THE PRESIDENT'S INITIATIVE ON RACE

ADVISORY BOARD MEETING

TUESDAY,SEPTEMBER 30, 1997

The Advisory Board met in the East Room at the MayflowerHotel, 1127 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C., at 9:30a.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 Franklin

Report from Advisory Board Chairman - 4

Dr. John Hope Franklin

Report from Executive Director - 11

Judith A. Winston

Discussion with President Clinton and Vice President Gore - 13

Introduction of Roundtable Topic for the Day - 70

Dr. John Hope Franklin

Demographic Information About the Population of the United States - 73

Dr. Reynolds Farley

Polling Data Concerning our Attitudes and Actions on Race - 95

Dr. Lawrence Bobo

Talking About Our Attitudes and Actions

Dr. James Jones - 122

Dr. Jack Dovidio - 158

Dr. Derald Wing Sue - 179

Presentation of Advisory Board Work Plan - 207

Dr. John Hope Franklin

Next 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 onRace. I think that if you do not know the members of the AdvisoryBoard, then permit me to present them.

Thomas Kean over at my far right, president of DrewUniversity and former governor of New Jersey.

The Reverend Suzan Johnson Cook who is the pastor ofthe Bronx Faith Community Church.

The Honorable William Winter, the former governor ofMississippi 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 LosAngeles Bar and activist in the area of civil rights and a greatcriminal 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 alongtime servant of the public in many capacities; Ms. Laura Harrisof San Antonio, Texas, who has kindly consented to serve as asenior consultant, although we wanted her for a longer period oftime than that.

We have been busy during these last several weeksdoing a number of things. One of the first things that we havedone is develop five broad goals that reflect the work that we willbe doing and have been doing, as the Advisory Board, and the workthat the staff on the President's Initiative on Race have beendoing.

First, we have undertaken to articulate thePresident's vision of a just, unified America.

Secondly, we have undertaken to educate all Americansabout the facts of race in this country that extend back at leasthalf a millennium.

Thirdly, to promote a constructive and continuingdialogue in which we will confront many of the difficult issues ofrace.

Fourthly, to encourage leadership at the federal,state, local, community and individual levels in the effort tobridge the racial divides.

Finally, the identify and develop solutions incritical areas such as education, economic opportunity, theadministration of justice, housing, crime and health care.

During the last several weeks, individual boardmembers have given speeches, they have served on panels and engagedin numerous informal discussions concerning the President'sInitiative on Race and the Advisory Board's work plan.

Individual members participated in the activities ofthe Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional HispanicCaucus.

A few of us have met with members of the AmericanPsychological Association when it met in Chicago last month todiscuss how to talk about race in ways that unite rather thandivide us.

Dr. James Jones from whom we will be hearing later,helped to arrange that meeting.

I have written to the entire Congressional leadershipconcerning our desire to involve them in the process, and I lookforward to an opportunity to meet with all members of theCongressional leadership.

I also have had the honor and the privilege to speakto the joint session of the North Carolina General Assembly. Therewas an enormous amount of interest in what we are doing asexpressed by the members of that legislative body.

And of course, many of us were involved during thispast weekend in the commemoration of the fortieth anniversary ofthe desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock. I willhave more to say about that in a moment.

The response that we have received as we have carriedon our work, and the response and reactions that we continue toreceive, have been overwhelming and the extent to which people havevolunteered and asked to be included in one way or another in thiseffort, has been most gratifying.

There has been an enormous volume of mail, telephonecalls, almost all of them positive, I might add. Not only has theoffice Washington received huge volumes of mail and telephonecalls, but individual members of the board have received responsesfrom the general public.

People have asked to participate, they have offeredtheir services, they have made helpful suggestions, and we continueto be grateful to them for what they have done, and we willcontinue to be grateful to them for what they will do in thefuture. We look forward to getting large numbers of them involvedin the work of the Advisory Board and the general activities thatwe will be carrying on.

When we met last on July 14, we had just appointed anexecutive director, Ms. Judy Winston. She did not actually beginher work until the month of August. But the work that she has donein the relatively brief time that she has been heading the staffhas been most remarkable and gratifying.

The staffing of the President's Initiative on Race isnearly complete and the staff has been hard at work in pursuing thegoals to which I referred. Judy will make a more extensive reportin just a minute or two.

One example of the manner in which we have been activewas our involvement in the commemoration of the fortiethanniversary of the desegregation of the Central High School, inLittle Rock, Arkansas.

Many of you saw the observations and commemorations ontelevision and perhaps you have had the opportunity to reflect onthe far-reaching impact of that one event on the status in America.

During the period of the commemoration, members of theAdvisory Board were active in working with the National Conferenceto put on a two-day program following the specific anniversarycommemoration, and they were in various parts of the country as weundertook to take advantage of the work that the NationalConference was doing.

So, Governor Winter and I were in Little Rock whereGovernor Winter gave the keynote address of the two-day meetinglast Friday. Then both of us participated in round tablediscussions and the town meetings that followed on Saturday.

We were particularly involved and concerned with the mannerin which public education could help to prepare our young peoplefor the multi-racial society that will characterize our country inthe 21st Century.

These activities were developed and extended andtransmitted by satellite to some 25 locations around the country. The Advisory Board and members participated in events in three ofthese locations.

Governor Winter and I, as I indicated were in LittleRock, where we able not only to listen to the comments of our localaudience, but to receive comments and questions from peoplestationed at various locations around the country.

Members of the Advisory Board were in some of theselocations. Unfortunately, we didn't have 25 members on theAdvisory Board so we could not have members at each of the pointswhere 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 thoseactivities, perhaps, just a little later.

Also, we have developed a work plan which we will bediscussing later in the meeting. This work plan is the result ofcontributions 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 howextremely generous he has been with his time and with the time ofhis staff.

I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Nissan, USAin Gardena, California, to see what that particular group has donein the way of setting an example for corporate America to involveitself more in generating, not only on their staff, but settingexamples for others, to show what diversity really is and can be ina great American corporation.

Now, I am pleased at this time to present ourexecutive director who oversees the day-to-day operations of theAdvisory Board and the President's Initiative on Race staff. I amgoing to ask her to tell us something about what she and the staffhave 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 toeveryone here at the second Advisory Board meeting and to thank allthe members of the Advisory Board as well, for your wonderfulreception to me as I joined this effort in August.

I thank you for all the time and attention that youhave given to the President's Initiative on Race over the pastseveral weeks, and to the staff.

The theme of today's Advisory Board meeting isbuilding on a common foundation.

As Dr. Franklin noted earlier, he, Governor Winter andI have just returned from Little Rock where we attended thefortieth anniversary of the desegregation of Central High School.

We were also participants in the National Conference'sNational Leadership Summit which provided an opportunity for us toengage in a conversation on race and education.

Both events, as Dr. Franklin has indicated, were trulyexceptional experiences.

As I sat and listened to President Clinton's speechand the words of the Little Rock Nine at the Leadership Summit, itstruck me that these two events capture the essence of theInitiative, bringing people together to discuss our differenceswhile celebrating our commonalities, concentrating on that whichbinds us together while recognizing we still have a lot of hardwork to do.

The level of energy and excitement that peopleexhibited in Little Rock was astounding, and it was only matched,in my view, by the level of interest that we have found incommunities all over the country that want to share their storiesand participate in the dialogue.

Communities like Springfield, Ohio, which is home to a study circle and is attempting to reach across boundaries andbuild bridges in its community.

My point is that there are many, many people in thecountry, from one end to the other, who recognize a need for andwant to have a dialogue on race. In fact, they have begun to haveit already.

We know, for example, in Akron, Ohio and in NewOrleans, Louisiana, the daily newspapers, the Beacon Journal andthe Times Picayune, respectively, have both penned series ofarticles offering in-depth analysis of how race is affecting theircommunities.

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 significantproject designed to promote racial harmony in these communities.

In Philadelphia and Seattle, the Ford Foundation isparticipating in the campus diversity initiative, a programdesigned to explore the benefits of diversity in education.

In fact, only this morning, the non-profit Center forLiving Democracy released the results of its year-long survey ofcommunity efforts at interracial dialogues. Researchers identifiedover 80 interracial dialogue groups representing at least 30states.

Interestingly, one of the findings of CLD is thatreligious organizations ranked first, and the media, last, in orderof importance in fostering interracial dialogue.

There are many other findings and I hope you all willhave an opportunity to take a look at this survey and understandbetter how much is going on in this country.

Some of it is stimulated recently by the creation ofthe President's Initiative on Race, but other activities have beenongoing, and the people who have been engaged in dialogue on thiscritical issue have been, in my view and from their own mouths,have been re-energized by the President's call to talk about thisissue and to begin to understand how we can resolve and deal withthe challenges of bridging the racial divide.

So these and other communities recognize the urgencyand the importance of what the Initiative is trying to accomplishand sincerely want to participate.

I think that we would all agree that there is nobetter time than now for this activity to take place.

We have been very busy at the Initiative office whichis located in the New Executive Office Building, here inWashington, D.C. I am pleased to announce that, as of today, wenow have 24 full-time staff members of the Initiative and fourconsultants.

I have been asked by a number of news reporters overthe 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 alsohave several consultants working with us. Dr. Franklin introducedearlier Laura Harris and Chris Edley who are busy working with usand helping to guide our activities.

My expectation is that by mid-October we will add anadditional five members to the full-time staff.

I notice that Dr. Franklin did leave the room, and Ishould tell you that he has gone to meet the President and theVice-President who will be joining us here.

I would like to take this opportunity to indicate thatwe expect the President and the Vice-President to be with us atthis meeting for approximately an hour, and I would askparticularly that the audience would remain in your seats for afull fifteen minutes, following's departure. We ask you to do thatfor security reasons.

So, we would appreciate your indulgence at theconclusion of that particular part of our Advisory Board meeting.

I do want to mention that the staff is divided intoessentially three components. We do have a communications teamthat is headed by Deputy Director Claire Gonzales. We also have anoutreach and program development team which is headed by DeputyDirector Michael Wenger. We have a group of staff working onpolicy planning and research under the direction of Deputy DirectorLin Lu.

Those teams are responsible for directing theInitiative's media relations and the development and disseminationof public information about the Initiative's many activities andfindings.

The outreach and program development team has createdand will create an ongoing process of constructive nationaldialogue on issues surrounding race.

The policy planning and research team is responsiblefor coordinating the Initiative's efforts in the following areas: to provide the public and the Advisory Board with social andeconomic data by racial groups in order to analyze disparities andprogress; to identify, evaluate and disseminate promisingpractices; to coordinate policy recommendations with the WhiteHouse and other federal agencies; to coordinate the development ofthe President's final report to the American people.

Now, the emphasis that we have on our outreachcomponent has been to reach as many of our communities of ournation as possible. We understand that this process is vitallyimportant if we are to engage all of the many voices that should beinvolved in this dialogue is to be meaning and substantive.

We have had many, many questions about whether or notwe intend for this Initiative and this year-long conversation to beinclusive, and we do.

