THE PRESIDENT'S INITIATIVE ON RACE
ADVISORY BOARD MEETING
TUESDAY,SEPTEMBER 30, 1997The Advisory Board met in the East Room at the Mayflower Hotel, 1127 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C., at 9:30 a.m., Dr. John Hope Franklin, Chairman, presiding.
PRESENT:
JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN Chairman
WILLIAM CLINTON President of the United States
ALBERT GORE Vice-President of the United States
LINDA CHAVEZ-THOMPSON Board Member
SUZAN D. JOHNSON COOK Board Member
THOMAS H. KEAN Board Member
ANGELA E. OH Board Member
ROBERT THOMAS Board Member
WILLIAM F. WINTER Board Member
JUDITH WINSTON Executive Director
A-G-E-N-D-A
Agenda Item Page
Introduction/Review of Agenda - 3
Dr. John Hope FranklinReport from Advisory Board Chairman - 4
Dr. John Hope FranklinReport from Executive Director - 11
Judith A. WinstonDiscussion with President Clinton and Vice President Gore - 13
Introduction of Roundtable Topic for the Day - 70
Dr. John Hope FranklinDemographic Information About the Population of the United States - 73
Dr. Reynolds FarleyPolling Data Concerning our Attitudes and Actions on Race - 95
Dr. Lawrence BoboTalking About Our Attitudes and Actions
Dr. James Jones - 122Dr. Jack Dovidio - 158
Dr. Derald Wing Sue - 179
Presentation of Advisory Board Work Plan - 207
Dr. John Hope FranklinNext Steps - 219
P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S (9:34 a.m.)
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I am pleased to call to order the meeting of the Advisory Board to the President's Initiative on Race. I think that if you do not know the members of the Advisory Board, then permit me to present them.
Thomas Kean over at my far right, president of Drew University and former governor of New Jersey.
The Reverend Suzan Johnson Cook who is the pastor of the Bronx Faith Community Church.
The Honorable William Winter, the former governor of Mississippi and a distinguished of the Mississippi Bar.
Ms. Linda Chavez-Thompson who is the executive vice-president of the AFL/CIO.
Ms. Angela Oh, is a distinguished member of the Los Angeles Bar and activist in the area of civil rights and a great criminal lawyer in Los Angeles.
Mr. Robert Thomas, the president and CEO of Nissan, USA.
I would also like to present the executive director of the Advisory Board to the President's Initiative on Race, Ms. Judith A. Winston.
There are two senior consultants to the Board: Mr. Christopher Edley, professor at the Harvard Law School and a longtime servant of the public in many capacities; Ms. Laura Harris of San Antonio, Texas, who has kindly consented to serve as a senior consultant, although we wanted her for a longer period of time than that.
We have been busy during these last several weeks doing a number of things. One of the first things that we have done is develop five broad goals that reflect the work that we will be doing and have been doing, as the Advisory Board, and the work that the staff on the President's Initiative on Race have been doing.
First, we have undertaken to articulate the President's vision of a just, unified America.
Secondly, we have undertaken to educate all Americans about the facts of race in this country that extend back at least half a millennium.
Thirdly, to promote a constructive and continuing dialogue in which we will confront many of the difficult issues of race.
Fourthly, to encourage leadership at the federal, state, local, community and individual levels in the effort to bridge the racial divides.
Finally, the identify and develop solutions in critical areas such as education, economic opportunity, the administration of justice, housing, crime and health care.
During the last several weeks, individual board members have given speeches, they have served on panels and engaged in numerous informal discussions concerning the President's Initiative on Race and the Advisory Board's work plan.
Individual members participated in the activities of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
A few of us have met with members of the American Psychological Association when it met in Chicago last month to discuss how to talk about race in ways that unite rather than divide us.
Dr. James Jones from whom we will be hearing later, helped to arrange that meeting.
I have written to the entire Congressional leadership concerning our desire to involve them in the process, and I look forward to an opportunity to meet with all members of the Congressional leadership.
I also have had the honor and the privilege to speak to the joint session of the North Carolina General Assembly. There was an enormous amount of interest in what we are doing as expressed by the members of that legislative body.
And of course, many of us were involved during this past weekend in the commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock. I will have more to say about that in a moment.
The response that we have received as we have carried on our work, and the response and reactions that we continue to receive, have been overwhelming and the extent to which people have volunteered and asked to be included in one way or another in this effort, has been most gratifying.
There has been an enormous volume of mail, telephone calls, almost all of them positive, I might add. Not only has the office Washington received huge volumes of mail and telephone calls, but individual members of the board have received responses from the general public.
People have asked to participate, they have offered their services, they have made helpful suggestions, and we continue to be grateful to them for what they have done, and we will continue to be grateful to them for what they will do in the future. We look forward to getting large numbers of them involved in the work of the Advisory Board and the general activities that we will be carrying on.
When we met last on July 14, we had just appointed an executive director, Ms. Judy Winston. She did not actually begin her work until the month of August. But the work that she has done in the relatively brief time that she has been heading the staff has been most remarkable and gratifying.
The staffing of the President's Initiative on Race is nearly complete and the staff has been hard at work in pursuing the goals to which I referred. Judy will make a more extensive report in just a minute or two.
One example of the manner in which we have been active was our involvement in the commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the desegregation of the Central High School, in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Many of you saw the observations and commemorations on television and perhaps you have had the opportunity to reflect on the far-reaching impact of that one event on the status in America.
During the period of the commemoration, members of the Advisory Board were active in working with the National Conference to put on a two-day program following the specific anniversary commemoration, and they were in various parts of the country as we undertook to take advantage of the work that the National Conference was doing.
So, Governor Winter and I were in Little Rock where Governor Winter gave the keynote address of the two-day meeting last Friday. Then both of us participated in round table discussions and the town meetings that followed on Saturday.
We were particularly involved and concerned with the manner in which public education could help to prepare our young people for the multi-racial society that will characterize our country in the 21st Century.
These activities were developed and extended and transmitted by satellite to some 25 locations around the country. The Advisory Board and members participated in events in three of these locations.
Governor Winter and I, as I indicated were in Little Rock, where we able not only to listen to the comments of our local audience, but to receive comments and questions from people stationed at various locations around the country.
Members of the Advisory Board were in some of these locations. Unfortunately, we didn't have 25 members on the Advisory Board so we could not have members at each of the points where the town meetings were in progress.
But Angela Oh was in the Oakland-San Francisco area, Bob Thomas was in Chicago, and Suzan Johnson Cook and Linda Chavez-Thompson were here in Washington.
I hope that they will give us a report on those activities, perhaps, just a little later.
Also, we have developed a work plan which we will be discussing later in the meeting. This work plan is the result of contributions from all of the board members.
I want at this time, to particularly think Bob Thomas, the president of Nissan, USA, for what he has done and how extremely generous he has been with his time and with the time of his staff.
I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Nissan, USA in Gardena, California, to see what that particular group has done in the way of setting an example for corporate America to involve itself more in generating, not only on their staff, but setting examples for others, to show what diversity really is and can be in a great American corporation.
Now, I am pleased at this time to present our executive director who oversees the day-to-day operations of the Advisory Board and the President's Initiative on Race staff. I am going to ask her to tell us something about what she and the staff have been doing since she came on board.
DIRECTOR WINSTON: Thank you very much, Dr. Franklin.
I would like to add my own hello and welcome to everyone here at the second Advisory Board meeting and to thank all the members of the Advisory Board as well, for your wonderful reception to me as I joined this effort in August.
I thank you for all the time and attention that you have given to the President's Initiative on Race over the past several weeks, and to the staff.
The theme of today's Advisory Board meeting is building on a common foundation.
As Dr. Franklin noted earlier, he, Governor Winter and I have just returned from Little Rock where we attended the fortieth anniversary of the desegregation of Central High School.
We were also participants in the National Conference's National Leadership Summit which provided an opportunity for us to engage in a conversation on race and education.
Both events, as Dr. Franklin has indicated, were truly exceptional experiences.
As I sat and listened to President Clinton's speech and the words of the Little Rock Nine at the Leadership Summit, it struck me that these two events capture the essence of the Initiative, bringing people together to discuss our differences while celebrating our commonalities, concentrating on that which binds us together while recognizing we still have a lot of hard work to do.
The level of energy and excitement that people exhibited in Little Rock was astounding, and it was only matched, in my view, by the level of interest that we have found in communities all over the country that want to share their stories and participate in the dialogue.
Communities like Springfield, Ohio, which is home to a study circle and is attempting to reach across boundaries and build bridges in its community.
My point is that there are many, many people in the country, from one end to the other, who recognize a need for and want to have a dialogue on race. In fact, they have begun to have it already.
We know, for example, in Akron, Ohio and in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daily newspapers, the Beacon Journal and the Times Picayune, respectively, have both penned series of articles offering in-depth analysis of how race is affecting their communities.
We also know that in Albuquerque, New Mexico, El Paso, Texas, Valdosta, Georgia and Chattanooga, Tennessee, the Levi-Strauss Foundation and Levi Strauss have undertaken a significant project designed to promote racial harmony in these communities.
In Philadelphia and Seattle, the Ford Foundation is participating in the campus diversity initiative, a program designed to explore the benefits of diversity in education.
In fact, only this morning, the non-profit Center for Living Democracy released the results of its year-long survey of community efforts at interracial dialogues. Researchers identified over 80 interracial dialogue groups representing at least 30 states.
Interestingly, one of the findings of CLD is that religious organizations ranked first, and the media, last, in order of importance in fostering interracial dialogue.
There are many other findings and I hope you all will have an opportunity to take a look at this survey and understand better how much is going on in this country.
Some of it is stimulated recently by the creation of the President's Initiative on Race, but other activities have been ongoing, and the people who have been engaged in dialogue on this critical issue have been, in my view and from their own mouths, have been re-energized by the President's call to talk about this issue and to begin to understand how we can resolve and deal with the challenges of bridging the racial divide.
So these and other communities recognize the urgency and the importance of what the Initiative is trying to accomplish and sincerely want to participate.
I think that we would all agree that there is no better time than now for this activity to take place.
We have been very busy at the Initiative office which is located in the New Executive Office Building, here in Washington, D.C. I am pleased to announce that, as of today, we now have 24 full-time staff members of the Initiative and four consultants.
I have been asked by a number of news reporters over the last few weeks just how we are doing, in terms of our staffing, and I keep changing our numbers; but that is progress.
We now have 24 full-time staff members and we also have several consultants working with us. Dr. Franklin introduced earlier Laura Harris and Chris Edley who are busy working with us and helping to guide our activities.
My expectation is that by mid-October we will add an additional five members to the full-time staff.
I notice that Dr. Franklin did leave the room, and I should tell you that he has gone to meet the President and the Vice-President who will be joining us here.
I would like to take this opportunity to indicate that we expect the President and the Vice-President to be with us at this meeting for approximately an hour, and I would ask particularly that the audience would remain in your seats for a full fifteen minutes, following's departure. We ask you to do that for security reasons.
