Remarks in the "Presidential Dialogue on Race" on PBS

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, July 13, 1998

Moderator Jim Lehrer. Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Welcome to an hour of conversation with President Clinton about race in America.

And welcome to you, Mr. President.

The President. Thank you, Jim.

Mr. Lehrer. The President's conversation will be with eight Americans - four NewsHour regulars: essayist Richard Rodriguez of the Pacific News Service, Roger Rosenblatt and Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune, and regional commentator Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Constitution; plus, four others: Roberto Suro of The Washington Post, author of a recent book on Hispanic Americans; Kay James, dean of Regent University's School of Government; Elaine Chao, former head of United Way of America, now at the Heritage Foundation; and Sherman Alexie, novelist, poet, and screenwriter.

Keep in mind, please, that whatever their affiliation and most importantly, their race, each is here as an individual speaking only for him or herself.

Richard Rodriguez, what do you think is the single most important thing the President could do to improve race relations in this country?

[Mr. Rodriguez asserted his belief that race issues in the country have become more complicated and that the national discussion initiated under "One America: The President's Initiative on Race" and its Chair, John Hope Franklin, has not kept pace with that complexity.]

The President. Well, I basically agree with you about that. As a Southerner, like Dr. Franklin, I think that there are unique and still unresolved issues between black and white Americans, and there are some conditions in America which disproportionately involve African-Americans. Some of them are not old. Today there was just this Journal of American Medical Association story saying that African-Americans metabolize nicotine in a different way than other races, as far as we know, and therefore, even though blacks smoke fewer cigarettes, they're more likely to get lung cancer - interesting thing.

But to get back to your main point, I have tried to emphasize that America is becoming a multiracial, multiethnic, multireligious society, and therefore it would be more important both to understand the differences and to identify the common values that hold us together as a country.

And I often cite, since we're in northern Virginia where this program is being filmed, I often cite the Fairfax County School District, which is now the most diverse school district in the country, with people from over 100 different racial and ethnic groups with over 100 different languages, actually, in this school district. And I think that's a pattern of where we're going. I've got a friend who is a Southern Baptist minister here; he used to be a minister in Arkansas. He's got a Korean ministry in his church. That's just one tiny example of the kind of things you're going to see more and more of in the country.

Mr. Lehrer. Cynthia, is the unfinished business still black and white?

[Ms. Tucker suggested that what many think are racial differences are actually class differences, that disproportionately poor blacks resent whites, and that working class whites with stagnant or declining incomes blame blacks and immigrants. She blamed the wealth gap, in part, for the continuing racial problems.]

The President. There's no doubt about that. And I think that whenever possible, if you think that there is a class-related or income-related element in the difficulties we have with race, we ought to have income-based solutions to it.

A lot of things that I've asked the Congress to do over the last 5 1/2 years, a lot of things that are in this budget now are designed to address that, with grater incentives for people to invest in inner cities and Native American reservations and other poor areas; tax systems, which would disproportionately benefit working people on the lower income of the scale. I think those things are very important because - and there is, by the way, some evidence that in the last couple of years, the income inequality has begun to abate some.

But I think it's very important not to confuse the two. I mean, I believe the primary reason for income inequality - increasing inequality in America is that we have changed the nature of the economy. That is, if you go back to 100 years ago, and you see when we moved from an agricultural to an industrial economy, we also had a big influx of immigrants. There was a hug increase in inequality, not so much because of the immigrants, but because the way people made money changed. The whole basis of wealth changed. That's what's happened in this computer-based information economy, and the premium on education these days is so much greater than it's ever been, that there's a lot of stagnant incomes out there from people who have worked hard all of their lives but aren't part of the modern economy. And I think that we need strategies to identify the people that aren't winning and turn them into winners. And at the very least, turn their children into winners.

Mr. Lehrer. Kay James, class or race?