It is a multi-racial effort and we intend to involveeveryone. We have had some very productive meetings with a widerange of groups, including an opportunity that I and others hadrecently to meet with a number of representatives of ethnic groups.

They expressed their sincere interest in beingsubstantially involved in the work of the Advisory Board and inhelping the President and indeed, the country, understand howimportant it is for us to value our differences as well tounderstand how much we have in common.

I see several representatives from that particularmeeting in the audience this morning.

We have also met with the American PsychologicalAssociation which had a mini-convention on psychology and racism inChicago.

We have had a number of staff and Advisory Boardmembers participating in discussion symposia, including severalthat were sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus.

We have met with the American Institute for ManagingDiversity in Atlanta.

The National American Italian Foundation a conferenceon pluralism, and it was there that we had another opportunity tomeet with many representatives from ethnic communities from aroundthe United States.

The National Hispanic Bar Association and the U.S.Department of Education provided an opportunity to speak withpresidents and administrators from our National Historically BlackColleges and Universities Initiative.

The National Conference's national leadership summitwhich I mentioned earlier in the presentation, is another example,and I could cite many more, of opportunities that the Board and thestaff have had to begin to engage the communities and interestedpersons in dialogue.

It is true that we plan to have many more suchmeetings and to have several town hall meetings which have, ofcourse, have generated an awful lot of interest.

But I think it is important, not just for the peoplehere and interested to realize, but for everyone in the country torealize, that we expect this initiative to be represented by themany dialogues and conversations people have, whether we aretalking about four people or a hundred and four or a hundred andfour thousand; that all counts.

You should not count the success of this exercise bywhether or not we are making the newspapers in terms of the kindsof conversations that draw large crowds. These conversations arehappening everyday in many places, often involving our AdvisoryBoard members, often involving our staff.

I just want to make a very quick reference that we arealso trying to engage the philanthropic community in thesediscussions.

Actually, many are already very much engaged, and whatwe are trying to do is to learn from the experience that they havehad as well as to build partnerships with organizations withfoundations that are currently engaged in promoting diversity andaddressing the problems of race.

In anticipation of the possibility that the Presidentwill be joining us momentarily, I would like to briefly say that weare also looking forward to extending our outreach and engaging themany sectors in this Initiative as partners.

One of the things that I know that the Advisory Boardis talking about and members of the Advisory Board may wish toelaborate on today, is the fact that we are going to identifyleaders in communities and in various sectors to themselves beginto do what you members of the Advisory Board are doing, and that isgenerating discussion across racial groups to talk about what thechallenges are and how we can go about resolving the challenges.

For example, we anticipate the real possibility thatthe work that has been begun so well by Robert Thomas, who ispresident of Nissan, will be extended to many others in thecorporate and business community.

We have also spoken with Reverend Suzan Johnson Cookabout how we might engage members of the faith community, thereligious community, through her work and experience in thatcommunity, and others.

The labor community as well.

So, this particular aspect of our work is particularlyexciting as we look at building out from this circle of advisors tothe many, many other people who will take leadership positions.

I am going to stop here and ask if members of theAdvisory Board would like to share with us some of the experiencesthat they have had over the last several weeks that are indicativeof the kind of work that we and they intend to carry forward in theweeks 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 schoolsto college campuses and certainly many interviews. I think alittle bit of everybody in America is kind of interested in what weare doing. So, the excitement is what stood out for me most.

I had anticipated a lot of resistance from people whomay not really want to deal with the race issue. But it was quitethe contrary. Many people want to.

I think that the question that is raised in mostplaces is will the real grassroots constituency be at the table andnot just a talking heads environment? I assure them that I am fromthat community and it will be represented.

I was at the Congressional Black Caucus about twoweeks ago and there were several town meetings there concerningrace; Dr. Franklin participated in one. Then there were severalsmaller workshops where people were interested in the race issue,in terms of taking action steps, particularly. Such as, by the endof this year, what can we propose to this country, because we havebeen talking for a long time.

In the New York area, certainly there have been a lotof local groups, particularly elective officials who want to dealwith it.

In the Bronx we have a unique situation. We have aLatino burrough president, Fernando Ferrer, so there are twodominant minority groups; African Americans and Latinos there.

It is really a desire for us to come together and notlive and work in our separate communities, but to really work asone partnership and I think that is really exciting.

So, I think we are on the pulse of what American isreally feeling and desiring to do. Someone had to take the lead todo it and I think we are in the right place at the right time withthe right issue.

DIRECTOR WINSTON: Thank you.

GOVERNOR WINTER: Judy, in spite of the initialskepticism about this Initiative, I have found it has tapped anincredible about of interest among the people with whom I come incontact.

I come from the deep South, and my phone has literallybeen ringing many times a day from groups who want to know moreabout how they can be involved in this process of racialunderstanding and racial reconciliation.

We have come a long way in that area of the country inwhich I live, but we all recognize how far we still have to go.

Out there is a good spirit on the part of almosteveryone that I have come in contact with in terms of wanting to dosomething, individually and as a part of the groups of which theyare a part, to make this one America.

That is a task that cannot be mandated fromWashington. It has to be established within the hearts and mindsof individual Americans.

That is the thrust of this Initiative. As I go aroundand speak to different groups at schools and churches and civicorganizations, I find a response that, frankly, I did not thinkthose people were capable of, in many instances, but which, inevery instance, has indicated their desire to do more than theyhave been doing to bring people together.

And that is what this Initiative is about and I thinkit will be successful because there is that spirit in this country.

MEMBER THOMAS: One of the interesting things that Ihave found while traveling around, and it as actually changed alittle bit of my impression, is that initially, some of the youngerpeople I talked to were maybe college students and that, and racewasn't one of their top priorities.

Many times they would say that this isn't an issue; weget along fine. We do all of our things together and we areessentially color blind in that sense. They had other things thatwere their top priorities. I was starting to put that as sort ofa general take on youth.

But recently, I have dealt more and more with highschool 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'twant to hear about our generations or generations beyond theirs. They want to hear from students and young people and leaders atthat age because they, just very frankly, say that you don't speakour language; we don't hear you, two or three sentences into it welose you.

And that is something that has really been a change inimpression for me, that is, that race is huge issue at that age.

MEMBER OH: I would like to share with you that Robertand I had a very nice reception in southern California. I wouldsay that there were probably two or three hundred people who werethere just to celebrate the fact that something like this washappening.

In the weeks that I have been back at my job, I havereceived an overwhelming positive response to some of the issuesthat were put on the table in our first meeting.

I also wanted to say to you that I have heard from thePacific Islander people who have said that, because of theexperiences of being on the islands, it is Representative Underwoodin particular, who had been very good about sending informationover about the experiences of native people.

It is a difficult journey as we move through thisprocess, but one that most people in this country are ready totake, personally and publicly.

He believes that there are some tremendous insights tobe gained by going to native people and seeing and hearing theirexperience.

So, I hope that, in this process, one of the thingsthat we make room for is that kind of input.

MEMBER CHAVEZ-THOMPSON: The one thing that I haveexperienced, more than anything else is that everybody is waiting,anxiously, for these town hall meetings, because they believe thatat that point in time, they, meaning the public, will have anopportunity to address their issues.

We know that we are addressing some of the issues thatwe are concerned about and perhaps each of us brings to the tablea certain aspect of participation.

But I think that, for the most part, the public wantsto have the opportunity to have their say to tell us what concernsthem.

My concern also, and in talking with some of themembers here this morning, is that we also bring the youth factorinto our conversations because, if anybody is going to make itwork, it is the young people of our country and we need to hearfrom them.

We absolutely need to factor in, whether it is a townhall meeting or whether it is a mini forum, we really need to bringthe young people in to talk about it.

I heard from some of the young people in Little Rockduring that conference, and some of their words are so beautifulabout their outlook for race and how they feel more attention needsto be paid to the dialogue

GOVERNOR KEAN: There is, you know, a tremendousdesire out there for us to succeed.

There is a worry that we won't.

But my experience is that there isn't anybody outthere that I have talked to who doesn't hope that the kind ofdialogue that we are talking about can take place and that theresults, overall, will be positive.

I find the young people, in particular, want to havethat dialogue. I don't know if they want to include us or not, butthey want to have it.

I see on our own campus at Drew University, without myparticipation at all, they have already started a dialogue and theyare going to make that one of things that they do this year; havea dialogue on race that is going to go on for a period of monthsand it is student-led.

They had the adults in for a while, then mid-way, theysaid now we would like you to leave, and they had their owndialogue. I think that that is fine.

DIRECTOR WINSTON: Thank you very much. Well, we arebreathlessly awaiting the arrival.

I do want to just make a comment. One of theopportunities that I had, in keeping with the point on youth andhow anxious youth are to be involved, I had the privilege ofparticipating in a symposium that was billed as the civil rightscrusaders 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 ofthe many young people on our staff getting translations so I wouldmake sure that I would understand the conversations that we werehaving.

It was very instructive and very, very inspiring andenergizing 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 toour meeting.

(PAUSE)

MEMBER THOMAS: Judy, if you need filler, one thingthat I would just mention to the Advisory Board and the public isthat I have had the privilege of meeting with your staff, and Ijust want to compliment you and your staff on the development.

(APPLAUSE)

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I have the honor to present to youthe President and the Vice-President of the United States, and toexpress our gratitude for the confidence that you have reposed inus as appointees to the Advisory Board.

Mr. President?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thank you, very much.

Dr. Franklin, members of the Advisory Board, ladiesand gentlemen, first let me again thank the Advisory Board for itswillingness to serve. To those who came to Little Rock for thefortieth anniversary of Central High, I thank you for coming there. It was a very important occasion, I believe, and one that all of uswho were there felt was immensely rewarding.

I want to talk to you today about how we go forwardfrom here.

When I was at Little Rock Central High School, afterwe had this magnificent ceremony celebrating the fortiethanniversary and the original nine students went into the school, Iwent back outside and spent quite a long while talking to thestudents and the young people who were there.

All they talked to me about was how we are going to goforward and I just listened to them.

I think you have made a very important beginning byurging that we focus on education and economic opportunity, thingsthat cut across racial lines but are necessary to bring ustogether.

One of the young men in the audience said, "You know,I don't think they had these gang problems forty years ago. I amworried about that."

It was very touching, you know.

But I think that it is very important that we throwthis into the future and I agree with you that we should focus oneducation and economic opportunity.

But if I can go back to the original mission of theBoard, I think it is also important that we have the facts. I knowthat this afternoon you are going to hear from noted scientists anddemographers who will share their research on population patternsand attitudes on race, and I think that is important.

Secondly, I think that it is important that wecontinue this dialogue. I got as much out of the hour or so thatI spent after the ceremony in Little Rock just listening to theyoung people talking, as I worked my way down the lines of peoplewho were there, as anything else.

I am going to have a town hall meeting on this subjecton December 2, 1997, and I will continue to do what I can tosupport you in reaching out to all Americans in discussing this, sothat we can build bridges that will lead to understanding andreconciliation.

But finally, in the end, we have to decide what it isthat we are going to do.