So, we would appreciate your indulgence at the conclusion of that particular part of our Advisory Board meeting.
I do want to mention that the staff is divided into essentially three components. We do have a communications team that is headed by Deputy Director Claire Gonzales. We also have an outreach and program development team which is headed by Deputy Director Michael Wenger. We have a group of staff working on policy planning and research under the direction of Deputy Director Lin Lu.
Those teams are responsible for directing the Initiative's media relations and the development and dissemination of public information about the Initiative's many activities and findings.
The outreach and program development team has created and will create an ongoing process of constructive national dialogue on issues surrounding race.
The policy planning and research team is responsible for coordinating the Initiative's efforts in the following areas: to provide the public and the Advisory Board with social and economic data by racial groups in order to analyze disparities and progress; to identify, evaluate and disseminate promising practices; to coordinate policy recommendations with the White House and other federal agencies; to coordinate the development of the President's final report to the American people.
Now, the emphasis that we have on our outreach component has been to reach as many of our communities of our nation as possible. We understand that this process is vitally important if we are to engage all of the many voices that should be involved in this dialogue is to be meaning and substantive.
We have had many, many questions about whether or not we intend for this Initiative and this year-long conversation to be inclusive, and we do.
It is a multi-racial effort and we intend to involve everyone. We have had some very productive meetings with a wide range of groups, including an opportunity that I and others had recently to meet with a number of representatives of ethnic groups.
They expressed their sincere interest in being substantially involved in the work of the Advisory Board and in helping the President and indeed, the country, understand how important it is for us to value our differences as well to understand how much we have in common.
I see several representatives from that particular meeting in the audience this morning.
We have also met with the American Psychological Association which had a mini-convention on psychology and racism in Chicago.
We have had a number of staff and Advisory Board members participating in discussion symposia, including several that were sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus.
We have met with the American Institute for Managing Diversity in Atlanta.
The National American Italian Foundation a conference on pluralism, and it was there that we had another opportunity to meet with many representatives from ethnic communities from around the United States.
The National Hispanic Bar Association and the U.S. Department of Education provided an opportunity to speak with presidents and administrators from our National Historically Black Colleges and Universities Initiative.
The National Conference's national leadership summit which I mentioned earlier in the presentation, is another example, and I could cite many more, of opportunities that the Board and the staff have had to begin to engage the communities and interested persons in dialogue.
It is true that we plan to have many more such meetings and to have several town hall meetings which have, of course, have generated an awful lot of interest.
But I think it is important, not just for the people here and interested to realize, but for everyone in the country to realize, that we expect this initiative to be represented by the many dialogues and conversations people have, whether we are talking about four people or a hundred and four or a hundred and four thousand; that all counts.
You should not count the success of this exercise by whether or not we are making the newspapers in terms of the kinds of conversations that draw large crowds. These conversations are happening everyday in many places, often involving our Advisory Board members, often involving our staff.
I just want to make a very quick reference that we are also trying to engage the philanthropic community in these discussions.
Actually, many are already very much engaged, and what we are trying to do is to learn from the experience that they have had as well as to build partnerships with organizations with foundations that are currently engaged in promoting diversity and addressing the problems of race.
In anticipation of the possibility that the President will be joining us momentarily, I would like to briefly say that we are also looking forward to extending our outreach and engaging the many sectors in this Initiative as partners.
One of the things that I know that the Advisory Board is talking about and members of the Advisory Board may wish to elaborate on today, is the fact that we are going to identify leaders in communities and in various sectors to themselves begin to do what you members of the Advisory Board are doing, and that is generating discussion across racial groups to talk about what the challenges are and how we can go about resolving the challenges.
For example, we anticipate the real possibility that the work that has been begun so well by Robert Thomas, who is president of Nissan, will be extended to many others in the corporate and business community.
We have also spoken with Reverend Suzan Johnson Cook about how we might engage members of the faith community, the religious community, through her work and experience in that community, and others.
The labor community as well.
So, this particular aspect of our work is particularly exciting as we look at building out from this circle of advisors to the many, many other people who will take leadership positions.
I am going to stop here and ask if members of the Advisory Board would like to share with us some of the experiences that they have had over the last several weeks that are indicative of the kind of work that we and they intend to carry forward in the weeks to come.
Is there anyone who would like to speak to that or speak specifically to the Little Rock event over the weekend?
MEMBER COOK: Yes. I think what I felt, most of all, was the excitement across the nation, in all sectors.
I have been in elementary school rooms to high schools to college campuses and certainly many interviews. I think a little bit of everybody in America is kind of interested in what we are doing. So, the excitement is what stood out for me most.
I had anticipated a lot of resistance from people who may not really want to deal with the race issue. But it was quite the contrary. Many people want to.
I think that the question that is raised in most places is will the real grassroots constituency be at the table and not just a talking heads environment? I assure them that I am from that community and it will be represented.
I was at the Congressional Black Caucus about two weeks ago and there were several town meetings there concerning race; Dr. Franklin participated in one. Then there were several smaller workshops where people were interested in the race issue, in terms of taking action steps, particularly. Such as, by the end of this year, what can we propose to this country, because we have been talking for a long time.
In the New York area, certainly there have been a lot of local groups, particularly elective officials who want to deal with it.
In the Bronx we have a unique situation. We have a Latino burrough president, Fernando Ferrer, so there are two dominant minority groups; African Americans and Latinos there.
It is really a desire for us to come together and not live and work in our separate communities, but to really work as one partnership and I think that is really exciting.
So, I think we are on the pulse of what American is really feeling and desiring to do. Someone had to take the lead to do it and I think we are in the right place at the right time with the right issue.
DIRECTOR WINSTON: Thank you.
GOVERNOR WINTER: Judy, in spite of the initial skepticism about this Initiative, I have found it has tapped an incredible about of interest among the people with whom I come in contact.
I come from the deep South, and my phone has literally been ringing many times a day from groups who want to know more about how they can be involved in this process of racial understanding and racial reconciliation.
We have come a long way in that area of the country in which I live, but we all recognize how far we still have to go.
Out there is a good spirit on the part of almost everyone that I have come in contact with in terms of wanting to do something, individually and as a part of the groups of which they are a part, to make this one America.
That is a task that cannot be mandated from Washington. It has to be established within the hearts and minds of individual Americans.
That is the thrust of this Initiative. As I go around and speak to different groups at schools and churches and civic organizations, I find a response that, frankly, I did not think those people were capable of, in many instances, but which, in every instance, has indicated their desire to do more than they have been doing to bring people together.
And that is what this Initiative is about and I think it will be successful because there is that spirit in this country.
MEMBER THOMAS: One of the interesting things that I have found while traveling around, and it as actually changed a little bit of my impression, is that initially, some of the younger people I talked to were maybe college students and that, and race wasn't one of their top priorities.
Many times they would say that this isn't an issue; we get along fine. We do all of our things together and we are essentially color blind in that sense. They had other things that were their top priorities. I was starting to put that as sort of a general take on youth.
But recently, I have dealt more and more with high school students and they very clearly say that race is an issue. It is a big issue at home, a big issue at school.
When they talk about solutions to this, they don't want to hear about our generations or generations beyond theirs. They want to hear from students and young people and leaders at that age because they, just very frankly, say that you don't speak our language; we don't hear you, two or three sentences into it we lose you.
And that is something that has really been a change in impression for me, that is, that race is huge issue at that age.
MEMBER OH: I would like to share with you that Robert and I had a very nice reception in southern California. I would say that there were probably two or three hundred people who were there just to celebrate the fact that something like this was happening.
In the weeks that I have been back at my job, I have received an overwhelming positive response to some of the issues that were put on the table in our first meeting.
I also wanted to say to you that I have heard from the Pacific Islander people who have said that, because of the experiences of being on the islands, it is Representative Underwood in particular, who had been very good about sending information over about the experiences of native people.
It is a difficult journey as we move through this process, but one that most people in this country are ready to take, personally and publicly.
He believes that there are some tremendous insights to be gained by going to native people and seeing and hearing their experience.
So, I hope that, in this process, one of the things that we make room for is that kind of input.
MEMBER CHAVEZ-THOMPSON: The one thing that I have experienced, more than anything else is that everybody is waiting, anxiously, for these town hall meetings, because they believe that at that point in time, they, meaning the public, will have an opportunity to address their issues.
We know that we are addressing some of the issues that we are concerned about and perhaps each of us brings to the table a certain aspect of participation.
But I think that, for the most part, the public wants to have the opportunity to have their say to tell us what concerns them.
My concern also, and in talking with some of the members here this morning, is that we also bring the youth factor into our conversations because, if anybody is going to make it work, it is the young people of our country and we need to hear from them.
We absolutely need to factor in, whether it is a town hall meeting or whether it is a mini forum, we really need to bring the young people in to talk about it.
I heard from some of the young people in Little Rock during that conference, and some of their words are so beautiful about their outlook for race and how they feel more attention needs to be paid to the dialogue
GOVERNOR KEAN: There is, you know, a tremendous desire out there for us to succeed.
There is a worry that we won't.
But my experience is that there isn't anybody out there that I have talked to who doesn't hope that the kind of dialogue that we are talking about can take place and that the results, overall, will be positive.
I find the young people, in particular, want to have that dialogue. I don't know if they want to include us or not, but they want to have it.
I see on our own campus at Drew University, without my participation at all, they have already started a dialogue and they are going to make that one of things that they do this year; have a dialogue on race that is going to go on for a period of months and it is student-led.
They had the adults in for a while, then mid-way, they said now we would like you to leave, and they had their own dialogue. I think that that is fine.
DIRECTOR WINSTON: Thank you very much. Well, we are breathlessly awaiting the arrival.
I do want to just make a comment. One of the opportunities that I had, in keeping with the point on youth and how anxious youth are to be involved, I had the privilege of participating in a symposium that was billed as the civil rights crusaders and the hip-hop generation.
I was crushed to learn that I was not part of the hip-hop generation and I actually had to spend some time with some of the many young people on our staff getting translations so I would make sure that I would understand the conversations that we were having.
It was very instructive and very, very inspiring and energizing to hear from the young people in our community.
Ladies and gentlemen, I think that we are about the welcome the President and the Vice-President and Dr. Franklin to our meeting.
(PAUSE)
MEMBER THOMAS: Judy, if you need filler, one thing that I would just mention to the Advisory Board and the public is that I have had the privilege of meeting with your staff, and I just want to compliment you and your staff on the development.
(APPLAUSE)
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I have the honor to present to you the President and the Vice-President of the United States, and to express our gratitude for the confidence that you have reposed in us as appointees to the Advisory Board.
Mr. President?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thank you, very much.
Dr. Franklin, members of the Advisory Board, ladies and gentlemen, first let me again thank the Advisory Board for its willingness to serve. To those who came to Little Rock for the fortieth anniversary 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 to you 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 fortieth anniversary 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.
All they talked to me about was how we are going to go forward and I just listened to them.
