Transcript: Clinton Remarks on His One America Initiative March 9, 2000

(Meets with diverse group of religious leaders at White House) (3550)
President Clinton met March 9 in the East Room of the White House with
a broad group of American religious leaders to discuss their efforts
to mobilize the faith community around the President's goal of
building One America.
He told the group that contemporary surveys show that the American
people look to the faith community to lead them "forward on this great
journey."
Many of the world's most intractable political situations are caused
not by ethnic, but by religious, differences, the President said. The
work of building one America, he added, "will more and more and more
require a deeper understanding of the diversity of faiths, and the
understanding of the relationship between them."
Clinton said "you can make a compelling argument that getting this
right in the United States and putting us in a position to play a role
of leadership in the world is not just a racial and ethnic issue,
anymore -- it is also inevitably a religious issue."
Following is the transcript:
(begin transcript)
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
March 9, 2000
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON ONE AMERICA INITIATIVE
RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY CALL TO ACTION
The East Room
2:30 P.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Well, first of all, welcome to the White
House. Welcome to this wonderful East Room, where Thomas Jefferson and
Meriwether Lewis planned the Lewis and Clark expedition to explore
parts of America no one had ever seen, to try to find an ocean that no
one thought could be reached by land. In a way, we are here on an even
grander expedition -- to try to find a place in the human heart no one
has ever seen, that many believe we cannot reach in this life. And so
I thank you all for coming.
Thank you, Sandy, for your passionate and vigorous leadership. Thank
you, Ben Johnson, for telling me that you like your job every day.
(Laughter.) I was afraid that I had given you an impossible job, you
would only hear from people who were disappointed in us, and that you
would quit on me. So I'm glad you're happy, and I appreciate you.
Thank you, Maria, for your leadership of this effort. And I want to
thank the members of the administration who are here, who have been
introduced. And Dr. Franklin and Judy Winston, thank you for being
here. And I thank my good friend, Congressman Amo Houghton, for being
here, for proving that this issue is not a partisan issue, and for
being in Selma. Didn't we have a grand day Sunday? One of the great
days of my life, and many of you were there.
I was thinking, when I was in Selma Sunday and we were walking across
the Edmund Pettus Bridge, what an important role the faith community
of that day had in the civil rights movement. And there was an elderly
woman there who was 90 years old, who was telling me about a rabbi who
came to march with them. And I think it was Rabbi Heschel, but I'm not
sure because she didn't remember, but I think that's who it must be.
And the rabbi had a very, very long beard, and she said, "You know, a
lot of us thought God, himself, had come down to Earth to go with us."
(Laughter.)
I say that because even today contemporary surveys show that the
American people look to the faith community to lead us forward on this
great journey. Some of you have a foot in both worlds, so to speak. I
see my great friend, Reverend and former congressman, Floyd Flake,
from New York out there. But all of you must have a foot in this world
on this issue.
I also want to comment that if we had had a meeting like this 35 years
ago in the White House, and it had been a very inclusive meeting,
there would have been probably -- probably -- African Americans and
Hispanics here, and European Americans, maybe some Native Americans --
although we were pretty tone deaf about that back then -- and maybe,
maybe, one Asian American. And all the faiths represented here would
have been Christians and Jews, and maybe Native Americans.
Today, we have a large number of Muslims, we have Buddhists here, we
have Baha'i members here, and perhaps many other faiths. I say that to
make this point. I think you can make a compelling argument that
getting this right in the United States and putting us in a position
to play a role of leadership in the world is not just a racial and
ethnic issue, anymore -- it is also inevitably a religious issue.
If you look around the world where I have been so involved -- take my
people, the Irish -- there's no ethnic difference; all the differences
are religious. Or if you look at our continuing efforts in the Middle
East; is that an ethnic conflict or a religious one? In our attempts
to resolve the difficulties between Greece and Turkey and on the
island of Cyprus, is that an ethnic conflict or a religious one? When
you see the continuing efforts to resolve the future of Tibet and the
role of the Dalai Lama, is that a religious conflict or an ethnic one?
I'm sure all of you have thought about this more than I have. The most
dangerous place in the world today, I think you could argue, is the
Indian subcontinent and the line of control in Kashmir. Is that an
ethnic conflict or a religious one? So I think in order to understand
this even and make this journey, we have to learn not only more about
our ethnic and racial differences, but our religious differences --
how are we different, how are our world views different, how are they
in common, how do we find a way through it all to reaffirm our common
humanity.
We know that the three great monotheistic religions that grew out of
the sturdy but difficult soil of the Middle East all say that we're
supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves, that if we turn aside a
stranger, it's as if we turn aside God, that we should not do to
others what we would not like to have done to ourselves. And we know
that, in various ways, all the faiths in this room, however they
define man's understanding of the divine, at least recognize the
fundamental importance on this earth of our common humanity.