This summer I announced the first of what I hope willbe a long series of actions consistent with the work that we aredoing here with the Advisory Board when I said that we would havean initiative to send our most talented teachers to the needyschool districts by offering scholarships for their own educationif they would, in turn, teach in those districts for a number ofyears. I think that would be very helpful.

Later today, our Housing and Urban DevelopmentSecretary, Andrew Cuomo, will announce new efforts to end housingdiscrimination.

First, HUD will issue $15 million in grants to 67private, non-profit housing groups and state and local governments,to combat housing discrimination and promote fair housingpractices.

Then Secretary Cuomo will double the number of housingdiscrimination enforcement actions over the next four years.

It is clear to me now that there is more housingdiscrimination in America than I thought there was when I becamePresident. So I applaud what Secretary Cuomo is doing and I willstrongly 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 theend of the ceremony in Little Rock where there was a great sense ofthat among the people there and I felt around the country among thepeople watching it a great sense that now we have to do things andthat just about every individual American is interested in thisissue and understands how important it is and understands thatwe'll all have to do our part if we expect to come out where wewant to be.

So, Dr. Franklin, I'll look forward to going on withthe discussion and I think that maybe the Vice-President might wantto 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 briefbecause I'm looking forward to the discussion here. I think theremarks you made, Mr. President, in Little Rock last week were verypowerful and resonated throughout this nation.

I think this initiative, as I've said

previously, may turn out to be the most important single initiativeof your entire presidency, because it's obviously so important forour nation. To the other members of the Advisory Board, you havethe thanks of every American for the hard work and time that youare putting into this task and I know that, like all of us, youfeel proud to be led by your Chair, Dr. Franklin.

I've had an opportunity to sit at the Godfather's kneein the past and learn from him. And some of the lessons that I'vetaken from his work are first, that race is a pervasive, if oftenunacknowledged, part of every issue, controversy, in deedconversation in the United States of America. And those whopretend it's not are in danger of deluding themselves and missingimportant aspects of whatever subject they are trying to deal with.

Secondly however, if it is dealt with openly, in thekind of historic, national dialogue the President has chartered forour nation and followed up with the kinds of actions that he hadrecommended and pointed the way to, it can be transcended. Just asstudents learn arithmetic about the lowest common denominator, inmatters of the spirit we seek the highest common denominator.

And the way to reach it is again in a two step processaccording to the works that I've read from Dr. Franklin. NumberOne, acknowledge differences. Understand and absorb the uniquesuffering that human beings have experienced because of the factthat they are a particular race or ethnicity or in some other groupthat distinguishes them.

Suffering binds us together and can enable us to reachacross those divides. But also acknowledge and celebrate theunique gifts and contributions to the rich diversity of Americathat have been made by every race, by every group. And teach youngpeople especially, who are members of that race or group, about therich history which has often been ignored in the lesson plans thathave left them out in the past.

But then after acknowledging and respecting differenceand establishing mutual respect, then the next step is to transcendthat difference and reach out for the highest common denominator. I personally think that one of the problems we've had in the pastis that many people of good will have tried to go to step twowithout pausing at step one.

And indicated their desire to transcend difference andhave harmony without doing the hard work of establishing the mutualrespect, acknowledging the difference, acknowledging the suffering,acknowledging the unique contributions.

And this dialogue is a necessary healing step whichgives our nation the opportunity to come together and build thefoundation for really becoming one America as the President haschallenged us to do.

I look forward to hearing the Panelists. I know thatthis morning we are going to be able to hear some of the dialogueand then this afternoon you are going to have a very specificscientific and demographic discussion of the country we arebecoming and look at more detail concerning our growing diversityand differences.

And I really look forward to the part that we aregoing 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 youwhat we have done. Secondly, we can ask you if you want to raiseany question about what we should do or what we are doing.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, why don't you begin bytelling us, giving us all the things you have done.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I would be glad to do that. We'vebeen telling some of the audience about some of the things we'vebeen doing. I wonder if Robert Thomas, who is the President andCEO of Nissan USA, would tell us about some of the unique andreally remarkable things that Nissan is doing and through Nissan isinfluencing other corporations in this country.

MEMBER THOMAS: Thank you, Dr. Franklin. There areprobably a couple quick things I'd mention. We've created a staffthat has interacted with the initiative staff. And they've done alot of background work on some of the issues and some directionalchoices that we can make.

And it is interesting because you, as you sort ofbrain 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 adialogue and develop your points of view toward the end? Or do youestablish some points of view early on and test those against thedialogue?

And so those are just, that's for example just one ofthe questions that we have, we've raised up. But I will just tossthat out and then I'll just mention one personal thing that I'vefound 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 arereal.

And the second thing is when you add in and lay overany issues regarding poverty, it is just exacerbated to the nthdegree. And so that would just be a starting point that I wouldthrow out for the Advisory Board.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Governor Winter.

MEMBER WINTER: Mr. President, Mr. Vice-President, letme thank you for this initiative. I think it's one of the mostimportant things that all of us can be dealing with these days. Welive in this very diverse country, increasingly diverse, and yetthere is, there are common values that we all share.

And my understanding is that the common value thatmaybe 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 myneighbors. I see it in the school up in Oxford, Mississippi wheremy, where two of my grandchildren go to school.

If every, if every school in America could look likethe one where my grandchildren go, I think we would establish thesecommon values in a way that would ensure that we will be oneAmerica. But we can't do it as long as we separate ourselves andparticularly if our young people are separated.

And these kids are going to school with people fromevery background, every racial and social background. Andprejudice is learned. Prejudice is learned, in my opinion. And itmay not be specifically taught, but it's learned by what we, how weact and how we relate to each other.

And if we will, if we will let our children have theexperience of associating early in their lives and get the kind ofexperience there and share in the opportunity to get an adequateeducation. That's one of the, that's one of the most, the greatestfault lines we have, is that discrimination between people who havea good education and people who have a poor education.

And so education, education of all of us, of the wholecitizenry of this country, but particularly our young people, Ithink holds the key to how successful this initiative will be andhow we will achieve one America.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Reverend Cook.

MEMBER COOK: Mr. President, Mr. Vice-President, Iconcur totally with Governor Winter. As a mother of a two year oldand four year old and trying to plan a five year old's birthdayparty for Saturday on the road. I represent a community in theBronx, which has now been named an all-American city, which is aphoenix rising out of the ashes.

Some wonderful things are happening in the Bronx wherepredominant groups, African-Americans and Latinos, are really forthe first time saying, let's come together. Let's livecooperatively. Let's work cooperatively. Let's share in buildingour community together. So it's a wonderful model of what can bedone and I hope that at some point you may even visit the Bronx forone of our town meetings.

But I also share the voice of many constituents thatcome through the faith community as a Pastor. Most of ourconstituents do not attend the same schools in the communities welive because the school districts have failed. And so children asyoung as four and five must travel a half an hour or an hour eachway every day to get an adequate education and the parents pay aconsiderable amount of money.

So I think education and diversity are critical issuesfor this task. But I do want to share with you that people in thefaith community have been energized by this initiative and areeagerly seeking ways that we can work together cooperatively acrossdenominational lines. It is no one person's agenda, no one faithgroup's agenda any more. We are eagerly looking to work with youand also partner with the corporate community and the laborcommunity where we don't normally get a chance to sit down at thetable together.

So we are looking to forge partnerships because weunderstand in the communities that the collaborative effort bringsthe strong results. And so we are looking to seek ways to do thatand we are in partnership with you. I think the most importantthing that stood out for me in your speech, when you spoke aboutthe Little Rock Nine, was that they did not turn back.

And what we are hoping is that we will not turn backin America. That we shall go forward and that people will not turntheir backs on this initiative, but that we will work together.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Ms. Oh.

MEMBER OH: Yes, good morning and thank you again fortaking that courageous step to go into what I consider to be somevery tough, unchartered waters. In the weeks since we last met,I've had the opportunity to meet with folks who are doing researchin this area, looking at some of the tough issues that have to dowith new populations and the impact on this country and oureconomy.

I've had the opportunity to meet with CEO's, withChambers of Commerce, with organized labor, with students, withcreative people in the Arts who have a lot to say and a lot toshare in this area. I want to urge you to continue forward withsome guiding principles. Those being the compassion, the vision,the intelligence. Yes, the courage.

Also to look to non-traditional sources for yourintelligence. Look to non-traditional sources, i.e., the peoplethat you are saying you want to reach in this initiative. Therearen't very many vehicles that are set up. I know we have the townhall meetings, but there is a lot of energy and interest. And youknow, even among the cynics, of which I know many, there is adesire not to be involved.

But you know what? They cannot resist becomingengaged, because what we are doing is so at the core of where thiscountry is. For those who are saying, I don't want to know, justlike I don't want to know about the O.J. trial. You know, peoplecouldn't resist. It was there. It was something that spoke to acharacter of who we are.

I believe that one of the things that makes us uniqueas Americans is that we believe in civic participation, weencourage 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 thefuture. We can't change the past, unfortunately for many, but wecan have an affect on the future.

So I guess my last words would be that even as we aremoving through this journey, both public and private journey, thatwe need to be very clear about what those guiding principles aregoing to be. And also be aware that as swiftly as we think we aremoving, the assumptions that we begin with are going to change bythe time we reach the end of this very brief public journey overthis year.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Linda Thompson.

MEMBER CHAVEZ-THOMPSON: I just want to reiterate whatI said to you earlier before you both came into the room, Mr.President, Mr. Vice-President. And that is that there are a lot ofpeople who want to participate in the town hall meetings. Thegeneral public, per se, the conversations that I've had, whether itis at Union conferences or where I speak to women's groups or civilrights groups, there's an anxiety that they be heard.

And they want to be heard on the issues that theybelieve are important in their neighborhoods, in their churches, intheir own communities. And the other thing that really comesthrough to me is how we need to reach the young people. Havingheard the conversations at the town hall meeting in Little Rock onSaturday and the observations that were made by many of our youngpeople, it is almost a very crucial part for this Advisory Board tobring the young people in to converse about how they will makewhatever plans we come forth in a year.

We are not going to be around long enough to implementsome of those if we don't have the youth of this country involvedin the conversation of race. Because they are going to be the onesthat finalize whatever plans we put together. And if we don'tbegin when they are in elementary school or middle school or highschool. If we don't being that conversation with them now, whenwill we be able to reach them.

So the youth is a major factor for me and of courseeconomics, I always talk about economics and how we need to bemaking sure that people are in jobs that provide the kind ofstability, job security, wages and benefits that they need to beable to provide a better education for their children. Betterhousing for themselves and living wages for their family and theirstandard of living.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Governor.

MEMBER KEAN: Mr. President, Mr. Vice-President. Idon't know if people in this country really recognize just howimportant this initiative is. And the passion that you bring to itfrom a life long interest in this subject. We forget sometimesthat we are unique in the world.