I think you have made a very important beginning by urging that we focus on education and economic opportunity, things that cut across racial lines but are necessary to bring us together.
One of the young men in the audience said, "You know, I don't think they had these gang problems forty years ago. I am worried about that."
It was very touching, you know.
But I think that it is very important that we throw this into the future and I agree with you that we should focus on education and economic opportunity.
But if I can go back to the original mission of the Board, I think it is also important that we have the facts. I know that this afternoon you are going to hear from noted scientists and demographers who will share their research on population patterns and attitudes on race, and I think that is important.
Secondly, I think that it is important that we continue this dialogue. I got as much out of the hour or so that 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 am going to have a town hall meeting on this subject on December 2, 1997, and I will continue to do what I can to support you in reaching out to all Americans in discussing this, so that we can build bridges that will lead to understanding and reconciliation.
But finally, in the end, we have to decide what it is that 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 that we are doing here with the Advisory Board when I said that we would have an initiative to send our most talented teachers to the needy school districts by offering scholarships for their own education if they would, in turn, teach in those districts for a number of years. I think that would be very helpful.
Later today, our Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Andrew Cuomo, will announce new efforts to end housing discrimination.
First, HUD will issue $15 million in grants to 67 private, non-profit housing groups and state and local governments, to combat housing discrimination and promote fair housing practices.
Then Secretary Cuomo will double the number of housing discrimination enforcement actions over the next four years.
It is clear to me now that there is more housing discrimination in America than I thought there was when I became President. 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 where I felt we were at the end of the ceremony in Little Rock where there was a great sense of that among the people there and I felt around the country among the people watching it a great sense that now we have to do things and that just about every individual American 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'll look forward to going on with the discussion and I think that maybe the Vice-President might want to say a word or two and then we can go forward.
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President.
Mr. Vice President.
VICE-PRESIDENT GORE: Thank you very much, Dr. Franklin. And thank you, Mr. President. I will be very brief because I'm looking forward to the discussion here. I think the remarks you made, Mr. President, in Little Rock last week were very powerful and resonated throughout this nation.
I think this initiative, as I've said
previously, may turn out to be the most important single initiative of your entire presidency, because it's obviously so important for our nation. To the other members of the Advisory Board, you have the thanks of every American for the hard work and time that you are putting into this task and I know that, like all of us, you feel proud to be led by your Chair, Dr. Franklin.
I've had an opportunity to sit at the Godfather's knee in the past and learn from him. And some of the lessons that I've taken from his work are first, that race is a pervasive, if often unacknowledged, part of every issue, controversy, in deed conversation in the United States of America. And those who pretend it's not are in danger of deluding themselves and missing important aspects of whatever subject they are trying to deal with.
Secondly however, if it is dealt with openly, in the kind of historic, national dialogue the President has chartered for our nation and followed up with the kinds of actions that he had recommended and pointed the way to, it can be transcended. Just as students learn arithmetic about the lowest common denominator, in matters of the spirit we seek the highest common denominator.
And the way to reach it is again in a two step process according to the works that I've read from Dr. Franklin. Number One, acknowledge differences. Understand and absorb the unique suffering that human beings have experienced because of the fact that they are a particular race or ethnicity or in some other group that distinguishes them.
Suffering binds us together and can enable us to reach across those divides. But also acknowledge and celebrate the unique gifts and contributions to the rich diversity of America that have been made by every race, by every group. And teach young people especially, who are members of that race or group, about the rich history which has often been ignored in the lesson plans that have left them out in the past.
But then after acknowledging and respecting difference and establishing mutual respect, then the next step is to transcend that difference and reach out for the highest common denominator. I personally think that one of the problems we've had in the past is that many people of good will have tried to go to step two without pausing at step one.
And indicated their desire to transcend difference and have harmony without doing the hard work of establishing the mutual respect, acknowledging the difference, acknowledging the suffering, acknowledging the unique contributions.
And this dialogue is a necessary healing step which gives our nation the opportunity to come together and build the foundation for really becoming one America as the President has challenged us to do.
I look forward to hearing the Panelists. I know that this morning we are going to be able to hear some of the dialogue and then this afternoon you are going to have a very specific scientific and demographic discussion of the country we are becoming and look at more detail concerning our growing diversity and differences.
And I really look forward to the part that we are going to be able to take part in. Thank you very much.
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Thank you, Mr. Vice-President. Well, there are two things that we can do. One is we can tell you what we have done. Secondly, we can ask you if you want to raise any question about what we should do or what we are doing.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, why don't you begin by telling us, giving us all the things you have done.
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I would be glad to do that. We've been telling some of the audience about some of the things we've been doing. I wonder if Robert Thomas, who is the President and CEO of Nissan USA, would tell us about some of the unique and really remarkable things that Nissan is doing and through Nissan is influencing other corporations in this country.
MEMBER THOMAS: Thank you, Dr. Franklin. There are probably a couple quick things I'd mention. We've created a staff that has interacted with the initiative staff. And they've done a lot of background work on some of the issues and some directional choices that we can make.
And it is interesting because you, as you sort of brain storm your way through this and you game out the next year, one of the questions that comes out is, you know, do you do a dialogue and develop your points of view toward the end? Or do you establish some points of view early on and test those against the dialogue?
And so those are just, that's for example just one of the questions that we have, we've raised up. But I will just toss that out and then I'll just mention one personal thing that I've found in traveling around is that first the racial issues are real. And there's a lot of people that think they aren't, but they are real.
And the second thing is when you add in and lay over any issues regarding poverty, it is just exacerbated to the nth degree. And so that would just be a starting point that I would throw out for the Advisory Board.
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Governor Winter.
MEMBER WINTER: Mr. President, Mr. Vice-President, let me thank you for this initiative. I think it's one of the most important things that all of us can be dealing with these days. We live in this very diverse country, increasingly diverse, and yet there is, there are common values that we all share.
And my understanding is that the common value that maybe is most common to all of us is what we want for our children. I have watched this in my own family. I watched it among my neighbors. I see it in the school up in Oxford, Mississippi where my, where two of my grandchildren go to school.
If every, if every school in America could look like the one where my grandchildren go, I think we would establish these common values in a way that would ensure that we will be one America. But we can't do it as long as we separate ourselves and particularly if our young people are separated.
And these kids are going to school with people from every background, every racial and social background. And prejudice is learned. Prejudice is learned, in my opinion. And it may not be specifically taught, but it's learned by what we, how we act and how we relate to each other.
And if we will, if we will let our children have the experience of associating early in their lives and get the kind of experience there and share in the opportunity to get an adequate education. That's one of the, that's one of the most, the greatest fault lines we have, is that discrimination between people who have a good education and people who have a poor education.
And so education, education of all of us, of the whole citizenry of this country, but particularly our young people, I think holds the key to how successful this initiative will be and how we will achieve one America.
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Reverend Cook.
MEMBER COOK: Mr. President, Mr. Vice-President, I concur totally with Governor Winter. As a mother of a two year old and four year old and trying to plan a five year old's birthday party for Saturday on the road. I represent a community in the Bronx, which has now been named an all-American city, which is a phoenix rising out of the ashes.
Some wonderful things are happening in the Bronx where predominant groups, African-Americans and Latinos, are really for the first time saying, let's come together. Let's live cooperatively. Let's work cooperatively. Let's share in building our community together. So it's a wonderful model of what can be done and I hope that at some point you may even visit the Bronx for one of our town meetings.
But I also share the voice of many constituents that come through the faith community as a Pastor. Most of our constituents do not attend the same schools in the communities we live because the school districts have failed. And so children as young as four and five must travel a half an hour or an hour each way every day to get an adequate education and the parents pay a considerable amount of money.
So I think education and diversity are critical issues for this task. But I do want to share with you that people in the faith community have been energized by this initiative and are eagerly seeking ways that we can work together cooperatively across denominational lines. It is no one person's agenda, no one faith group's agenda any more. We are eagerly looking to work with you and also partner with the corporate community and the labor community where we don't normally get a chance to sit down at the table together.
So we are looking to forge partnerships because we understand in the communities that the collaborative effort brings the strong results. And so we are looking to seek ways to do that and we are in partnership with you. I think the most important thing that stood out for me in your speech, when you spoke about the Little Rock Nine, was that they did not turn back.
And what we are hoping is that we will not turn back in America. That we shall go forward and that people will not turn their backs on this initiative, but that we will work together.
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Ms. Oh.
MEMBER OH: Yes, good morning and thank you again for taking that courageous step to go into what I consider to be some very tough, unchartered waters. In the weeks since we last met, I've had the opportunity to meet with folks who are doing research in this area, looking at some of the tough issues that have to do with new populations and the impact on this country and our economy.
I've had the opportunity to meet with CEO's, with Chambers of Commerce, with organized labor, with students, with creative people in the Arts who have a lot to say and a lot to share in this area. I want to urge you to continue forward with some guiding principles. Those being the compassion, the vision, the intelligence. Yes, the courage.
Also to look to non-traditional sources for your intelligence. Look to non-traditional sources, i.e., the people that you are saying you want to reach in this initiative. There aren't very many vehicles that are set up. I know we have the town hall meetings, but there is a lot of energy and interest. And you know, even among the cynics, of which I know many, there is a desire not to be involved.
But you know what? They cannot resist becoming engaged, because what we are doing is so at the core of where this country is. For those who are saying, I don't want to know, just like I don't want to know about the O.J. trial. You know, people couldn't resist. It was there. It was something that spoke to a character of who we are.
I believe that one of the things that makes us unique as Americans is that we believe in civic participation, we encourage it. A lot of people don't quite know how to plug in. And I also believe that we must look to the past to inform the future. We can't change the past, unfortunately for many, but we can have an affect on the future.
So I guess my last words would be that even as we are moving through this journey, both public and private journey, that we need to be very clear about what those guiding principles are going to be. And also be aware that as swiftly as we think we are moving, the assumptions that we begin with are going to change by the time we reach the end of this very brief public journey over this year.
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Linda Thompson.
MEMBER CHAVEZ-THOMPSON: I just want to reiterate what I said to you earlier before you both came into the room, Mr. President, Mr. Vice-President. And that is that there are a lot of people who want to participate in the town hall meetings. The general public, per se, the conversations that I've had, whether it is at Union conferences or where I speak to women's groups or civil rights groups, there's an anxiety that they be heard.
And they want to be heard on the issues that they believe are important in their neighborhoods, in their churches, in their own communities. And the other thing that really comes through to me is how we need to reach the young people. Having heard the conversations at the town hall meeting in Little Rock on Saturday and the observations that were made by many of our young people, it is almost a very crucial part for this Advisory Board to bring the young people in to converse about how they will make whatever plans we come forth in a year.
We are not going to be around long enough to implement some of those if we don't have the youth of this country involved in the conversation of race. Because they are going to be the ones that finalize whatever plans we put together. And if we don't begin when they are in elementary school or middle school or high school. If we don't being that conversation with them now, when will we be able to reach them.
