $5 million to preserve a number of World War II 
internment camps. Part of what I know about this stems from the fact 
that one of those camps was in my home State. We must never forget that 
sad chapter in our history or let fear and prejudice jeopardize our 
rights and our liberties.
    I'll never forget when I went to Hawaii to celebrate the 50th 
anniversary of the end of World War II in the Pacific; I played golf 
with a number of World War II veterans. And one of them told me that--he 
said that he was the only good example of what happened in an internment 
camp. He was sent to our internment camp in Arkansas, and there was--the 
only place that he could find anyone who made his native food was across 
the river in Mississippi. So he went over there and met a young woman 
who became his wife. They let him out of the internment camp, and he 
joined the military and served with distinction in our armed services. I 
have never forgotten that. And I still can't believe it happened. And 
that may be the only good story that ever came out of one of those 
things.
    So I would say that we need to do our best to preserve those camps 
so that there will never be any new ones in America, and our children 
don't forget what happened--and the cautionary tale of how quickly good 
people can do bad things.

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    I am also really looking forward next month to awarding the Medal of 
Honor to 21 Asian-Pacific American veterans of World War II, including 
Senator Inouye. It is long overdue.
    Finally, let me say, we have to do more to combat hate crimes in our 
society. We see case after case across our land: a man dragged to death 
in Texas because he was black; a young man beaten and left to die in 
Wyoming because he was gay; children shot in Los Angeles because of 
their Jewish faith; a postal worker gunned down in California because of 
his Filipino heritage. Hate crimes target people not because of what 
they do but because of who they are. And because of that, they strike at 
the heart of who we are as Americans. I hope we can pass the hate crimes 
legislation, and I hope you'll help us to do it.
    I recently received a remarkable book called, ``Asian American 
Dreams.'' In the book, the author, Helen Zia, notes that Asian-Pacific 
Americans, and I quote, ``are a people in constant motion, a great work 
in progress, each stage more faceted and complex than before. As we 
overcome adversity and take on new challenges, we have evolved. Our 
special dynamism is our gift to America.''
    Thank you for sharing that gift and renewing our Nation. Thank you 
for moving us closer to the America of our Founders' dreams, where we 
don't just tolerate but celebrate our differences, share our rich 
heritage in history with others, always reaffirming our common humanity.
    Now, I would like to ask the next speaker to the podium, a World War 
II internment survivor, the first Asian-American to be a committee 
chairman in Congress, the founder of the Asian Pacific Institute for 
Congressional Studies, the chair of my Advisory Commission on Asian 
American and Pacific Islanders, and my friend, Norm Mineta.
    Norm, come up.

 [At this point, Mr. Mineta and Daphne Kwok, chair, National Council for 
Asian Pacific Islanders, made brief remarks. Ms. Kwok then presented the 
President with an award.]

    The President.  Thank you. I want to thank again the Members of 
Congress for coming; give them a chance to make their exit. We're 
adjourned. Let's just stand up and have a good time.
    Thank you.

 Note:  The President spoke at 1:05 p.m. in the Rose Garden at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Jin Sook Lee, secretary, and Karen 
Narasaki, treasurer, National Council for Asian Pacific Islanders; 
Special Assistant to the President and Presidential Speechwriter Samir 
(Sam) Afridi; and Albert Wong, husband of judicial nominee Dolly M. Gee.