I mean, there is no other place in the world where somany different groups have come to attempt to live together. In mystate alone, we have over 100 recognized ethnic groups and racialgroups. And the fact we are also trying to do it in a countrywhich is the world's now oldest, I guess, democracy. And we aretrying to make it work in a democratic fashion.

Whether or not this democracy is, I believe, is goingto survive and flourish, depends how well we are going to livetogether. How well we can resolve our differences. How well wecan avoid the things that divide us and celebrate the things thatunite us.

Race, ethnic differences are the things that divideus. They are the things that are causing terrible problems inother parts of the world. And we are, have got to be, the exampleof how those issues are solved in a democratic manner. And to me,you know at the beginning of this initiative there was some pressarticles that said, well, I hope it's not all talk.

Talk is extraordinarily important. The dialogue thatthis initiative is all about. We are not going to get to the nextstep without the dialogue. I've seen on a college campus whenthere are problems, how important dialogue is and what progress youmake when that dialogue is successful. Then you can move on to thenext step.

I've found extraordinary excitement in any number ofareas, including some folks that you wouldn't think would be thatexcited about this initiative. People want to celebrate it. People want to be helpful. And I just think it is a very excitingstep forward for the country.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Well, of course we have been, forthe last six weeks, talking about certain aspects of the programthat we are trying to get off the ground, as it were. But nothinghas been more important and I think nothing is more important thantrying to communicate to all of us the importance of shared values,shared ideals, shared experiences, shared aspirations, as we try todevelop a vision for what we want to be in the next century.

And it is very interesting that almost all of thepeople who have communicated with this Advisory Board, so far as Iknow certainly all that has communicated with me, have raised thismatter in one way or another. What can we do to increase thecommon, our goals? What can we do to work together to achieveequity and fairness?

And so the Advisory Board has been going along twotracks. One to try to be certain that these shared aspirations andideals and values are in the forefront. At the same timediscovering or trying to find out practical ways, every day ways ofrealizing our goals. And to that end, I am delighted that we havethe practical application as seen in the work, in the announcementthat you just made regarding Secretary Cuomo's plans to enter thearea of housing and to take some specific and concrete steps.

And that's what people are wanting to know. How canwe combine these wonderful goals with practical steps that willtake us toward those goals? And this is an example, I think, ofexactly what we need and want to use as we move toward the ultimategoals 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 expressionof involvement?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I would just say that I think, inaddition to the kind of town meeting message, I think it is veryimportant to try to see, identify and highlight some laboratorysituations, either laboratories because you think that people aredoing something that works that ought to be able to be donesomewhere else.

And I agree with Suzan that what's going on in theBronx today -- if she told anybody ten years ago that this would behappening in the Bronx, nobody would have believed you. To whatextent is that unique to the Bronx? To what extent is it somethingthat could be done anywhere else? How did it happen? Those thingsI think are important.

There is another sort of laboratory that I think wouldbe worth looking at and I'll give you one example. I believe nowthat the Fairfax County schools, just across the river, is now themost diverse school district in the United States. I think it haseven more ethnic diversity than the New York or the Los Angeles orthe 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 differentlanguage groups in this one school district. Now, that goes backto the Governor's picture there of his grandchildren. It would beinteresting to know -- sometimes I think maybe we should all gothere together. I'm just giving this to you as an example. Wecould go somewhere else and do the same thing.

How are these differences dealt with within theschools for the children? How are the kids dealing with theirdiversity and their shared values? Is there an explicit attempt todo this? How do they get along?

Then, I would ask is their experience consistent withor inconsistent with their parents' experience in the work place? Because, you know, what I have seen over time -- I hate to use sucha much used buzz word as empowerment, but what I have seen is thatall of these racial issues get much worse when people feel likethey don't have any basic control over their lives, which isobviously why you asked us in our administration to focus on theeconomic and educational issues first.

But I think it would interesting to see how, in aplace that is very much -- I don't think this should be the onlyone, but it's a place that is very much sort of standing out in bigcapital letters what the future might become in America. How arethe kids doing? How are their parents doing? What is thedifference in how their parents are being treated or how the kidsare treated at school? Are there any differences?

What kind of dialogue goes on in the home with thesepeople between the parents and the children about their experiencesat school and at work and are there differences there? It seems tome that somehow we have to imagine how all this is going to playout in the real world and anything the government does, forexample, needs to really make sense in terms of how these folkslive.

And so, I think maybe one thing we ought to try to dois try to either organize a set of expeditions or define a set ofwhat you might call town hall meetings with people who haveactually lived in kind of circumstances that we imagine America'sfuture to be. I think that would be, you know, one suggestion thatI 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 Italked about this the first time that we visited -- how do we getover and finish our sort of unfinished business and still recognizethat time is not waiting for us and our children are being throwninto a world that is radically different. So, that might be oneway to proceed.

I think we might learn a great deal if you could getsome of these children and maybe some of their parents together andhave an honest talk about how their kids are doing in the schools,how the parents are doing in the work place and in the widersociety, and what that tells us about what we need to do in thefuture.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: One of the things that we found incommunications with people in various parts of the country is theenormous number of experiments already going on. Sometimes theyseem to suggest, well, welcome to what we are doing. They arealready engaged in some of these activities and they commend themto 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, andwill stimulate this kind of thing. It is true that some might notwork in some other places, but that's yet to be proved. And untilit is proved, we cannot invalidate them and we can merely welcomethem and place them on the table as possible experiments that wecan use, if not in this place then perhaps in another place.

So we've got a rather large group of suggestions thatmay be helpful.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: One of the things that I believethis group should strongly consider doing is actually publishingkind of a compendium of those local efforts with a briefdescription of how they work, who participated and how you cancontact those people.

One of the things we are trying to do is to replicatewhat works around the country. I think that, you know, it isobvious that when people have challenges and problems, they starttalking about it.

So what I would recommend is that one of the things weconsider doing, without trying to be too exhaustive, to to get atleast 50 or 100 of the things that you believe work the best, geta brief description of them, have a person who can be contacted,ask them if they would mind our promoting them, and find a way topublish it and widely disseminate this around the nation so that wecan generate more interest and involve more people; and if notcopying, then at least adapting what has worked to places wherethere aren't such efforts going on.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I think that our ExecutiveDirector already has some plans in that regard. Judy Winston isplanning some how to bits and various other things like that.

DIRECTOR WINSTON: Yes, we have many, many examples ofgood things happening and things happening. And it is, we'vetalked 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 whohave been involved in this dialogue.

I mentioned earlier the fact that just this morningthe Center for Living Democracy released the results of its surveyof inter-racial dialogues occurring in more than 30 states. Andthey have some findings that I think would be very instructive tothose who are interested in continuing or beginning dialogues.

We know about many youth groups, for example, that areactively engaged in the very discussion and exploration that we'vetalked about on issues of tolerance and how to overcome bigotry. There is an organization in New England, in Massachusetts, in factit's mentioned in Mrs. Clinton's book, It Takes a Village. It isan organization, a project, a program called Team Harmony thatbrings together young people in middle and high schools. Youngpeople of many racial and ethnic backgrounds.

And they spend the year talking in their schools toeach other and to children in other schools about how to betolerant. And how to model the kind of behavior that you all havebeen talking about. And we, and they come together every year toprovide, to receive awards. I think there are 10,000 of thesechildren who will be meeting in November in Boston.

And so those are the kinds of things that we arelooking at and which we will make available not just publishing atthe end of the year, but things that we want to put on our web sitefor people to access immediately. And we will be providing updateson those activities and getting, hopefully getting some responseback from people who are able to access the web site, both inschools and in business, to see whether they have something to add. So we are very excited about this prospect. I think it will bevery helpful.

VICE-PRESIDENT GORE: In a lot of the efforts thathave taken place in President Clinton's administration, we've seenhow communities can figure out unique approaches that are going towork best in their communities. You've alluded to this and I'mwondering if one or two examples spring to mind to any of you oflocal communities that have undertaken a unique approach todialogue or promoting diversity that you find particularlypromising?

MEMBER OH: In Los Angeles, there are a series ofprojects. We have the Leadership Education Program in inter-ethnicrelations that is a school-based program. We have a Neighbor ToNeighbor Dialogue Program, which is headed up by, I think one ofthe spouses of one of our Council Members.

The Human Relations Commission, both at the city andcounty levels, have been working with law enforcement agenciesbecause of the impact that new populations, perhaps limitedEnglish-speaking populations, have struggles with dealing with lawenforcement.

Encouraging, even some of our Deputy DA's go out andthey do in-classroom kinds of outreach to talk to youth aboutconsidering careers in the law. The Bar Associations in southernCalifornia, we have a multi-cultural Bar Association which, in LA,every ethnic group has their own Bar and among Asians, we all haveour separate Bars. But, there is something called the Multi-Cultural Bar Association for those of us who are really looking atbroader issues.

Independence of the judiciary kinds of issues and thenalso reaching out to young people to encourage them to come intothe legal profession. As many people may think there are too manylawyers, I am one who believes there are not enough lawyers ofcolor who are out there practicing and have a sense of communityand their professional growth.

So there are lots of very positive models going on, inthe ecumenical ground too, churches are way out there in terms ofleadership.

MEMBER THOMAS: While somebody may be thinking of aspecific example, Mr. Vice-President, one of the things I'd mentionis that everywhere I go there are examples of every day heros whoare filling in the fault lines of race that Governor Winter refersto. And in that, we can't forget that those fault lines are therebecause I just think it needs bigger and more expansive every dayheros to address those and solve those, like Suzan mentions, acoalition of labor and business and faith and government.

But everywhere there is these people that miraculouslygo out and address and solve these problems. As you said, Mr.President, the problems are there so people don't let them gounanswered. They address them. And it's really amazing andrewarding to see and listen to these individuals who do this,without any recognition, with the glare of the publicity that weare 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 severalyears ago, by black and white citizens of that community, anorganization simply known as The Club, that consisted of an equalnumber of blacks and whites.

They meet on an informal basis once a month and sitdown and talk about all the issues that concern them, with specialemphasis on support for the public schools there, whichincidentally are very good, and it created an atmosphere in Cosesgothat now I think represents almost a model community in terms ofrace relations.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: When I spoke before the jointsession of the legislature in North Carolina two months ago, Ipraised the Governor for his Smart Start Program, which was for thepurpose of stimulating activity in the schools and making certainthat the schools were brought up to speed and up to standard.

I added though that we not only needed Smart Start ofthe children, we needed Smart Start for the adults as well. And Iwas talking to the Governor after that and he pointed out to methat there were plans to have adults doing the same sort of thingthat they were trying to do in the schools.

And later on in October or toward the end of Octoberthis very thing is going to be discussed and developed at aconference which the Governor is styling their own dialogue onrace. This is going to take place in Charlotte at the end ofOctober, at which time they plan to have organizations or developorganizations who will replicate what they are doing in the schoolsamong the adults, so that the adults will take the very suggestionswe made regarding ways to develop programs across racial and ethniclines.

And to spread them out all over the state of NorthCarolina. I think that there are a number of my correspondents, Ithink there are a number of states that are doing similar things.