So the youth is a major factor for me and of course economics, I always talk about economics and how we need to be making sure that people are in jobs that provide the kind of stability, job security, wages and benefits that they need to be able to provide a better education for their children. Better housing for themselves and living wages for their family and their standard of living.
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Governor.
MEMBER KEAN: Mr. President, Mr. Vice-President. I don't know if people in this country really recognize just how important this initiative is. And the passion that you bring to it from a life long interest in this subject. We forget sometimes that we are unique in the world.
I mean, there is no other place in the world where so many different groups have come to attempt to live together. In my state alone, we have over 100 recognized ethnic groups and racial groups. And the fact we are also trying to do it in a country which is the world's now oldest, I guess, democracy. And we are trying to make it work in a democratic fashion.
Whether or not this democracy is, I believe, is going to survive and flourish, depends how well we are going to live together. How well we can resolve our differences. How well we can avoid the things that divide us and celebrate the things that unite us.
Race, ethnic differences are the things that divide us. They are the things that are causing terrible problems in other parts of the world. And we are, have got to be, the example of how those issues are solved in a democratic manner. And to me, you know at the beginning of this initiative there was some press articles that said, well, I hope it's not all talk.
Talk is extraordinarily important. The dialogue that this initiative is all about. We are not going to get to the next step without the dialogue. I've seen on a college campus when there are problems, how important dialogue is and what progress you make when that dialogue is successful. Then you can move on to the next step.
I've found extraordinary excitement in any number of areas, including some folks that you wouldn't think would be that excited about this initiative. People want to celebrate it. People want to be helpful. And I just think it is a very exciting step forward for the country.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thank you very much.
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Well, of course we have been, for the last six weeks, talking about certain aspects of the program that we are trying to get off the ground, as it were. But nothing has been more important and I think nothing is more important than trying to communicate to all of us the importance of shared values, shared ideals, shared experiences, shared aspirations, as we try to develop a vision for what we want to be in the next century.
And it is very interesting that almost all of the people who have communicated with this Advisory Board, so far as I know certainly all that has communicated with me, have raised this matter in one way or another. What can we do to increase the common, our goals? What can we do to work together to achieve equity and fairness?
And so the Advisory Board has been going along two tracks. One to try to be certain that these shared aspirations and ideals and values are in the forefront. At the same time discovering or trying to find out practical ways, every day ways of realizing our goals. And to that end, I am delighted that we have the practical application as seen in the work, in the announcement that you just made regarding Secretary Cuomo's plans to enter the area of housing and to take some specific and concrete steps.
And that's what people are wanting to know. How can we combine these wonderful goals with practical steps that will take us toward those goals? And this is an example, I think, of exactly what we need and want to use as we move toward the ultimate goals in the 21st Century.
Are there any questions you want to raise with us? Any kind of advice, any kind of criticism, any kind of expression of involvement?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I would just say that I think, in addition to the kind of town meeting message, I think it is very important to try to see, identify and highlight some laboratory situations, either laboratories because you think that people are doing something that works that ought to be able to be done somewhere else.
And I agree with Suzan that what's going on in the Bronx today -- if she told anybody ten years ago that this would be happening in the Bronx, nobody would have believed you. To what extent is that unique to the Bronx? To what extent is it something that could be done anywhere else? How did it happen? Those things I think are important.
There is another sort of laboratory that I think would be worth looking at and I'll give you one example. I believe now that the Fairfax County schools, just across the river, is now the most diverse school district in the United States. I think it has even more ethnic diversity than the New York or the Los Angeles or the Chicago school systems. I believe that's correct.
According to the USA Today article on it last week, they have kids from 182 different countries with over 100 different language groups in this one school district. Now, that goes back to the Governor's picture there of his grandchildren. It would be interesting to know -- sometimes I think maybe we should all go there together. I'm just giving this to you as an example. We could go somewhere else and do the same thing.
How are these differences dealt with within the schools for the children? How are the kids dealing with their diversity and their shared values? Is there an explicit attempt to do this? How do they get along?
Then, I would ask is their experience consistent with or inconsistent with their parents' experience in the work place? Because, you know, what I have seen over time -- I hate to use such a much used buzz word as empowerment, but what I have seen is that all of these racial issues get much worse when people feel like they don't have any basic control over their lives, which is obviously why you asked us in our administration to focus on the economic and educational issues first.
But I think it would interesting to see how, in a place that is very much -- I don't think this should be the only one, but it's a place that is very much sort of standing out in big capital letters what the future might become in America. How are the kids doing? How are their parents doing? What is the difference in how their parents are being treated or how the kids are treated at school? Are there any differences?
What kind of dialogue goes on in the home with these people between the parents and the children about their experiences at school and at work and are there differences there? It seems to me that somehow we have to imagine how all this is going to play out in the real world and anything the government does, for example, needs to really make sense in terms of how these folks live.
And so, I think maybe one thing we ought to try to do is try to either organize a set of expeditions or define a set of what you might call town hall meetings with people who have actually lived in kind of circumstances that we imagine America's future to be. I think that would be, you know, one suggestion that I have. I'd kind of like to be a part of that.
(Laughter)
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think about this all the time. In fact, I always think about how we can -- Dr. Franklin and I talked about this the first time that we visited -- how do we get over and finish our sort of unfinished business and still recognize that time is not waiting for us and our children are being thrown into a world that is radically different. So, that might be one way to proceed.
I think we might learn a great deal if you could get some of these children and maybe some of their parents together and have an honest talk about how their kids are doing in the schools, how the parents are doing in the work place and in the wider society, and what that tells us about what we need to do in the future.
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: One of the things that we found in communications with people in various parts of the country is the enormous number of experiments already going on. Sometimes they seem to suggest, well, welcome to what we are doing. They are already engaged in some of these activities and they commend them to us to replicate in other parts of the country.
So that we, I think, do have a number of models that, like patterns of activity that will inform others and will, and will stimulate this kind of thing. It is true that some might not work in some other places, but that's yet to be proved. And until it is proved, we cannot invalidate them and we can merely welcome them and place them on the table as possible experiments that we can use, if not in this place then perhaps in another place.
So we've got a rather large group of suggestions that may be helpful.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: One of the things that I believe this group should strongly consider doing is actually publishing kind of a compendium of those local efforts with a brief description of how they work, who participated and how you can contact those people.
One of the things we are trying to do is to replicate what works around the country. I think that, you know, it is obvious that when people have challenges and problems, they start talking about it.
So what I would recommend is that one of the things we consider doing, without trying to be too exhaustive, to to get at least 50 or 100 of the things that you believe work the best, get a brief description of them, have a person who can be contacted, ask them if they would mind our promoting them, and find a way to publish it and widely disseminate this around the nation so that we can generate more interest and involve more people; and if not copying, then at least adapting what has worked to places where there aren't such efforts going on.
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I think that our Executive Director already has some plans in that regard. Judy Winston is planning some how to bits and various other things like that.
DIRECTOR WINSTON: Yes, we have many, many examples of good things happening and things happening. And it is, we've talked to the Advisory Board, Mr. President and Mr. Vice-President, about developing something we've been calling Promising Practices. And we know that, for example, there are many, many communities who have been involved in this dialogue.
I mentioned earlier the fact that just this morning the Center for Living Democracy released the results of its survey of inter-racial dialogues occurring in more than 30 states. And they have some findings that I think would be very instructive to those who are interested in continuing or beginning dialogues.
We know about many youth groups, for example, that are actively engaged in the very discussion and exploration that we've talked about on issues of tolerance and how to overcome bigotry. There is an organization in New England, in Massachusetts, in fact it's mentioned in Mrs. Clinton's book, It Takes a Village. It is an organization, a project, a program called Team Harmony that brings together young people in middle and high schools. Young people of many racial and ethnic backgrounds.
And they spend the year talking in their schools to each other and to children in other schools about how to be tolerant. And how to model the kind of behavior that you all have been talking about. And we, and they come together every year to provide, to receive awards. I think there are 10,000 of these children who will be meeting in November in Boston.
And so those are the kinds of things that we are looking at and which we will make available not just publishing at the end of the year, but things that we want to put on our web site for people to access immediately. And we will be providing updates on those activities and getting, hopefully getting some response back from people who are able to access the web site, both in schools and in business, to see whether they have something to add. So we are very excited about this prospect. I think it will be very helpful.
VICE-PRESIDENT GORE: In a lot of the efforts that have taken place in President Clinton's administration, we've seen how communities can figure out unique approaches that are going to work best in their communities. You've alluded to this and I'm wondering if one or two examples spring to mind to any of you of local communities that have undertaken a unique approach to dialogue or promoting diversity that you find particularly promising?
MEMBER OH: In Los Angeles, there are a series of projects. We have the Leadership Education Program in inter-ethnic relations that is a school-based program. We have a Neighbor To Neighbor Dialogue Program, which is headed up by, I think one of the spouses of one of our Council Members.
The Human Relations Commission, both at the city and county levels, have been working with law enforcement agencies because of the impact that new populations, perhaps limited English-speaking populations, have struggles with dealing with law enforcement.
Encouraging, even some of our Deputy DA's go out and they do in-classroom kinds of outreach to talk to youth about considering careers in the law. The Bar Associations in southern California, we have a multi-cultural Bar Association which, in LA, every ethnic group has their own Bar and among Asians, we all have our separate Bars. But, there is something called the Multi-Cultural Bar Association for those of us who are really looking at broader issues.
Independence of the judiciary kinds of issues and then also reaching out to young people to encourage them to come into the legal profession. As many people may think there are too many lawyers, I am one who believes there are not enough lawyers of color who are out there practicing and have a sense of community and their professional growth.
So there are lots of very positive models going on, in the ecumenical ground too, churches are way out there in terms of leadership.
MEMBER THOMAS: While somebody may be thinking of a specific example, Mr. Vice-President, one of the things I'd mention is that everywhere I go there are examples of every day heros who are filling in the fault lines of race that Governor Winter refers to. And in that, we can't forget that those fault lines are there because I just think it needs bigger and more expansive every day heros to address those and solve those, like Suzan mentions, a coalition of labor and business and faith and government.
But everywhere there is these people that miraculously go out and address and solve these problems. As you said, Mr. President, the problems are there so people don't let them go unanswered. They address them. And it's really amazing and rewarding to see and listen to these individuals who do this, without any recognition, with the glare of the publicity that we are able to bring to some things. So it is really reassuring.
MEMBER WINTER: Mr. Vice-President, in Kosciusko, Mississippi as unlikely as that may be, there was organized several years ago, by black and white citizens of that community, an organization simply known as The Club, that consisted of an equal number of blacks and whites.
They meet on an informal basis once a month and sit down and talk about all the issues that concern them, with special emphasis on support for the public schools there, which incidentally are very good, and it created an atmosphere in Cosesgo that now I think represents almost a model community in terms of race relations.
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: When I spoke before the joint session of the legislature in North Carolina two months ago, I praised the Governor for his Smart Start Program, which was for the purpose of stimulating activity in the schools and making certain that the schools were brought up to speed and up to standard.