So I hope that we will be able to talk today about what you're going
to do, but I hope beyond that, you will be thinking today about how
more and more of this racial and ethnic diversity, both within America
and beyond our borders, has an inevitable religious component, and,
therefore, how people of faith speak about it, behave about it, what
their body language is even, will have a profound impact on how this
whole thing plays out in 21st century America.
If you heard the State of the Union, you heard me tell the story about
the evening we had in this very room that my wife sponsored to observe
the millennium, where we had one of the founders of the Internet, the
man who sent the first e-mail to his profoundly deaf wife 18 years
ago, Vince Cerf, talking with Eric Lander, one of our human genome
experts. And the beginning of their whole discussion was about how we
could never have uncovered the mysteries of the human gene without the
revolution in computers, because it made it mechanically,
scientifically possible to deal with things that small and that
diverse.
But in the end, Lander just said, almost in passing, he said, you
know, we're all genetically 99.9 percent the same. And if you get an
ethnic group together, the differences among individuals within the
group will be greater than the differences between one group and
another, between African Americans, Asian Americans and Native
Americans. The differences within the groups, genetically, are greater
than the group profile from one group to another. And when I said
that, there was almost a groan in the Congress, you know, because the
Republicans and Democrats having to recognize they were 99.9 percent
the same -- (laughter) -- it made them physically uncomfortable. You
know, you could see that they were having real trouble dealing with
this. And I think it made them understand how others have real trouble
dealing with it.
But I think -- one of the things I think is most interesting is how
the advances of science sooner or later seem to confirm the teaching
of ancient faiths, the teaching of people who maybe counted with an
abacus, and wrote in a language now long dead, or had no writing at
all. This is worth remembering.
So I wanted to make this point to you. I mean, America would have
never had any of its great movements for social justice had it not
been for leaders of faith. None of them. And the same can be said of
many other nations as well. But as we grow more diverse, our
opportunity to do good around the world is even greater if we can be
good here at home.
But I would argue to you, we will not be able to do it unless we
understand that this whole diversity, more than ever before, is not
like bringing the preachers and the priests and the rabbis to help
heal the soul of the sinful races. Now it's caught up in our entire
world view, and this multiplicity of faiths we now have in America.
And we need to take this whole effort to a different level. And that's
why I ask for your help -- to begin with, understanding. It's hard to
understand this, if you've never lived in a culture different from
your own.
So, I've already talked a little more than I meant to, but I wanted
you to be thinking about that, because I think -- you know, none of
you are term-limited, except by the Almighty. (Laughter.) And so you
will be around here doing these kinds of things, presumably, when I am
no longer President. But I will predict to you that the work of
building one America and dealing with this diversity will more and
more and more require a deeper understanding of the diversity of
faiths, and the understanding of the relationship between human nature
and the divine, and how it's articulated and played out in life than
it ever has before to this day. Which means your role will be even
more important in the new century than it was in the pivotal struggles
of our nation's past.
Thank you very much.  (Applause.)
* * *
THE PRESIDENT: I would like to say two things very briefly, because I
want to hear more from you.
First of all, I do think this whole issue of economic equity and
empowerment is important. And I believe there are two elements to
that. One is, are people who are poor being given enough support from
their government and from their religious institutions. The other,
that I think is the far more important question -- and one to which
Mr. Flake, among others, has done so much -- are we doing enough to
empower the poor to support themselves and to take a different path to
the future. And that is what this whole New Markets effort we're
making this year is designed to do. So I hope you'll be involved in
that.
Let me just say about the Diallo case, I tried to think of something
to say which would be true, relevant and wouldn't put us all in the
position of second-guessing the jury. That is, we didn't -- or looking
into the hearts and minds of those police officers. That is, we didn't
sit there, we didn't hear the evidence. Four African Americans did,
among others.
So let's posit. The jury rendered a verdict and it is the verdict. But
the larger fact is that we all have the feeling, I think, that it
probably wouldn't have happened, as I said, if it had been a white,
young man in a white neighborhood under the same facts.
And so the real issue here -- and, again, we're getting more diverse
now, more racially diverse and, another thing, linguistically, we're
getting much more diverse. So you're going to have people in
neighborhoods that can't even communicate in tense situations with the
people whose job it is to enforce the law.
Keep in mind, this also puts more pressure on the police. A lot of
them believe that it's not the color of their skin, it's the color of
their uniform that causes them to be distrusted and to feel like
aliens. So when they get treated that way, then they feel more
endangered and more threatened and they're more likely to do
something.
So one of the things -- I didn't say this earlier, but one of the
things that I hope will come out of the Diallo case, if you looked at
the powerful image his mother has made -- she's been quite a grand
person, I think, the way she has tried to free herself of what any
parent would feel, to go to the larger issues. I just hope that one of
the things we can all do to --coming out of this, is not only to make
sure that the police forces in our diverse communities are themselves
properly diverse -- that's important, but that's not all there is to
it, because you're never going to be having a time when there won't
be, let's say, black police officers who have to arrest Hispanics, and
Asian police officers have to arrest white people or, you know,
whatever it is. There's never going to be a time when you're going to
have total racial homogeneity between the police and the communities
they're working. So I hope that we can come out of this so that within
a period of time, a reasonable period of time, you could all stand up
and say, whatever happens, I don't believe it would have happened
differently if the police and the person involved had, themselves,
been of a different race.