MEMBER COOK: Two initiatives come to mind for me. InNew York on the day that the initiative was announced the Coalitionof 100 Black Women, the Coalition of Latino Women and the Coalitionof Asian Women came together in a unique conference called theWorld of Women Leaders to figure out ways that we can partnertogether and not go on our separate tracks.

And that will now be an annual event and certainlythrough the year there are meetings now and dialogue for the firsttime across those ethnic lines. The other initiative is the Multi-Ethnic Center, which began on the lower east side of New York andnow has expanded to the Bronx.

It was an after school homework help program forchildren, but through the children, parents who historically hadracial tension and never spoken to one another, had to startdialoguing with each other and have now formed parent coalitionswhere they become advocates for their children on the public schoollevel and the private school level. And help children to get intoprograms that will be beneficial to them.

And one of the programs under the Multi-ethnic Centeris called Junta Imani. Junto meaning "join together" in Latino andImani is a Swahili word meaning "in faith". And a community choirhas now developed that brings the races together. We got somefunding from the New York Yankees and some other corporate modelsare now funneling some funds into it.

And what it is is a dialogue for the first time alongethnic lines. The children are bringing the parents to the tableand 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 acontinual basis. A town called Maplewood comes to mind wherepeople have been working over a period of years in a bi-partisanmanner to keep the dialogue going. To make sure there aren't, thatproblems don't develop in the community. But unfortunately, the time I've seen most good happenin communities is after an incident. Somebody, there is anincident with the police, where the police act wrongly in a racialsituation. Or somebody, there's a synagogue and a synagogue wallwill put a swastika or one of the incidents.

And then the whole community comes together to condemnit. To talk about why it happens. To get the kind of dialoguegoing which should have been going all along. And if it had beengoing, 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 getthose dialogues going without the incidents that provoke them.

MEMBER CHAVEZ-THOMPSON: One thing that the AFL-CIO isdoing is we are having a full participation conference in LosAngeles in March, at which time the dialogue on race and thequestion of diversity in the American Labor Movement.

We are going to hear from the people who are affectedby either lack of diversity or lack of inclusion in the work place. We plan on having all of our constituency groups participate, aswell as the dialogue of how we can include them in leadershippositions within the labor movement.

So the conversations are going on within our group aswell. But I think the other thing that I want to touch upon issometimes how business needs to be responsive as well. And I don'tpoint to Robert as much as, because he is the businessman on theBoard, more or less represents it. But often times, you haveoccasions where certain businesses use race to keep Unions out, byeither favoring one ethnic group over another by pitting groups,whether it's white, brown, black, Asian-American against eachother.

Where they build the distrust, if the Union wins, thisgroup will take over or this group will have more say than you do. And that happened to us just recently in one major election inNorth Carolina. Of course, we lost. And it was basically becausethey brought more Latinos into the plant to go against the Union. And the fear of the African-Americans that work there was that theywould take it over versus the subs, so they too voted against theUnion.

So there needs to be more responsibility and aresponsiveness from businesses against using race in situation likethat.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Mr. President, Mr. Vice-President,I know you have a very busy schedule. We would express to you ourdeep gratitude for coming here and honoring us by your presence andlistening to us and participating in this discussion.

I think it has been very fruitful and helpful for theAdvisory Board and I think we take heart in enjoying your supportand we will therefore move forward with all speed, not deliberatespeed, but all speed in order to achieve the goals that you want toachieve before the end of the term. Thank you very much and we arehonored by your presence.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thank you very much.

(Applause)

DIRECTOR WINSTON: Ladies and gentlemen, let me remindyou that you do need to stay in place for about 15 minutes. And weare going to be moving into the next phase of our Advisory Boardmeeting in just a moment, beginning with our first panel.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Today our journey toward oneAmerica will take the form of exploring how to build on the commonvalues that we hopefully share. In order to do this in an informedmanner, we have certain needs among which are knowledge andunderstanding about certain developments that have taken place inthis country, particularly with respect to the operation and shapeof it, where it has been and where it's going, attitudes towardrace and ethnicity, and of course the ways in which we can talkconstructively and productively about such matters.

This will be the first in a series of roundtablediscussions on race-related issues in which the Board will engage. The purpose of these discussions is to inform ourselves and informthe nation regarding race and ethnicity.

Our particular desire is to learn, so that we canadvise the President and his staff in an informed manner, and toshare our learning with all America. Those people who watch thesediscussions can help us all by sharing their learning with otherswith whom they come in contact.

This particular topic on demography was chosen becauseit will establish a foundation and framework for futurediscussions. And the panelists were selected on the basis of therecommendations that many people made regarding their ownachievements -- that is, the achievements of the members of thispanel and their stature in their fields.

Each person will be asked to make openingpresentations, being sensitive to very great time restraints, andthen they're going to take questions from the Advisory Boardmembers.

The first set of panelists are Dr. Reynolds Farley andDr. Lawrence Bobo. Dr. Farley is Vice President of the RussellSage Foundation in New York, and until this year he was in theSociology Department, a professor in the Sociology Department, andDirector of the Center of Population Studies Center at theUniversity of Michigan where he was for 28 years.

He is a recognized authority in the field ofdemographics, and his most recent book, "The New American Reality: Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We're Going," was publishedlast year by the Russell Sage Foundation.

Dr. Farley's presentation will focus primarily ondemographic information concerning the population of the UnitedStates and projections for the future. And following hispresentation, he will entertain questions from the Board.

I have the great pleasure of introducing an old anddear friend with whom we have been working for a number of years,and particularly when we worked on "Common Destiny," which waspublished I don't know how many years ago, Reynolds, but ourfriendship and association dates from that time. And I am pleasedto have him here and to present to the Board and to the group atthis point.

Thank you.

DR. FARLEY: John, thank you very much. It is apleasure to be here. I am the demographer who will try to lay outsome of the population trends that are now reshaping this nation.

The United States has undergone racial changethroughout its entire history, but never at the pace and themagnitude occurring now. Within the next 50 years, whites, as ashare of the total population, will decline from about three-quarters at present to roughly half of the size of the totalpopulation.

The African-American population will increase verysubstantially in size, but its share of the total will remainbasically unchanged. Depending upon immigration trends,interracial marriage, and self-identity, the Hispanic populationmay increase to become, by the middle of the next century, roughlya quarter of the total population. And the Asian population mayincrease from its present representation of four percent to eightpercent or more.

Let me start with a couple of background remarks,introductory remarks. When the first census was taken in PresidentWashington's administration, African-Americans made up 20 percentof the total -- a much higher proportion than at present. Throughout the 19th century, there were many parts of the souththat had predominantly black populations, and for more than acentury three southern states were majority black in theircomposition.

But between the Revolutionary War and World War II,the population became increasingly white, primarily because ofimmigration. After the potato famine, we had an influx of whitesfrom Northern Europe after 1848, and then there was a very largeinflux of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe after 1880,immigrants who we now think of as white but there was some doubtabout that when they arrived.

As a result of those great immigration trends, theproportion of population African-American sunk to a low of 10percent at the outset of World War II.

You have a handout here of the presentations thismorning, and on about the third or fourth page you see a set of piecharts showing the population composition. The first of thosecharts shows the United States on the eve of World War II. At thattime, blacks and whites made up about 99 percent of the population.

The next pie chart shows the population's compositionat the start of the civil rights decade, 1960. At that time, thiswas still a country of whites and blacks. Because of restrictiveimmigration laws dating to the 19th century, there were fewer thana million Asians in the United States, and there were only about ahalf a million American Indians, and they lived in sparselypopulated Western states. There was not even a question on thecensus of 1960 seeking to identify the Hispanic population.

We often think of the three important civil rightsacts of the civil rights decade -- the Civil Rights Act of 1964,the Voting Rights Act of the next year, and the Open Housing Actpassed after the killing of Dr. King in Memphis. But there wasanother civil rights act of that decade, one that is now helping toreshape the nation's racial composition.

Representative Seller and Senator Hart wrote theImmigration Reform Act of 1965, an act that sought to overturn thediscriminatory provisions of our previous immigration laws. Thoseprovisions sought to totally exclude the flow of Asians to thiscountry, and to greatly dampen the flow from Eastern and SouthernEurope.

The sponsors of that legislation foresaw very littlein the line of additional immigration from Asia. They thoughtthere would be an influx of immigrants from behind the IronCurtain. That is not quite what happened.

Figure 1 shows the racial composition of thepopulation in 1997. This composition reflects both immigration tothe United States, substantial differences in birth rates, andchanges in our demographic procedures. Through 1960, an enumeratorwent door to door asking questions and marking down the race of therespondents.

But since 1970, race has been a self-administeredquestion. The census questionnaire comes in the mail, you fill itout, you send it back. We are what we mark down on that racialform, on that census questionnaire. So our racial identity isself-chosen. There is no editing of that, so there is a differentprocedure for gathering information.

The Spanish origin population -- we know a great dealabout that, because of additions to the census and other federalstatistical systems. Responding to pressures from Hispanicadvocates, President Nixon, in 1969, ordered that a Spanish originquestion be included in the census of 1970. And then in 1977, OMBmandated that all federal statistical agencies gather data aboutthe Spanish origin population as well as race.

So a precedent is firmly established, and the plansfor the census of 2000 foresee asking the Spanish origin questionbefore the race question. And that does raise some issues, sincefor many Latinos the race question is apparently redundant.

In the 1990 census, about 43 percent of the people whomarked down Spanish origin, that they were of Spanish origin,omitted the race question. They didn't answer the race question atall, 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 growthrates of the population from 1990 to the present, with the place ofbirth distinction for Latinos and Asians.

In this figure and in subsequent figures, I amtreating 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 thosemodifiers.

The Asian and Hispanic populations are growing muchmore rapidly than the white, the American Indian, or the blackpopulation. The native-born Asian population grew almost sevenpercent a year in this decade, meaning its size will double in adecade. The Latino, the foreign-born Latino population is growingalmost five percent a year, much more rapidly than the whitepopulation which is growing only about a half a percent each year.

Let's think for a minute about projections of thepopulation. What will this nation look like in terms of its racialcomposition in 25 or 50 years? Whites as a share of the populationwill decline, blacks as a share will probably not increase much ordecrease much, while Asians and Latinos will increase. But all ofthese depend upon possible changes in immigration trends,interracial marriage, and how people identify themselves.

Let me go over a couple of technical details here asbriefly as possible. If we're going to make any assumptions of thefuture population, we have to make some assumptions about fertilitypatterns. For a population to remain constant in size, there needsto be an average of about 2.1 births per woman.

At present, among whites, the birth rate implies onlyabout 1.8 births per woman. So if that continues, the whitepopulation will reach a peak size in about 35 years, and then willvery gradually decline unless there is an influx of whiteimmigrants or a jump in the birth rate.

The current birth rates of blacks and Asians bothimply about 2.3 births per woman. That is a moderate rate ofpopulation growth. The fertility rates of Hispanic women suggestabout 2.7 births per woman, but that is influenced by the largenumber of Latino immigrants to the United States. With previousgroups anyway, the first generation arriving also often hasfertility reflecting the culture and patterns in the home country. But after a generation or two or three generations, the fertilityrates fall to those of the native-born population.