I added though that we not only needed Smart Start of the children, we needed Smart Start for the adults as well. And I was talking to the Governor after that and he pointed out to me that there were plans to have adults doing the same sort of thing that they were trying to do in the schools.
And later on in October or toward the end of October this very thing is going to be discussed and developed at a conference which the Governor is styling their own dialogue on race. This is going to take place in Charlotte at the end of October, at which time they plan to have organizations or develop organizations who will replicate what they are doing in the schools among the adults, so that the adults will take the very suggestions we made regarding ways to develop programs across racial and ethnic lines.
And to spread them out all over the state of North Carolina. I think that there are a number of my correspondents, I think there are a number of states that are doing similar things.
MEMBER COOK: Two initiatives come to mind for me. In New York on the day that the initiative was announced the Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Coalition of Latino Women and the Coalition of Asian Women came together in a unique conference called the World of Women Leaders to figure out ways that we can partner together and not go on our separate tracks.
And that will now be an annual event and certainly through the year there are meetings now and dialogue for the first time across those ethnic lines. The other initiative is the Multi-Ethnic Center, which began on the lower east side of New York and now has expanded to the Bronx.
It was an after school homework help program for children, but through the children, parents who historically had racial tension and never spoken to one another, had to start dialoguing with each other and have now formed parent coalitions where they become advocates for their children on the public school level and the private school level. And help children to get into programs that will be beneficial to them.
And one of the programs under the Multi-ethnic Center is called Junta Imani. Junto meaning "join together" in Latino and Imani is a Swahili word meaning "in faith". And a community choir has now developed that brings the races together. We got some funding from the New York Yankees and some other corporate models are now funneling some funds into it.
And what it is is a dialogue for the first time along ethnic lines. The children are bringing the parents to the table and I think that's an important step.
MEMBER KEAN: There are a number of communities, Mr. President, in my own state of New Jersey who are working on a continual basis. A town called Maplewood comes to mind where people have been working over a period of years in a bi-partisan manner to keep the dialogue going. To make sure there aren't, that problems don't develop in the community. But unfortunately, the time I've seen most good happen in communities is after an incident. Somebody, there is an incident with the police, where the police act wrongly in a racial situation. Or somebody, there's a synagogue and a synagogue wall will put a swastika or one of the incidents.
And then the whole community comes together to condemn it. To talk about why it happens. To get the kind of dialogue going which should have been going all along. And if it had been going, maybe the incident wouldn't have occurred to begin with. And I think one of the things we got to figure out is how to get those dialogues going without the incidents that provoke them.
MEMBER CHAVEZ-THOMPSON: One thing that the AFL-CIO is doing is we are having a full participation conference in Los Angeles in March, at which time the dialogue on race and the question of diversity in the American Labor Movement.
We are going to hear from the people who are affected by either lack of diversity or lack of inclusion in the work place. We plan on having all of our constituency groups participate, as well as the dialogue of how we can include them in leadership positions within the labor movement.
So the conversations are going on within our group as well. But I think the other thing that I want to touch upon is sometimes how business needs to be responsive as well. And I don't point to Robert as much as, because he is the businessman on the Board, more or less represents it. But often times, you have occasions where certain businesses use race to keep Unions out, by either favoring one ethnic group over another by pitting groups, whether it's white, brown, black, Asian-American against each other.
Where they build the distrust, if the Union wins, this group will take over or this group will have more say than you do. And that happened to us just recently in one major election in North Carolina. Of course, we lost. And it was basically because they brought more Latinos into the plant to go against the Union. And the fear of the African-Americans that work there was that they would take it over versus the subs, so they too voted against the Union.
So there needs to be more responsibility and a responsiveness from businesses against using race in situation like that.
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Mr. President, Mr. Vice-President, I know you have a very busy schedule. We would express to you our deep gratitude for coming here and honoring us by your presence and listening to us and participating in this discussion.
I think it has been very fruitful and helpful for the Advisory Board and I think we take heart in enjoying your support and we will therefore move forward with all speed, not deliberate speed, but all speed in order to achieve the goals that you want to achieve before the end of the term. Thank you very much and we are honored by your presence.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thank you very much.
(Applause)
DIRECTOR WINSTON: Ladies and gentlemen, let me remind you that you do need to stay in place for about 15 minutes. And we are going to be moving into the next phase of our Advisory Board meeting in just a moment, beginning with our first panel.
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Today our journey toward one America will take the form of exploring how to build on the common values that we hopefully share. In order to do this in an informed manner, we have certain needs among which are knowledge and understanding about certain developments that have taken place in this country, particularly with respect to the operation and shape of it, where it has been and where it's going, attitudes toward race and ethnicity, and of course the ways in which we can talk constructively and productively about such matters.
This will be the first in a series of roundtable discussions on race-related issues in which the Board will engage. The purpose of these discussions is to inform ourselves and inform the nation regarding race and ethnicity.
Our particular desire is to learn, so that we can advise the President and his staff in an informed manner, and to share our learning with all America. Those people who watch these discussions can help us all by sharing their learning with others with whom they come in contact.
This particular topic on demography was chosen because it will establish a foundation and framework for future discussions. And the panelists were selected on the basis of the recommendations that many people made regarding their own achievements -- that is, the achievements of the members of this panel and their stature in their fields.
Each person will be asked to make opening presentations, being sensitive to very great time restraints, and then they're going to take questions from the Advisory Board members.
The first set of panelists are Dr. Reynolds Farley and Dr. Lawrence Bobo. Dr. Farley is Vice President of the Russell Sage Foundation in New York, and until this year he was in the Sociology Department, a professor in the Sociology Department, and Director of the Center of Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan where he was for 28 years.
He is a recognized authority in the field of demographics, and his most recent book, "The New American Reality: Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We're Going," was published last year by the Russell Sage Foundation.
Dr. Farley's presentation will focus primarily on demographic information concerning the population of the United States and projections for the future. And following his presentation, he will entertain questions from the Board.
I have the great pleasure of introducing an old and dear friend with whom we have been working for a number of years, and particularly when we worked on "Common Destiny," which was published I don't know how many years ago, Reynolds, but our friendship and association dates from that time. And I am pleased to have him here and to present to the Board and to the group at this point.
Thank you.
DR. FARLEY: John, thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be here. I am the demographer who will try to lay out some of the population trends that are now reshaping this nation.
The United States has undergone racial change throughout its entire history, but never at the pace and the magnitude occurring now. Within the next 50 years, whites, as a share of the total population, will decline from about three-quarters at present to roughly half of the size of the total population.
The African-American population will increase very substantially in size, but its share of the total will remain basically unchanged. Depending upon immigration trends, interracial marriage, and self-identity, the Hispanic population may increase to become, by the middle of the next century, roughly a quarter of the total population. And the Asian population may increase from its present representation of four percent to eight percent or more.
Let me start with a couple of background remarks, introductory remarks. When the first census was taken in President Washington's administration, African-Americans made up 20 percent of the total -- a much higher proportion than at present. Throughout the 19th century, there were many parts of the south that had predominantly black populations, and for more than a century three southern states were majority black in their composition.
But between the Revolutionary War and World War II, the population became increasingly white, primarily because of immigration. After the potato famine, we had an influx of whites from Northern Europe after 1848, and then there was a very large influx of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe after 1880, immigrants who we now think of as white but there was some doubt about that when they arrived.
As a result of those great immigration trends, the proportion of population African-American sunk to a low of 10 percent at the outset of World War II.
You have a handout here of the presentations this morning, and on about the third or fourth page you see a set of pie charts showing the population composition. The first of those charts shows the United States on the eve of World War II. At that time, blacks and whites made up about 99 percent of the population.
The next pie chart shows the population's composition at the start of the civil rights decade, 1960. At that time, this was still a country of whites and blacks. Because of restrictive immigration laws dating to the 19th century, there were fewer than a million Asians in the United States, and there were only about a half a million American Indians, and they lived in sparsely populated Western states. There was not even a question on the census of 1960 seeking to identify the Hispanic population.
We often think of the three important civil rights acts of the civil rights decade -- the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of the next year, and the Open Housing Act passed after the killing of Dr. King in Memphis. But there was another civil rights act of that decade, one that is now helping to reshape the nation's racial composition.
Representative Seller and Senator Hart wrote the Immigration Reform Act of 1965, an act that sought to overturn the discriminatory provisions of our previous immigration laws. Those provisions sought to totally exclude the flow of Asians to this country, and to greatly dampen the flow from Eastern and Southern Europe.
The sponsors of that legislation foresaw very little in the line of additional immigration from Asia. They thought there would be an influx of immigrants from behind the Iron Curtain. That is not quite what happened.
Figure 1 shows the racial composition of the population in 1997. This composition reflects both immigration to the United States, substantial differences in birth rates, and changes in our demographic procedures. Through 1960, an enumerator went door to door asking questions and marking down the race of the respondents.
But since 1970, race has been a self-administered question. The census questionnaire comes in the mail, you fill it out, you send it back. We are what we mark down on that racial form, on that census questionnaire. So our racial identity is self-chosen. There is no editing of that, so there is a different procedure for gathering information.
The Spanish origin population -- we know a great deal about that, because of additions to the census and other federal statistical systems. Responding to pressures from Hispanic advocates, President Nixon, in 1969, ordered that a Spanish origin question be included in the census of 1970. And then in 1977, OMB mandated that all federal statistical agencies gather data about the Spanish origin population as well as race.
So a precedent is firmly established, and the plans for the census of 2000 foresee asking the Spanish origin question before the race question. And that does raise some issues, since for many Latinos the race question is apparently redundant.
In the 1990 census, about 43 percent of the people who marked down Spanish origin, that they were of Spanish origin, omitted the race question. They didn't answer the race question at all, which raises questions about our measurement of these issues.
Let's turn a bit to growth rates of the population. The second figure in my handout here shows average annual growth rates of the population from 1990 to the present, with the place of birth distinction for Latinos and Asians.
In this figure and in subsequent figures, I am treating Hispanics as if they were equivalent to a racial group. That is, I am presenting information for non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, non-Hispanic Asians, but I'll try to omit those modifiers.
The Asian and Hispanic populations are growing much more rapidly than the white, the American Indian, or the black population. The native-born Asian population grew almost seven percent a year in this decade, meaning its size will double in a decade. The Latino, the foreign-born Latino population is growing almost five percent a year, much more rapidly than the white population which is growing only about a half a percent each year.
Let's think for a minute about projections of the population. What will this nation look like in terms of its racial composition in 25 or 50 years? Whites as a share of the population will decline, blacks as a share will probably not increase much or decrease much, while Asians and Latinos will increase. But all of these depend upon possible changes in immigration trends, interracial marriage, and how people identify themselves.
Let me go over a couple of technical details here as briefly as possible. If we're going to make any assumptions of the future population, we have to make some assumptions about fertility patterns. For a population to remain constant in size, there needs to be an average of about 2.1 births per woman.