That's what I want you to be able to say. That's the big issue here. I
wish I could bring that boy back for his mother and his friends, to
give him the life he should have had. But I can't do that, and you
can't do that. And we can't be in a position where we second-guess a
jury that sat there and I believe honestly made their best judgment.
And we didn't hear all those facts. But we do know the larger truth,
and that's what I hope will come out of this -- a real determination
-- and a lot of you can have an impact on this in your communities, to
bring the police and the community together. And role-play this --
this is a matter of training as well as tone. It's a matter of
disciplined work as well as the heart.
You know, you'd never think about sending a police force out unless
they've trained in how to use their guns; unless they knew how to put
on their bulletproof vests; unless they knew how to give someone their
Miranda warnings; unless they knew these things. You have to train for
this. This is not just a matter of having a good heart. This is work.
This is discipline.
How many times have you had to remind yourself of that in your own
work? Not just enough to have good intentions; you've got to train and
work for this.
I've talked more about this than I meant to, but this is a big deal.
We'll never get this race issue right unless we get the
police-community relations issue right. And most of these police
officers -- listen, they get up every day. They put on those uniforms,
and they've got their lives on the line, and they -- most of them
really do try to do the right thing, in a decent way and an honorable
way. And we shouldn't lose sight of that. And we've got to train for
this so that we don't have these Diallo-type cases again.
* * *
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Let me be very brief here. Number one, we
have this national effort to reduce violence against children,
especially in the schools. And we've got a lot of things going; it's a
subject for another moment. If you would like to be involved in it, if
any of you would like to be involved in it, if you would give to Ben
or Maria a card or address or something, we'll get you involved. We've
got a lot of things going on here, because there is much more we can
do.
Secondly, on the perception of the United States around the world,
first of all, I think sometimes people think we can do more than we
can, which, when we don't do it, therefore, gives us a negative
perception. And then sometimes, we try to do things, that if we do it
in the wrong way, we're seen as being arrogant or high-handed. And
then, we are having our own debates in this country, which you saw in
the debate in the Senate over the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, for
example, about what the role of the United States and the world should
be.
So I think that some of this misperception is inevitable. But one of
the reasons I'm about to go to the Indian subcontinent is that I want
to try to minimize -- if people are mad at us, at least I want them to
have an accurate perception. (Laughter.) If they think we have a
certain policy or a certain attitude, I want them to have an accurate
view of what that policy or attitude is. And it's a constant effort,
but I appreciate that.
I wonder if -- I promised this gentleman in the back I'd call on him,
but we have some people here from different religious traditions, from
East Asia or South Asia who have not spoken. I wonder if any of them
would like to be heard before we go.
Go ahead, sir.
* * *
THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I strongly support what was done in South
Africa. And I have tried on various occasions to do that for the
Japanese who were interned here during the war; for the African
Americans that were subject to the Tuskegee experiments. And I wish
you would work with our people, and let's try to give some shape to
what your thinking is.
I do believe that it's -- I was thrilled that you mentioned that old
debate between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, because when people
look at John Adams, they sort of have this preconceived notion of what
he was like and what Jefferson was like. You would think that
Jefferson was arguing for passion, and Adams was arguing for reason.
And it was actually the other way around, which is maybe just their
own form of denial, who knows? (Laughter.)
But anyway, it was a great debate. And I agree that this is
fundamentally a problem of the heart.
* * *
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Let me say, I want to have a chance to greet
you all individually, so we're going to have to break up. I do want to
say, Bishop, that I don't believe I'll ever forget that remark that
without followers, a leader is just a person out on a walk.
(Laughter.) Without you and some of our friends of the last couple
years, I would have been taking a lot of walks. (Laughter.) So I thank
you for that.
I want to end this on a high note, if I might, since we're here
talking about one America. After a four-year wait, Judge Richard Paez,
a Hispanic judge from California, of the Mormon faith, and Marsha
Berzon were confirmed by the United States Senate today. (Applause.)
They got the highest rating by the American Bar Association and they
added to the diversity of the bench. This week, Judge Julio Fuentes,
of New Jersey, was also confirmed. So I think maybe we're, by fits and
starts, moving toward our one America. And we will work with you more.
I look forward to seeing you all individually. Thank you very much.
Oh, wait. We've got to have a benediction -- and this is my fault, --
tell them to stop the music. (Laughter.)
MS. ECHAVESTE: I would like to have Jake Swamp from the Mohawks lead
us in closing prayer.
THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, sir.
3:48 P.M. EST
(end transcript)
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