In a demographic sense, the Hispanic and Asianpopulations are posed for rapid population growth because of theiryouthful age structures. That is, because of immigration, a largeshare of the Latino and Asian populations are at young ages. Soeven were fertility rates to be low, or were the immigrationpolicies to be restrictive, the Asian and Latino populations willgrow much more rapidly than the whites.

Blacks have slightly higher fertility rates thanwhites and have a slightly younger age structure, so the blackpopulation will grow more rapidly than the whites but not asrapidly as the Asian and Latino populations.

What about mortality? A child born in the UnitedStates today can expect to live 76 years if current death ratespersist. Projections of the population typically assume that themodest declines in death rates recorded in the 1980s will continueinto the future, which would give us a life span of about 82 yearsat the middle of the next century. There are, of course,projections that assume a more rapid decline in mortality and somethat 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 thecountry every year, and another 225,000 arrive to stay withoutpapers. There is additionally some flow from Puerto Rican andAmerican citizens who return from abroad, but then there is animmigration of about 100- to 200,000 citizens each year inimmigration that is not very well documented. The most commonprojections assume a net immigration of about 850,000 persons peryear.

In this decade, Mexico, Russia, China, thePhilippines, and the Dominican Republic are the leading countriesof origin for immigrants. Current immigration flow might betypified briefly as about 45 percent of the immigrants areidentified as Hispanics in the United States; about 30 percent, 33percent are identified as Asians. The remainders are split betweenblacks and whites with whites being somewhat more numerous.

The immigration flow is now more diverse than everbefore, and because of some of the diversity provisions ofimmigration law there is good reason to think there will becontinued flow from places that have not sent immigrants to theUnited States before in large numbers -- the Mid East, Africa, andsome of the South American countries.

What about projected populations? Figure 3 in myhandout reports the Census Bureau's middle series of populationprojections by race. These imply that our population will growfrom 268 million at present to just under 400 million in 2050. AsI said, the white population will peak at about 210 million, andthen very slowly decline. But as shown in the one panel here,whites as a share of the total population will decline somewhatmore rapidly.

The African-American population will increase fromabout 32 million to 54 million, which is a very big increase. Butthere will be only a small shift in the proportion of Americans whoare African-Americans.

The Hispanic population may triple in size by themiddle of the next century, assuming there is a continued largeflow of immigrants from Latin America, and that Hispanic fertilityremains somewhat high. Thus, perhaps a quarter of the populationin 2050 will be Hispanic.

The Asian population will grow more rapidly than theLatino but will remain smaller, will remain smaller than the blackpopulation into the foreseeable future.

What about these population projection trends? Let mesuggest that there are now some pervasive social and demographicprocesses that call for a cautious interpretation of thoseprojections. You're on a Presidential Advisory Committee on race,serving at the very time that the meaning and measurement of raceare undergoing change.

Three processes, in addition to immigration,fertility, and mortality, strongly influence the nation's futureracial composition. First, there is interracial marriage. If welook at young women who married in the 1980s and classify them byrace according to this scheme, we find that only about threepercent of white women who married had non-white husbands.

Among young black women who married, it was about fourpercent who had husbands who were not African-Americans. But fornative-born Hispanics, it was 35 percent who had husbands who werenot Hispanics. And for native-born Asian women, it was 54 percentwho married a husband who was not an Asian.

So interracial marriage is occurring with considerablefrequency now, and most of the demographers think it has beensharply increasing in the last few years.

Second, because of interracial marriage, there is nowa mixed race population with clear patterns of identity.

Using 1990 census data, we can look at children whoare in interracial marriages and see how their race compares tothat of their parents. Now, we're still a nation in whichoverwhelmingly children are living with parents of the same race. About 96 percent of all children live with a married couple whoserace is the same as the child's race.

But it is not the situation that children identifywith the race of their mother, or that in interracial marriages 50percent of the children are in the father's race or the mother'srace.

A capsule summary would be that about 39 percent ofthe children who have one Asian parent and one non-Asian parent areidentified as Asian. The other percent -- 61 percent -- areidentified as non-Asian. For children who have one white parentand 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 parentand one non-black parent, we find 60 percent of the children areidentified as black. For children who have one Hispanic parent andone non-Hispanic parent, it is 65 percent of the children who areidentified as Hispanic.

So interracial marriages strongly influence thecomposition of the population. Marriages involving whites andAsians have fewer children who are marked down as white or Asianthan you might expect. Marriages involving Hispanics and blackshave proportionately more than a 50/50 distribution of children.

Third, there is the important issue in theclassification of people by race. How will this be done? Whatcategories will be used? Can a person claim membership in morethan one race?

In 1990, the census asked a race question first, andthen a question about Spanish origin, and then a question aboutancestry or national origin. Working with those data from the 1990census, we can estimate that upwards of seven percent of thepopulation identified themselves as mixed in race if we considerHispanic to be equivalent to a race for these statistical purposes.

There were more than three million people who saidthey were white by race but American Indian by ancestry. Therewere more than a quarter million who said they were black by racebut European ancestry. There were 100-and-some thousand who saidthey were white by race but African-American by ancestry, and so ondown the line. Clearly, given the options to report things thatlook like more than one origin, many people did so in 1990.

Plans for the enumeration of 2000 call for asking theSpanish origin question first and then presenting all individualswith a list of 13 races. They will be told that they can check allof the races that apply.

Now, in pretest, it turns out that a small proportionof people, perhaps two percent, will identify with more than onerace. But we don't know what will happen in the year 2000. We canprobably predict it will be more than two percent who identify withmore than one race. How will those people be categorized forvarious purposes? We don't know.

Furthermore, we don't know what proportion of thepeople who answer the Spanish origin question saying they areMexicans, Cubans, or Puerto Ricans will omit the race question andwhat they will do.

This is time for a conclusion. If I had a lot moretime, I would make two more points about our racial change in theUnited States. One is that racial change is occurring in someparts of the United States quite rapidly but very slowly in otherparts of the United States.

Governor Kean, in your state, racial change isoccurring because of the immigration and the diversity of theimmigration flows. Governor Winter, in Mississippi, it's occurringmuch less rapidly than in New Jersey because there isn't a largeimmigration flow. And so there is a national story to be told, butthe national story at local areas is extremely different.

I have one figure in here showing the immigrantpopulation as a proportion of the state's total in 1990. Therewere only 13 states and the District of Columbia that had above thenational average of eight percent foreign born. So we have a greatswath of the midwest and a large part of the inner part of thesouth where racial change is occurring very, very slowly comparedto the rest of the nation. Similarly, there are about eight largemetropolitan areas that are getting the lion's share of theimmigrants.

The other comment I was going to make is that racialchange occurs across the age structure, starting primarily at thebottom. So it's the schools and the entering workers in the laborforce, they will be much more diverse with regard to their racialcomposition than the population collecting Social Security checks.

Let me conclude. If the Census Bureau had madeprojections a century ago, at the end of the 19th century, theywould have made separate projections for Anglo-Saxons, for theIrish, for Slavic people, for Italians, and for the group thencalled Negroes. Indeed, the national origin groups at that timewere often referred to as races.

Today those projections would look ridiculous, sincehigh rates of interethnic and interreligious marriage have produceda white population that is hardly divided by ethnicity of ancestry. The projections they may have made for the black population mightlook more reasonable today.

Are we making a similar mistake now when we assumethat 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 identificationproduce a population very different from the projections that I'vedescribed 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 aretaking place, and also with the challenges that result from thosechanges, particularly as they might affect education or economicactivities.

Is there anyone who has a question? Governor Kean?

MEMBER KEAN: Yes. I just have one very briefquestion. I have always read that the birth rate is also afunction of income, that if the income goes up the birth rate goesdown. I assume that's not -- the assumption here is that theincome levels will stay the same or just in -- you weren't able tofigure that out?

DR. FARLEY: There is a good deal of debate amongeconomists and demographers about how income affects the birthrate. I think right now there are several very strong downwardpressures on the birth rate in the United States. Age at marriageis advancing, the proportion of women who are married is declining,male wages are decreasing, female opportunities for women in thelabor market are increasing, so these projections vary in theirassumptions but most of the projections assume the birth rates willeventually imply about 1.8 or 1.9 children per woman.

Of course, demographers in 1945 and '46, none of themsaw the baby boom and the tremendous acceleration of birth ratesthat occurred right after World War II. So we may be just aserroneous in saying we are on the track of low fertility in theUnited States.

MEMBER COOK: Can you clarify just one thing in termsof the African-American population and the reason it will notincrease as rapidly as the Asian and the Latino? Is it because ofhaving been here more than one or two generations? Is that yourtheory?

DR. FARLEY: Reverend Cook, it's primarily because ofthe immigration flow. The immigration flow now includes a verylarge volume of Latinos and Asians. Compared to the past, thereare relatively many African-Americans coming to the United States,but African-Americans are a very small component of the immigrationflow compared to Latinos and Asians.

And as you know, in the Bronx there is a largepopulation that -- how will they identify themselves on the census,the Dominicans and other Spanish-speaking individuals who would, inmany parts of the United States, be identified as African-Americans? Interesting question.

MEMBER OH: Could you speak to the Native Americanpopulation, where that fits into this picture?

DR. FARLEY: Ms. Oh, I can speak a bit to the NativeAmerican population. The demographic evidence is that a very highproportion of American Indians have married non-American Indiansthroughout this century, so there is a question of how doindividuals with American Indian backgrounds identify themselves.

In the 1980 census, when the ancestry question wasfirst asked, there were six million people who said they were whiteby race but American Indian by ancestry. And given patterns ofintermarriage, that is entirely plausible.

The American Indian population is different from mostother groups in that there are many tribes with official registriesand fairly strong rules about who can identify with those tribalgroups, and for the most part those tribal counts are smaller thancensus counts.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Thanks very much --

DR. FARLEY: Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: -- Dr. Farley. That was verystimulating, very interesting, and I wish we had more time to raisesome questions, particularly about the implications of thesedemographic changes. But perhaps later on we'll have anopportunity to discuss it further.

We must move on, and I am very delighted to presentDr. Lawrence Bobo, who is a professor of sociology and African-American studies at Harvard University. Before this year, he wasfor a number of years professor of sociology and director of theCenter for Research on Race, Politics, and Society, at theUniversity of California at Los Angeles.

Dr. Bobo is widely known for his remarkable book whichhas recently been revised and updated. The book is entitled"Racial Attitudes in the United States: Trends andInterpretations." That book has been the leading book on the wholequestion of attitudes, racial attitudes, for all of the years sinceit was published in 1985.

Once more, we had the opportunity to work together onearlier projects, and particularly on "Common Destiny," where weworked some years ago.

This presentation of Professor Bobo's will focus onpolling data and the impact of polling data on -- the way in whichpolling data reflects attitudes and actions based on race. Following his presentation, if we have time, we want to have somequestions.

Larry?