At present, among whites, the birth rate implies only about 1.8 births per woman. So if that continues, the white population will reach a peak size in about 35 years, and then will very gradually decline unless there is an influx of white immigrants or a jump in the birth rate.
The current birth rates of blacks and Asians both imply about 2.3 births per woman. That is a moderate rate of population growth. The fertility rates of Hispanic women suggest about 2.7 births per woman, but that is influenced by the large number of Latino immigrants to the United States. With previous groups anyway, the first generation arriving also often has fertility reflecting the culture and patterns in the home country. But after a generation or two or three generations, the fertility rates fall to those of the native-born population.
In a demographic sense, the Hispanic and Asian populations are posed for rapid population growth because of their youthful age structures. That is, because of immigration, a large share of the Latino and Asian populations are at young ages. So even were fertility rates to be low, or were the immigration policies to be restrictive, the Asian and Latino populations will grow much more rapidly than the whites.
Blacks have slightly higher fertility rates than whites and have a slightly younger age structure, so the black population will grow more rapidly than the whites but not as rapidly as the Asian and Latino populations.
What about mortality? A child born in the United States today can expect to live 76 years if current death rates persist. Projections of the population typically assume that the modest declines in death rates recorded in the 1980s will continue into the future, which would give us a life span of about 82 years at the middle of the next century. There are, of course, projections that assume a more rapid decline in mortality and some that assume male mortality will go up because of AIDS deaths.
Most important for today's discussion is immigration. Racial change is primarily driven by the immigration flow. Currently, there are about 800,000 legal immigrants coming into the country every year, and another 225,000 arrive to stay without papers. There is additionally some flow from Puerto Rican and American citizens who return from abroad, but then there is an immigration of about 100- to 200,000 citizens each year in immigration that is not very well documented. The most common projections assume a net immigration of about 850,000 persons per year.
In this decade, Mexico, Russia, China, the Philippines, and the Dominican Republic are the leading countries of origin for immigrants. Current immigration flow might be typified briefly as about 45 percent of the immigrants are identified as Hispanics in the United States; about 30 percent, 33 percent are identified as Asians. The remainders are split between blacks and whites with whites being somewhat more numerous.
The immigration flow is now more diverse than ever before, and because of some of the diversity provisions of immigration law there is good reason to think there will be continued flow from places that have not sent immigrants to the United States before in large numbers -- the Mid East, Africa, and some of the South American countries.
What about projected populations? Figure 3 in my handout reports the Census Bureau's middle series of population projections by race. These imply that our population will grow from 268 million at present to just under 400 million in 2050. As I said, the white population will peak at about 210 million, and then very slowly decline. But as shown in the one panel here, whites as a share of the total population will decline somewhat more rapidly.
The African-American population will increase from about 32 million to 54 million, which is a very big increase. But there will be only a small shift in the proportion of Americans who are African-Americans.
The Hispanic population may triple in size by the middle of the next century, assuming there is a continued large flow of immigrants from Latin America, and that Hispanic fertility remains somewhat high. Thus, perhaps a quarter of the population in 2050 will be Hispanic.
The Asian population will grow more rapidly than the Latino but will remain smaller, will remain smaller than the black population into the foreseeable future.
What about these population projection trends? Let me suggest that there are now some pervasive social and demographic processes that call for a cautious interpretation of those projections. You're on a Presidential Advisory Committee on race, serving at the very time that the meaning and measurement of race are undergoing change.
Three processes, in addition to immigration, fertility, and mortality, strongly influence the nation's future racial composition. First, there is interracial marriage. If we look at young women who married in the 1980s and classify them by race according to this scheme, we find that only about three percent of white women who married had non-white husbands.
Among young black women who married, it was about four percent who had husbands who were not African-Americans. But for native-born Hispanics, it was 35 percent who had husbands who were not Hispanics. And for native-born Asian women, it was 54 percent who married a husband who was not an Asian.
So interracial marriage is occurring with considerable frequency now, and most of the demographers think it has been sharply increasing in the last few years.
Second, because of interracial marriage, there is now a mixed race population with clear patterns of identity.
Using 1990 census data, we can look at children who are in interracial marriages and see how their race compares to that of their parents. Now, we're still a nation in which overwhelmingly children are living with parents of the same race. About 96 percent of all children live with a married couple whose race is the same as the child's race.
But it is not the situation that children identify with the race of their mother, or that in interracial marriages 50 percent of the children are in the father's race or the mother's race.
A capsule summary would be that about 39 percent of the children who have one Asian parent and one non-Asian parent are identified as Asian. The other percent -- 61 percent -- are identified as non-Asian. For children who have one white parent and one non-white parent, about 40 percent are identified as white; about 60 percent are identified with the other parent.
But when we look at children who have one black parent and one non-black parent, we find 60 percent of the children are identified as black. For children who have one Hispanic parent and one non-Hispanic parent, it is 65 percent of the children who are identified as Hispanic.
So interracial marriages strongly influence the composition of the population. Marriages involving whites and Asians have fewer children who are marked down as white or Asian than you might expect. Marriages involving Hispanics and blacks have proportionately more than a 50/50 distribution of children.
Third, there is the important issue in the classification of people by race. How will this be done? What categories will be used? Can a person claim membership in more than one race?
In 1990, the census asked a race question first, and then a question about Spanish origin, and then a question about ancestry or national origin. Working with those data from the 1990 census, we can estimate that upwards of seven percent of the population identified themselves as mixed in race if we consider Hispanic to be equivalent to a race for these statistical purposes.
There were more than three million people who said they were white by race but American Indian by ancestry. There were more than a quarter million who said they were black by race but European ancestry. There were 100-and-some thousand who said they were white by race but African-American by ancestry, and so on down the line. Clearly, given the options to report things that look like more than one origin, many people did so in 1990.
Plans for the enumeration of 2000 call for asking the Spanish origin question first and then presenting all individuals with a list of 13 races. They will be told that they can check all of the races that apply.
Now, in pretest, it turns out that a small proportion of people, perhaps two percent, will identify with more than one race. But we don't know what will happen in the year 2000. We can probably predict it will be more than two percent who identify with more than one race. How will those people be categorized for various purposes? We don't know.
Furthermore, we don't know what proportion of the people who answer the Spanish origin question saying they are Mexicans, Cubans, or Puerto Ricans will omit the race question and what they will do.
This is time for a conclusion. If I had a lot more time, I would make two more points about our racial change in the United States. One is that racial change is occurring in some parts of the United States quite rapidly but very slowly in other parts of the United States.
Governor Kean, in your state, racial change is occurring because of the immigration and the diversity of the immigration flows. Governor Winter, in Mississippi, it's occurring much less rapidly than in New Jersey because there isn't a large immigration flow. And so there is a national story to be told, but the national story at local areas is extremely different.
I have one figure in here showing the immigrant population as a proportion of the state's total in 1990. There were only 13 states and the District of Columbia that had above the national average of eight percent foreign born. So we have a great swath of the midwest and a large part of the inner part of the south where racial change is occurring very, very slowly compared to the rest of the nation. Similarly, there are about eight large metropolitan areas that are getting the lion's share of the immigrants.
The other comment I was going to make is that racial change occurs across the age structure, starting primarily at the bottom. So it's the schools and the entering workers in the labor force, they will be much more diverse with regard to their racial composition than the population collecting Social Security checks.
Let me conclude. If the Census Bureau had made projections a century ago, at the end of the 19th century, they would have made separate projections for Anglo-Saxons, for the Irish, for Slavic people, for Italians, and for the group then called Negroes. Indeed, the national origin groups at that time were often referred to as races.
Today those projections would look ridiculous, since high rates of interethnic and interreligious marriage have produced a white population that is hardly divided by ethnicity of ancestry. The projections they may have made for the black population might look more reasonable today.
Are we making a similar mistake now when we assume that the five groups we've talked about will remain separate, distinct, and identifiable groups for another 50 or 100 years? Will interracial marriages and new patterns of identification produce a population very different from the projections that I've described here?
Thank you very much.
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Thank you.
(Applause.)
I want to thank Dr. Farley for enlightening us, particularly with respect to the rapid demographic changes that are taking place, and also with the challenges that result from those changes, particularly as they might affect education or economic activities.
Is there anyone who has a question? Governor Kean?
MEMBER KEAN: Yes. I just have one very brief question. I have always read that the birth rate is also a function of income, that if the income goes up the birth rate goes down. I assume that's not -- the assumption here is that the income levels will stay the same or just in -- you weren't able to figure that out?
DR. FARLEY: There is a good deal of debate among economists and demographers about how income affects the birth rate. I think right now there are several very strong downward pressures on the birth rate in the United States. Age at marriage is advancing, the proportion of women who are married is declining, male wages are decreasing, female opportunities for women in the labor market are increasing, so these projections vary in their assumptions but most of the projections assume the birth rates will eventually imply about 1.8 or 1.9 children per woman.
Of course, demographers in 1945 and '46, none of them saw the baby boom and the tremendous acceleration of birth rates that occurred right after World War II. So we may be just as erroneous in saying we are on the track of low fertility in the United States.
MEMBER COOK: Can you clarify just one thing in terms of the African-American population and the reason it will not increase as rapidly as the Asian and the Latino? Is it because of having been here more than one or two generations? Is that your theory?
DR. FARLEY: Reverend Cook, it's primarily because of the immigration flow. The immigration flow now includes a very large volume of Latinos and Asians. Compared to the past, there are relatively many African-Americans coming to the United States, but African-Americans are a very small component of the immigration flow compared to Latinos and Asians.
And as you know, in the Bronx there is a large population that -- how will they identify themselves on the census, the Dominicans and other Spanish-speaking individuals who would, in many parts of the United States, be identified as African-Americans? Interesting question.
MEMBER OH: Could you speak to the Native American population, where that fits into this picture?
DR. FARLEY: Ms. Oh, I can speak a bit to the Native American population. The demographic evidence is that a very high proportion of American Indians have married non-American Indians throughout this century, so there is a question of how do individuals with American Indian backgrounds identify themselves.
In the 1980 census, when the ancestry question was first asked, there were six million people who said they were white by race but American Indian by ancestry. And given patterns of intermarriage, that is entirely plausible.
The American Indian population is different from most other groups in that there are many tribes with official registries and fairly strong rules about who can identify with those tribal groups, and for the most part those tribal counts are smaller than census counts.
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Thanks very much --
DR. FARLEY: Thank you very much.
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: -- Dr. Farley. That was very stimulating, very interesting, and I wish we had more time to raise some questions, particularly about the implications of these demographic changes. But perhaps later on we'll have an opportunity to discuss it further.
We must move on, and I am very delighted to present Dr. Lawrence Bobo, who is a professor of sociology and African-American studies at Harvard University. Before this year, he was for a number of years professor of sociology and director of the Center for Research on Race, Politics, and Society, at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Dr. Bobo is widely known for his remarkable book which has recently been revised and updated. The book is entitled "Racial Attitudes in the United States: Trends and Interpretations." That book has been the leading book on the whole question of attitudes, racial attitudes, for all of the years since it was published in 1985.