DR. BOBO: Thank you very much, John Hope.

I want to thank the other panel members also forinviting me here today.

My task, in a sense, is to answer the question ofwhether America is moving toward becoming a genuinely color blindsociety or remains a society deeply polarized by race. Studies ofracial attitudes in the U.S. present a difficult puzzle in responseto this question.

On the one hand, several studies emphasize thesteadily 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, relativesecurity, and potentially growing influence of the black middleclass.

On the other hand, there is evidence of persistentnegative stereotyping of racial minorities, evidence of widelydivergent views of the extent and importance of racialdiscrimination to modern race relations, and evidence of deepeningfeelings of pessimism about race relations, particularly in theblack community.

These more pessimistic attitudinal trends arereinforced again by such tangible indicators as the persistence ofthe 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 theperceptions that we are all aware of.

By way of foreshadowing what is to come, let me saythat we now have a deeply rooted national consensus on the idealsof racial equality and integration. These high ideals founder,however, on differences in preferred levels of integration. Theyfounder on sharp racial differences and beliefs about racialdiscrimination. They founder on the persistence of negative racialstereotypes, and they sometimes result in policy stagnation andmutual misunderstanding.

Although America has turned away from the Jim Crowracism of the past, in many ways it heads into an uncertain future. This initiative, and the dialogue it is designed to encourage, willhelp enormously in pushing that uncertainty toward positiveresolution.

The single clearest trend in studies of racialattitudes has involved a steady and sweeping movement towardendorsing the principles of racial equality and integration. Whenmajor national assessments of racial attitudes were first conductedin the 1940s, clear majorities of white Americans advocated that webe a society that segregated its schools, neighborhoods, and publictransportation; that practiced job discrimination against African-Americans; and that drew a sharp line against the possibility ofmixed or interracial marriages.

Thus, in the early 1940s, 68 percent of whiteAmericans in national surveys expressed the view that black andwhite school children should go to separate schools. Fifty-fourpercent felt that public transportation should be segregated, and54 percent felt that whites should receive preference over blacksin access to jobs.

By the early 1960s, each of these attitudes haddeclined substantially, so much so that they were actually droppedfrom ongoing surveys. The issue of integrated schooling remainedmore divided, however, but the trend has been equally steady. Thus, by 1995, fully 96 percent of white Americans in nationalsurveys expressed the view that white and black school childrenshould be going to the same schools.

Three clarifications about this basic transformationof principles and norms. First, there is some variation acrossdomains of life in the degree of endorsement of the principle ofracial equality and integration. In general, the more public andimpersonal the arena, the greater the evidence of movement towardendorsing these goals. Thus, support for unconstrained access tohousing 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 willbegin to give you some idea of, is that willingness to allowracially mixed marriages still encounters some resistance, with onein five whites as recently as 1990 actually willing to support lawsthat would ban such marriages, and an even higher fraction, as thesecond line in the figure shows, still personally disapproving ofsome marriages.

Second, African-Americans have long rejectedsegregation. Although the available pool of data for tracing long-term trends in the views of African-Americans is much more limitedthan that available about white attitudes, it is clear that theblack population has overwhelmingly favored integrated schools andneighborhoods and desired equal access to employment opportunity.

Third, the positive trend on these principles acrossthe domains of schools, public transportation, jobs, housing,politics, and even intermarriage, is steady and unabated, despiteintense discussion of the possibility of a "racial backlash" in the1960s in response to black protests, or in the 1970s in response toschool busing efforts in the implementation of affirmative action,or even more recently in the wake of the events such as the riotsin Los Angeles in 1992.

The support for principles of racial equality andintegration has been sweeping and robust -- so much so that it isreasonable to describe it as a change in the fundamental norms withregard to race.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to infer from thetremendous positive change on principles of equality that eitherpublic policy or the texture of day-to-day life for most Americanswould quickly come to mirror this apparent consensus. Consider first the issue of integrating neighborhoodsand schools. It is clear that numbers matters, as the secondfigure in your handout shows. When surveys ask whites about theirwillingness to live in integrated areas, or to send their ownchildren to integrated schools, as the proportions of blacks rise,the willingness to enter that situation falls.

Surveys have documented a steady increase in theopenness to both residential and school integration, so much sothat almost no whites object to having a black neighbor or tosending their own children to an integrated school. But objectionsrise considerably as the proportion of minority students grows.

The meaning of integration also differs for blacks andwhites. It is clear that most whites prefer to live inoverwhelmingly white neighborhoods, even if open to having a smallnumber of blacks in their community. On the other hand, blacksprefer to be present in substantial numbers -- numbers large enoughto be uncomfortable in the eyes of many whites, if our data is tobe believed, and impractical to accomplish on a large scale basis.

With respect to public policy issues, we are all awarethat there have been long-standing debates over equal opportunitypolicies and affirmative action. The trend data suggests thatthere is a significant substantive division in opinion. Programsthat are compensatory in nature, that aim to equip minorities to bemore effective competitors, or that engage in special outreach andrecruitment efforts, are reasonably popular.

Policies that call for explicit racial preferenceshave long been unpopular with the use of quotas rejected by whitesand blacks alike. The point is there is no singular view onaffirmative action. The policies themselves cover a range ofstrategies -- so does opinion -- as the next two figures in a wayare intended to show you, and to also emphasize that there areimportant racial group differences in opinion. And to illustratethat I draw on data from surveys recently conducted a couple ofyears back in the Los Angeles area.

They illustrate that blacks, but also Latinos, tend tosupport affirmative action type policies whether aimed at improvingtraining and the competitive resources of minority group members,or even in the case of calling for special preferences in hiringand promotion. Although a clear majority of whites support themore compensatory type policies, it falls below majority supportwhen one turns to more preferential types of policies.

A major piece of the puzzle behind the limits tointegration and to social policy with respect to race lies in theproblem of anti-minority stereotypes. There is evidence thatnegative racial stereotypes of minorities, especially of blacks andLatinos, remain common. There is also evidence that minoritygroups themselves stereotype one another, though the story hereappears more complicated.

In a major national survey conducted in 1990, wellover 50 percent of white Americans rated blacks and Latinos asbeing less intelligent. Similar proportions rated blacks andLatinos as being prone to violence, and well over two-thirds ratedblacks and Latinos as actually preferring to be welfare dependent.

One example of such patterns is shown in the nextfigure. Substantial fractions of white Americans in this samplerated blacks and Latinos as less intelligent, preferring to liveoff welfare, and as hard to get along with socially. Research doessuggest, however, that these types of stereotypes differ inimportant ways from the views that were prevalent in the past.

First, they are much more likely today to beunderstood as the product of environmental and group culturaltraditions than was true in the past. In the past, they wereunequivocally taken as the product of natural endowment.

Second, there is growing evidence that many whites areaware of these traditional negative stereotypes -- anyone inAmerican culture would be -- but personally reject the negativestereotype and its implications.

The problem is that in many face-to-face interactionsthe old cultural stereotype controls perception and behavior in theinstant. The end result is bias and discrimination.

In many ways, the centerpiece of the modern racialdivide comes in the evidence of sharply divergent beliefs about thecurrent level, effect, and very nature of discrimination. Blacksand Latinos, and many Asian-Americans as well, feel it and perceiveit in most domains of life. Many whites acknowledge that somediscrimination remains, yet tend to downplay its contemporaryimportance. The next figure gives an example of these perceptions.

However, minorities not only perceive morediscrimination, they see it as more institutional in character. Many whites tend to think of discrimination as either mainly anhistorical legacy of the past or as the idiosyncratic behavior ofan isolated bigot.

In short, to white America, those who beat AbnerLouima constitute a few bad apples. To African-Americans, theyrepresent the tip of the iceberg. White America tends to regardthe Texaco tapes as shocking. To black America, the tapes merelyreflect the ones who got caught.

It is difficult to overestimate, I believe, theimportance of this sharp divide over the understanding andexperience of racial discrimination to the current racial impasse.

In many corners, there is a feeling of pessimism aboutthe state of race relations. A 1997 survey conducted by the JointCenter for Political and Economic Research found that only two infive blacks rated race relations in their community as excellent orgood, and that more than one in five rated race relations as infact poor. In contrast, 59 percent of whites rated local racerelations as excellent or good, though better than one in 10 ratedthem as poor.

The results of a recent Gallup survey are in somerespects more pessimistic. There roughly a third of blacks andwhites described race relations as having gotten worse in the pastyear. What is more, 58 percent of blacks and 54 percent of whitesexpressed the view that relations between blacks and whites willalways 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 aswell. Among blacks, the national black politics survey conductedin 1993 found that 86 percent of African-Americans agreed with thestatement that "American society just hasn't dealt fairly withblack people."

Fifty-seven percent of African-Americans rejected theidea that American society has provided them a fair opportunity toget ahead in life, and 81 percent agreed with the idea thatAmerican society owes black people a better chance in life than wecurrently have.

In the next figure, a major survey of Los AngelesCounty residents, we asked these opinions across the rainbow, andyou see those numbers arrayed before you. Thus, for example, 64percent of Latinos in L.A. County and 42 percent of Asians agreedwith the idea that their respective groups were owed a betterchance in life.

These two groups, in between the very high sense ofdeprivation, observe among African-Americans and the essentiallynon-existent feelings of deprivation tied to race observed amongwhites.

The concern over cynicism is acute for two reasons. First, there are signs that the feelings of alienation anddeprivation are greatest in an unexpected place -- among the blackmiddle class, especially so among well-educated high-earningAfrican-Americans.

Second, there is a concern that these feelings ofalienation and deprivation may be contributing to a weakeningcommitment for priority placed on the goal of racial integration. Among the potentially discouraging signs in this regard are arecent significant rise, as the next figure shows, in the number ofAfrican-Americans who think it is time to form a separate nationalpolitical party.

The 1993 national black politics survey showed thatthis figure was up to 50 percent, rising substantially from 30percent where it had been in 1984. In addition, African-Americanscontinue to feel a strong connection between the fate of the groupas a whole and that of the individual African-American -- in fact,increasingly so.

To wrap up, the glass is half full or the glass ifhalf empty, depending upon what one chooses to emphasize. If onecompares the racial attitudes prevalent in the 1940s with thosecommonly observed today, it is very easy to be optimistic.

A nation once comfortable as a deliberatelysegregationist and racially discriminatory society has not onlyabandoned that view but positively endorses the goal of racialintegration and equal treatment. There is no sign whatsoever ofretreat from this ideal, despite many events that commentatorsthought 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 ina somewhat uncomfortable place. We have high ideals, but opennessto very limited amounts of integration at the personal levelremains. There is political stagnation over some types ofaffirmative action. Quite negative stereotypes of racialminorities persist, and a wide gulf in perceptions regarding theimportance of racial discrimination remains.

The level of miscommunication and misunderstanding is,thus, easy to comprehend.

The positive patterns in attitude and belief haveimportant parallels in more concrete social trends. Two examples. Matching the broad shift in attitudes on the principle ofresidential integration and openness to at least small amounts ofreal racial mixing in neighborhoods is borne out in demographicdata showing modest national declines in racial residentialsegregation in most metropolitan areas and in the growingsuburbanization of blacks, Latinos, and Asians.