Once more, we had the opportunity to work together on earlier projects, and particularly on "Common Destiny," where we worked some years ago.
This presentation of Professor Bobo's will focus on polling data and the impact of polling data on -- the way in which polling data reflects attitudes and actions based on race. Following his presentation, if we have time, we want to have some questions.
Larry?
DR. BOBO: Thank you very much, John Hope.
I want to thank the other panel members also for inviting me here today.
My task, in a sense, is to answer the question of whether America is moving toward becoming a genuinely color blind society or remains a society deeply polarized by race. Studies of racial attitudes in the U.S. present a difficult puzzle in response to this question.
On the one hand, several studies emphasize the steadily improving racial attitudes, especially of white Americans, toward African-Americans. These trends are reinforced, of course, by many more tangible indicators, most notably the size, relative security, and potentially growing influence of the black middle class.
On the other hand, there is evidence of persistent negative stereotyping of racial minorities, evidence of widely divergent views of the extent and importance of racial discrimination to modern race relations, and evidence of deepening feelings of pessimism about race relations, particularly in the black community.
These more pessimistic attitudinal trends are reinforced again by such tangible indicators as the persistence of the problem of racial segregation of neighborhoods and schools, evidence of discrimination in access to housing and employment, innumerable acts of everyday racial bias, and of course the perceptions that we are all aware of.
By way of foreshadowing what is to come, let me say that we now have a deeply rooted national consensus on the ideals of racial equality and integration. These high ideals founder, however, on differences in preferred levels of integration. They founder on sharp racial differences and beliefs about racial discrimination. They founder on the persistence of negative racial stereotypes, and they sometimes result in policy stagnation and mutual misunderstanding.
Although America has turned away from the Jim Crow racism of the past, in many ways it heads into an uncertain future. This initiative, and the dialogue it is designed to encourage, will help enormously in pushing that uncertainty toward positive resolution.
The single clearest trend in studies of racial attitudes has involved a steady and sweeping movement toward endorsing the principles of racial equality and integration. When major national assessments of racial attitudes were first conducted in the 1940s, clear majorities of white Americans advocated that we be a society that segregated its schools, neighborhoods, and public transportation; that practiced job discrimination against African-Americans; and that drew a sharp line against the possibility of mixed or interracial marriages.
Thus, in the early 1940s, 68 percent of white Americans in national surveys expressed the view that black and white school children should go to separate schools. Fifty-four percent felt that public transportation should be segregated, and 54 percent felt that whites should receive preference over blacks in access to jobs.
By the early 1960s, each of these attitudes had declined substantially, so much so that they were actually dropped from ongoing surveys. The issue of integrated schooling remained more divided, however, but the trend has been equally steady. Thus, by 1995, fully 96 percent of white Americans in national surveys expressed the view that white and black school children should be going to the same schools.
Three clarifications about this basic transformation of principles and norms. First, there is some variation across domains of life in the degree of endorsement of the principle of racial equality and integration. In general, the more public and impersonal the arena, the greater the evidence of movement toward endorsing these goals. Thus, support for unconstrained access to housing for blacks has also undergone tremendous positive change, but still lags behind that of the case of schools and jobs.
More telling, as the first figure in your handout will begin to give you some idea of, is that willingness to allow racially mixed marriages still encounters some resistance, with one in five whites as recently as 1990 actually willing to support laws that would ban such marriages, and an even higher fraction, as the second line in the figure shows, still personally disapproving of some marriages.
Second, African-Americans have long rejected segregation. Although the available pool of data for tracing long-term trends in the views of African-Americans is much more limited than that available about white attitudes, it is clear that the black population has overwhelmingly favored integrated schools and neighborhoods and desired equal access to employment opportunity.
Third, the positive trend on these principles across the domains of schools, public transportation, jobs, housing, politics, and even intermarriage, is steady and unabated, despite intense discussion of the possibility of a "racial backlash" in the 1960s in response to black protests, or in the 1970s in response to school busing efforts in the implementation of affirmative action, or even more recently in the wake of the events such as the riots in Los Angeles in 1992.
The support for principles of racial equality and integration has been sweeping and robust -- so much so that it is reasonable to describe it as a change in the fundamental norms with regard to race.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to infer from the tremendous positive change on principles of equality that either public policy or the texture of day-to-day life for most Americans would quickly come to mirror this apparent consensus. Consider first the issue of integrating neighborhoods and schools. It is clear that numbers matters, as the second figure in your handout shows. When surveys ask whites about their willingness to live in integrated areas, or to send their own children to integrated schools, as the proportions of blacks rise, the willingness to enter that situation falls.
Surveys have documented a steady increase in the openness to both residential and school integration, so much so that almost no whites object to having a black neighbor or to sending their own children to an integrated school. But objections rise considerably as the proportion of minority students grows.
The meaning of integration also differs for blacks and whites. It is clear that most whites prefer to live in overwhelmingly white neighborhoods, even if open to having a small number of blacks in their community. On the other hand, blacks prefer to be present in substantial numbers -- numbers large enough to be uncomfortable in the eyes of many whites, if our data is to be believed, and impractical to accomplish on a large scale basis.
With respect to public policy issues, we are all aware that there have been long-standing debates over equal opportunity policies and affirmative action. The trend data suggests that there is a significant substantive division in opinion. Programs that are compensatory in nature, that aim to equip minorities to be more effective competitors, or that engage in special outreach and recruitment efforts, are reasonably popular.
Policies that call for explicit racial preferences have long been unpopular with the use of quotas rejected by whites and blacks alike. The point is there is no singular view on affirmative action. The policies themselves cover a range of strategies -- so does opinion -- as the next two figures in a way are intended to show you, and to also emphasize that there are important racial group differences in opinion. And to illustrate that I draw on data from surveys recently conducted a couple of years back in the Los Angeles area.
They illustrate that blacks, but also Latinos, tend to support affirmative action type policies whether aimed at improving training and the competitive resources of minority group members, or even in the case of calling for special preferences in hiring and promotion. Although a clear majority of whites support the more compensatory type policies, it falls below majority support when one turns to more preferential types of policies.
A major piece of the puzzle behind the limits to integration and to social policy with respect to race lies in the problem of anti-minority stereotypes. There is evidence that negative racial stereotypes of minorities, especially of blacks and Latinos, remain common. There is also evidence that minority groups themselves stereotype one another, though the story here appears more complicated.
In a major national survey conducted in 1990, well over 50 percent of white Americans rated blacks and Latinos as being less intelligent. Similar proportions rated blacks and Latinos as being prone to violence, and well over two-thirds rated blacks and Latinos as actually preferring to be welfare dependent.
One example of such patterns is shown in the next figure. Substantial fractions of white Americans in this sample rated blacks and Latinos as less intelligent, preferring to live off welfare, and as hard to get along with socially. Research does suggest, however, that these types of stereotypes differ in important ways from the views that were prevalent in the past.
First, they are much more likely today to be understood as the product of environmental and group cultural traditions than was true in the past. In the past, they were unequivocally taken as the product of natural endowment.
Second, there is growing evidence that many whites are aware of these traditional negative stereotypes -- anyone in American culture would be -- but personally reject the negative stereotype and its implications.
The problem is that in many face-to-face interactions the old cultural stereotype controls perception and behavior in the instant. The end result is bias and discrimination.
In many ways, the centerpiece of the modern racial divide comes in the evidence of sharply divergent beliefs about the current level, effect, and very nature of discrimination. Blacks and Latinos, and many Asian-Americans as well, feel it and perceive it in most domains of life. Many whites acknowledge that some discrimination remains, yet tend to downplay its contemporary importance. The next figure gives an example of these perceptions.
However, minorities not only perceive more discrimination, they see it as more institutional in character. Many whites tend to think of discrimination as either mainly an historical legacy of the past or as the idiosyncratic behavior of an isolated bigot.
In short, to white America, those who beat Abner Louima constitute a few bad apples. To African-Americans, they represent the tip of the iceberg. White America tends to regard the Texaco tapes as shocking. To black America, the tapes merely reflect the ones who got caught.
It is difficult to overestimate, I believe, the importance of this sharp divide over the understanding and experience of racial discrimination to the current racial impasse.
In many corners, there is a feeling of pessimism about the state of race relations. A 1997 survey conducted by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Research found that only two in five blacks rated race relations in their community as excellent or good, and that more than one in five rated race relations as in fact poor. In contrast, 59 percent of whites rated local race relations as excellent or good, though better than one in 10 rated them as poor.
The results of a recent Gallup survey are in some respects more pessimistic. There roughly a third of blacks and whites described race relations as having gotten worse in the past year. What is more, 58 percent of blacks and 54 percent of whites expressed the view that relations between blacks and whites will always be a problem in the United States.
The cynicism takes acute form in the black population, and there are signs of frustration among Latinos and Asians as well. Among blacks, the national black politics survey conducted in 1993 found that 86 percent of African-Americans agreed with the statement that "American society just hasn't dealt fairly with black people."
Fifty-seven percent of African-Americans rejected the idea that American society has provided them a fair opportunity to get ahead in life, and 81 percent agreed with the idea that American society owes black people a better chance in life than we currently have.
In the next figure, a major survey of Los Angeles County residents, we asked these opinions across the rainbow, and you see those numbers arrayed before you. Thus, for example, 64 percent of Latinos in L.A. County and 42 percent of Asians agreed with the idea that their respective groups were owed a better chance in life.
These two groups, in between the very high sense of deprivation, observe among African-Americans and the essentially non-existent feelings of deprivation tied to race observed among whites.
The concern over cynicism is acute for two reasons. First, there are signs that the feelings of alienation and deprivation are greatest in an unexpected place -- among the black middle class, especially so among well-educated high-earning African-Americans.
Second, there is a concern that these feelings of alienation and deprivation may be contributing to a weakening commitment for priority placed on the goal of racial integration. Among the potentially discouraging signs in this regard are a recent significant rise, as the next figure shows, in the number of African-Americans who think it is time to form a separate national political party.
The 1993 national black politics survey showed that this figure was up to 50 percent, rising substantially from 30 percent where it had been in 1984. In addition, African-Americans continue to feel a strong connection between the fate of the group as a whole and that of the individual African-American -- in fact, increasingly so.
To wrap up, the glass is half full or the glass if half empty, depending upon what one chooses to emphasize. If one compares the racial attitudes prevalent in the 1940s with those commonly observed today, it is very easy to be optimistic.
A nation once comfortable as a deliberately segregationist and racially discriminatory society has not only abandoned that view but positively endorses the goal of racial integration and equal treatment. There is no sign whatsoever of retreat from this ideal, despite many events that commentators thought would call it into question. The magnitude, steadiness, and breadth of this change should be lost on no one.
The death of Jim Crow racism, however, has left us in a somewhat uncomfortable place. We have high ideals, but openness to very limited amounts of integration at the personal level remains. There is political stagnation over some types of affirmative action. Quite negative stereotypes of racial minorities persist, and a wide gulf in perceptions regarding the importance of racial discrimination remains.
The level of miscommunication and misunderstanding is, thus, easy to comprehend.
The positive patterns in attitude and belief have important parallels in more concrete social trends. Two examples. Matching the broad shift in attitudes on the principle of residential integration and openness to at least small amounts of real racial mixing in neighborhoods is borne out in demographic data showing modest national declines in racial residential segregation in most metropolitan areas and in the growing suburbanization of blacks, Latinos, and Asians.
In addition, the greater tolerance for interracial marriages, including black-white marriages, is mirrored in the significant rise in the number of such unions, as Dr. Farley's presentation indicated.
Is it possible to change attitude? The record of change that I have reviewed makes it plain that attitudes can change and in important ways. Education and information can help. The better educated, especially those who have gone on to college, are typically found to express more positive racial attitudes.
It is also clear that there are information problems out there. Many Americans, for example, hold inaccurate beliefs about the relative size of racial minority groups and about such social conditions as differences in level of welfare dependency. So information will help.
However, education and informational campaigns alone are not enough to do the job that remains ahead. Attitudes are most likely to change when the broad social conditions and the sort of discourse we have about them that create and reinforce these outlooks change and when the push to make such changes comes from a united national leadership that speaks with moral conviction of purpose. That is, it is also essential to speak to joblessness and poverty in the inner city in concrete ways, to failing schools in concrete ways, and to myriad forms of racial bias and discrimination that people of color often experience but have not yet effectively communicating to many of their fellow white Americans.
To pose the question directly, are we moving toward a colorblind society or toward deepening racial polarization? America is not yet a colorblind society. We stand uncomfortably at a point of having defeating Jim Crow racism but unsure of where to turn in the future.
As a people, we feel quite powerfully the tug; indeed, the exhortation, of Dr. King's dream to become a nation that embodies the ideals of equality and integration. We appear to be at a point of uncertainty, misunderstanding, and reassessment.
I think it is important to seize upon the steady commitment to these ideals of racial equality and integration. The risk of failing to do so is that we may worsen an already serious racial divide.
This initiative in a sense is not merely the project of the panel. It's not merely the project of the President. It's a project for all of the American people. And it's important that we pursue it to its positive conclusion.
Thank you.
(Applause.)
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I want to thank Larry Bobo for his paper, particularly the good news with respect to the broad consensus on principles of economic opportunity and racial integration. There's some bad news in there, too, but we know what that is.
It's obvious from what you've said and from what we said here earlier that the hopeful note depends on the next generation, our younger generation, where they will come down, how they will come down on this whole question.
And it's somewhat like the President said in Little Rock, that we have to decide. Particularly young people have to decide. And they will either move in the direction where we will become a shining example for the rest of the world or a stunning rebuke to the world of tomorrow.
I think that this information is very salient to what we're doing and trying to. We're deeply grateful.
Are there any questions? Yes?
MEMBER THOMAS: Yes. Dr. Bobo, one question I have, you raised the issue of how whites perceive themselves. In the situation, maybe a few bad apples create any of the problems. And, yet, the blacks would see it as institutionalized. And so my question is one of terminology.
Do you think that there's maybe another term that we need to gravitate towards, rather than colorblindness, that's maybe more an active-type term? Because it seems like that in your data and also in observations, that a lot of people who would consider themselves or groups who would consider themselves colorblind are not perceived by minorities as being what they would like us to see or what they need in order to unravel this institutionalized observation.
DR. BOBO: That is a very difficult question. And in many ways, it goes to the heart of how we develop and sustain a dialogue in which we're really capable of communicating to one another, given often such sharp differences in our beginning assumptions, kind of what we take to be the baseline.
The way I often try to put it to students in my class is that it's important to enter such discussions with the strong presumption that everyone is of good will. But in America, given what we know about race, no one is innocent. And it's that presumption of being innocent that I think we have to get around.
That's a hard part, but that's the issue of keeping our eye on the amount of discrimination that is still out there in the housing market, in access to jobs, and encounters in everyday public spaces from parks and restaurants to stores, what have you. So I would just keep reiterating that phrase.
I strongly presume everyone is of good will, but none of us, sadly, are innocent.
MEMBER COOK: Dr. Bobo, thank you for the work you've done. I wonder, what do you hope will happen as a result of your work and your research and your book?
DR. BOBO: What I hope is that people have before them what are common patterns and then they pose for themselves the question: Well, how is this playing out in my world, and what happens to me day to day?
What it means, for example, is that when, let's say, a young black male shows up to apply for a job at a business where the supervisor or the person doing the interviewing is a white male, they're both likely to start off with a set of assumptions that make that interaction a dangerous one, a one fraught with the peril of miscommunication and falling apart.
But if we're both mindful of entering the situation with that risk present, I think we're much better able to manage it than in a situation where neither side acknowledges the assumptions that are being brought to it.
So I hope that it serves that sort of informational purpose to stimulating the dialogue along and, in addition, to mapping out the fact that these attitudes do change.
People often think about attitudes as being fixed and immutable and just rigid. They're just things that we can't intervene on that are going to be modifiable; that, in short, stateways can't change folkways. That's not exactly true.
If the stateways really do change the conditions and circumstances under which people live, who they have contact with, clarify the mutuality of interests and goals, then those folkways will come along as well.
MEMBER COOK: Thank you.
MEMBER WINTER: Dr. Bobo, what are the implications of this huge increase in the number of African Americans who want a separate black political party? And what happened in that 5-year period from 1988 to 1993?
DR. BOBO: There were a lot of events wedged in there. The biggest ones, I believe, were the videotape beating of Rodney King and the exoneration initially of the officers in the Simi Valley trial and then the explosion in Los Angeles that followed. That really sharply crystallized deep questions about America's commitment to full incorporation of the African American community. I think that's part of it.
I don't think we've seen any retreat from the broad goal of integration, of being full participants in American society, but there is this state of incipient pessimism out there that, well, there's some renegotiation that has to go on.
There's some internal thinking and communication that has to go on given where we stand at the moment and the repeated frustrations that we seem to be encountering, perhaps best symbolized by the recent turn against affirmative action in higher education in statewide in California.
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I want to thank both Reynolds Farley and Lawrence Bobo for these very pertinent, significant, important statements that bear so directly on what we are undertaking here.
The information which you provided certainly will undergird some of the positions and activities that we will be taking in the immediate future. They're precisely the kind of information which we need in order to move on to plan our work. I'm deeply grateful to you.
We will continue this this afternoon. The Executive Director has some announcements to make. Before that, though, let me say that I'm delighted -- and I speak for the entire Board -- that so many of you have come, including some of the leaders of the community, here and abroad and in other parts of the country. You have come here to observe this. And we deeply appreciate your presence. We hope you will be coming back this afternoon and that you will come whenever we meet. Thank you very much.
Judy Winston has some announcements to make.
DIRECTOR WINSTON: I'd like to indicate that the members of the Advisory Board will be available briefly just before lunch to the front. And the Board will be available in the Chairman's Room, which is to the left as you go out of this room and two doors down. There will be a very brief, as I said, opportunity for the press to speak with the Board.
We will be adjourning for approximately an hour and 15 minutes. We plan to resume the discussion with a new panel at 1:15.
(Whereupon, a luncheon recess was taken at 12:00 noon.)
A-F-T-E-R-N-O-O-N S-E-S-S-I-O-N (1:53 p.m.)
CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I apologize for our slight delay in the meeting. We will now, I hope, come to order. And we will proceed with our business for the afternoon.
We have three panelists to carry on and to build on what we learned this morning: first, Dr. James Jones, Professor of Psychology at the University of Delaware and Director of Minority Fellowship Program for the American Psychological Association. His work is well-known, not only among psychologists, but even among some lay people.
His book, Prejudice and Racism, which was published some time ago and the second edition of which was published this year by McGraw-Hill, and his presentation are based upon, I hope, some of the findings that he shared with us in a conference in Chicago during the recent meeting of the American Psychological Association. He's going to speak on the embedded nature of race. And we are pleased to have him with us at this time.
Dr. Jones?
DR. JONES: Thank you very much, Dr. Franklin. And thanks to the Board for giving me this opportunity to talk with you about these ideas about race.
I will say at the outset that I share your excitement in this opportunity that's been provided by the Initiative. And I think it is, without question, an historic occasion that the leader of the free world would see fit to call us to this action. I think it's profoundly important, and I'm privileged to be part of it.
Race has been one of the most enduring divisive social and psychological phenomena since the founding of this country. As the Twentieth Century enjoys its last moments, the issue of race continues to reverberate in every facet of our society.
W. E. B. DuBois challenged this century in 1903, when he claimed the problem of the Twentieth Century was the problem of the color line. From slavery to freedom, we have come a long way. But we are not all the way to freedom yet. It is not any one person's or faction's fault. Rather, it is the result of the deep and pervasive penetration of race into our collective psyche and social institutions.
We struggle for liberty, for equality, and have made great strides, but our founding fathers also believed that fraternity was a core value for this nation.
We have insisted without compromise on liberty for individuals. We have aspired to equality without regard to skin color and try to make our laws and our customs reflect that value.
But race keeps us from success. We have not worked as hard or as well towards fraternity, which in the aggregate is community. We have been stymied by our racial differences because we have not figured out how to get on the same page when everyone has either no book or a different one.
I believe President Clinton's Initiative on Race is a clear acknowledgement that true community cannot be achieved in America unless we bridge the racial divides.
There are two perspectives that have voice in contemporary society. One argues that focusing on race is exactly the wrong approach to national unity. By granting race any significance, as few suggest, we give credence to its divisive and destructive influence. Only by ignoring it or at least not consciously acknowledging it in any meaningful way, the progress in race relations we have made this century will continue. Focusing on race, as few asserts, hinders this progress.
William Bennett once told a group of black children in Atlanta on the anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther King that, quote, "People of good will will disagree about the means, but I don't think anybody disagrees about the ends. I think the best mean to achieve the ends of a colorblind society is to proceed as if we were a colorblind society. I think the best way to treat people is as if their race did not make any difference."
A second view argues that we must focus on race because not to do so fails to meet the need for redress created by historic racial biases. The need to focus on race was clearly expressed by the late Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, who made the following observation in his opinion on the Bache case in 1978, and he made the following observation, "A race-conscious remedy is necessary to achieve a fully integrated society, one in which the color of a person's skin will not determine the opportunities available to him or her. If ways are not found to remedy under-representation of minorities in the professions, the country can never achieve a society that is not race-conscious. In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There's no other way. In order to treat persons equally, we must treat them differently."
We are faced with the question of whether the path to a fairer and more unified America can best be achieved by ignoring race or by staring it in the face and defeating its most sinister and insidious influences on our society and our psyches.
It is my belief -- and there is ample evidence to support it -- that race continues to matter in ways that may be more subtle than those who would have us ignore race understand.
I will share with you today some of the ways race matters and some of the evidence that illustrates this conclusion. I also acknowledge that by focusing on