In addition, the greater tolerance for interracialmarriages, including black-white marriages, is mirrored in thesignificant rise in the number of such unions, as Dr. Farley'spresentation indicated.

Is it possible to change attitude? The record ofchange that I have reviewed makes it plain that attitudes canchange 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 problemsout there. Many Americans, for example, hold inaccurate beliefsabout the relative size of racial minority groups and about suchsocial conditions as differences in level of welfare dependency. So information will help.

However, education and informational campaigns aloneare not enough to do the job that remains ahead. Attitudes aremost likely to change when the broad social conditions and the sortof discourse we have about them that create and reinforce theseoutlooks change and when the push to make such changes comes froma united national leadership that speaks with moral conviction ofpurpose. That is, it is also essential to speak to joblessness andpoverty in the inner city in concrete ways, to failing schools inconcrete ways, and to myriad forms of racial bias anddiscrimination that people of color often experience but have notyet effectively communicating to many of their fellow whiteAmericans.

To pose the question directly, are we moving toward acolorblind society or toward deepening racial polarization? America is not yet a colorblind society. We stand uncomfortably ata point of having defeating Jim Crow racism but unsure of where toturn in the future.

As a people, we feel quite powerfully the tug; indeed,the exhortation, of Dr. King's dream to become a nation thatembodies the ideals of equality and integration. We appear to beat a point of uncertainty, misunderstanding, and reassessment.

I think it is important to seize upon the steadycommitment to these ideals of racial equality and integration. Therisk of failing to do so is that we may worsen an already seriousracial divide.

This initiative in a sense is not merely the projectof the panel. It's not merely the project of the President. It'sa project for all of the American people. And it's important thatwe pursue it to its positive conclusion.

Thank you.

(Applause.)

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I want to thank Larry Bobo for hispaper, particularly the good news with respect to the broadconsensus on principles of economic opportunity and racialintegration. There's some bad news in there, too, but we know whatthat is.

It's obvious from what you've said and from what wesaid here earlier that the hopeful note depends on the nextgeneration, our younger generation, where they will come down, howthey will come down on this whole question.

And it's somewhat like the President said in LittleRock, that we have to decide. Particularly young people have todecide. And they will either move in the direction where we willbecome a shining example for the rest of the world or a stunningrebuke to the world of tomorrow.

I think that this information is very salient to whatwe'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 thesituation, maybe a few bad apples create any of the problems. And,yet, the blacks would see it as institutionalized. And so myquestion is one of terminology.

Do you think that there's maybe another term that weneed to gravitate towards, rather than colorblindness, that's maybemore an active-type term? Because it seems like that in your dataand also in observations, that a lot of people who would considerthemselves or groups who would consider themselves colorblind arenot perceived by minorities as being what they would like us to seeor what they need in order to unravel this institutionalizedobservation.

DR. BOBO: That is a very difficult question. And inmany ways, it goes to the heart of how we develop and sustain adialogue in which we're really capable of communicating to oneanother, given often such sharp differences in our beginningassumptions, kind of what we take to be the baseline.

The way I often try to put it to students in my classis that it's important to enter such discussions with the strongpresumption that everyone is of good will. But in America, givenwhat we know about race, no one is innocent. And it's thatpresumption of being innocent that I think we have to get around.

That's a hard part, but that's the issue of keepingour eye on the amount of discrimination that is still out there inthe housing market, in access to jobs, and encounters in everydaypublic 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 noneof us, sadly, are innocent.

MEMBER COOK: Dr. Bobo, thank you for the work you'vedone. I wonder, what do you hope will happen as a result of yourwork and your research and your book?

DR. BOBO: What I hope is that people have before themwhat are common patterns and then they pose for themselves thequestion: Well, how is this playing out in my world, and whathappens 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 wherethe supervisor or the person doing the interviewing is a whitemale, they're both likely to start off with a set of assumptionsthat make that interaction a dangerous one, a one fraught with theperil of miscommunication and falling apart.

But if we're both mindful of entering the situationwith that risk present, I think we're much better able to manage itthan in a situation where neither side acknowledges the assumptionsthat are being brought to it.

So I hope that it serves that sort of informationalpurpose to stimulating the dialogue along and, in addition, tomapping out the fact that these attitudes do change.

People often think about attitudes as being fixed andimmutable and just rigid. They're just things that we can'tintervene 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 andcircumstances under which people live, who they have contact with,clarify the mutuality of interests and goals, then those folkwayswill come along as well.

MEMBER COOK: Thank you.

MEMBER WINTER: Dr. Bobo, what are the implications ofthis huge increase in the number of African Americans who want aseparate black political party? And what happened in that 5-yearperiod 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 RodneyKing and the exoneration initially of the officers in the SimiValley trial and then the explosion in Los Angeles that followed. That really sharply crystallized deep questions about America'scommitment 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 broadgoal of integration, of being full participants in Americansociety, but there is this state of incipient pessimism out therethat, well, there's some renegotiation that has to go on.

There's some internal thinking and communication thathas to go on given where we stand at the moment and the repeatedfrustrations that we seem to be encountering, perhaps bestsymbolized by the recent turn against affirmative action in highereducation in statewide in California.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I want to thank both ReynoldsFarley and Lawrence Bobo for these very pertinent, significant,important statements that bear so directly on what we areundertaking here.

The information which you provided certainly willundergird some of the positions and activities that we will betaking in the immediate future. They're precisely the kind ofinformation 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 ExecutiveDirector has some announcements to make. Before that, though, letme 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 thecommunity, here and abroad and in other parts of the country. Youhave come here to observe this. And we deeply appreciate yourpresence. We hope you will be coming back this afternoon and thatyou will come whenever we meet. Thank you very much.

Judy Winston has some announcements to make.

DIRECTOR WINSTON: I'd like to indicate that themembers of the Advisory Board will be available briefly just beforelunch to the front. And the Board will be available in theChairman's Room, which is to the left as you go out of this roomand 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 15minutes. We plan to resume the discussion with a new panel at1:15.

(Whereupon, a luncheon recess was taken at 12:00noon.)

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 delayin the meeting. We will now, I hope, come to order. And we willproceed with our business for the afternoon.

We have three panelists to carry on and to build onwhat we learned this morning: first, Dr. James Jones, Professor ofPsychology at the University of Delaware and Director of MinorityFellowship Program for the American Psychological Association. Hiswork is well-known, not only among psychologists, but even amongsome lay people.

His book, Prejudice and Racism, which was publishedsome time ago and the second edition of which was published thisyear by McGraw-Hill, and his presentation are based upon, I hope,some of the findings that he shared with us in a conference inChicago during the recent meeting of the American PsychologicalAssociation. 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. Andthanks to the Board for giving me this opportunity to talk with youabout these ideas about race.

I will say at the outset that I share your excitementin this opportunity that's been provided by the Initiative. And Ithink it is, without question, an historic occasion that the leaderof the free world would see fit to call us to this action. I thinkit's profoundly important, and I'm privileged to be part of it.

Race has been one of the most enduring divisive socialand psychological phenomena since the founding of this country. Asthe Twentieth Century enjoys its last moments, the issue of racecontinues to reverberate in every facet of our society.

W. E. B. DuBois challenged this century in 1903, whenhe claimed the problem of the Twentieth Century was the problem ofthe 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 oneperson's or faction's fault. Rather, it is the result of the deepand pervasive penetration of race into our collective psyche andsocial institutions.

We struggle for liberty, for equality, and have madegreat strides, but our founding fathers also believed thatfraternity was a core value for this nation.

We have insisted without compromise on liberty forindividuals. We have aspired to equality without regard to skincolor and try to make our laws and our customs reflect that value.

But race keeps us from success. We have not worked ashard or as well towards fraternity, which in the aggregate iscommunity. We have been stymied by our racial differences becausewe have not figured out how to get on the same page when everyonehas either no book or a different one.

I believe President Clinton's Initiative on Race is aclear acknowledgement that true community cannot be achieved inAmerica unless we bridge the racial divides.

There are two perspectives that have voice incontemporary society. One argues that focusing on race is exactlythe wrong approach to national unity. By granting race anysignificance, as few suggest, we give credence to its divisive anddestructive influence. Only by ignoring it or at least notconsciously acknowledging it in any meaningful way, the progress inrace relations we have made this century will continue. Focusingon race, as few asserts, hinders this progress.

William Bennett once told a group of black children inAtlanta on the anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther King that,quote, "People of good will will disagree about the means, but Idon't think anybody disagrees about the ends. I think the bestmean to achieve the ends of a colorblind society is to proceed asif we were a colorblind society. I think the best way to treatpeople is as if their race did not make any difference."

A second view argues that we must focus on racebecause not to do so fails to meet the need for redress created byhistoric racial biases. The need to focus on race was clearlyexpressed by the late Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, whomade the following observation in his opinion on the Bache case in1978, and he made the following observation, "A race-consciousremedy is necessary to achieve a fully integrated society, one inwhich the color of a person's skin will not determine theopportunities available to him or her. If ways are not found toremedy under-representation of minorities in the professions, thecountry can never achieve a society that is not race-conscious. Inorder to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There's no other way. In order to treat persons equally, we musttreat them differently."

We are faced with the question of whether the path toa fairer and more unified America can best be achieved by ignoringrace or by staring it in the face and defeating its most sinisterand insidious influences on our society and our psyches.

It is my belief -- and there is ample evidence tosupport it -- that race continues to matter in ways that may bemore subtle than those who would have us ignore race understand.

I will share with you today some of the ways racematters and some of the evidence that illustrates this conclusion. I also acknowledge that by focusing on race, we run the risk ofexaggerating the differences we attach to it and perhaps misleadingourselves about the degree to which it affects us every day.

I am persuaded by two of my students, who are bothwhite, both young, and have experienced race in their everydaylives. One student grew up in a small rural town in Pennsylvaniaand described how life in his small high school provided dailyhassles for the one black student in the school. Worse, it broughtdaily insults and crude and lewd racial jokes that created an imageof black people that perpetuates a stereotype of their hostility,stupidity, and laziness.

Before he had even seen a black person, he reported,he had the idea that a black guy would stick him up and rob him. He even thought that black people on TV were just acting and whenthey went home, they acted just like the stereotype.

A second student from Long Island, New York reportedthat she had many black and white friends. However, she foundherself continually anxious that she would betray some hiddenprejudice toward them. She didn't feel any such thing but was notsure that she was without prejudice. She often felt anxious thatsome of her white friends who were perhaps less conscious of racethan she would be more inclined to make that sort of comment.

For both of these honest and well-meaning students,race is an issue.

It is a daunting task you face engaging the nation ina focus on race. In our nation's history, race has always beenused as a marker of differences and valued attributes andcapacities.

Race provides a convenient and simple means toestablish who's on top, in the middle, and on the bottom, who isdeserving and who is not. Having made that distinction, we maythen rationalize and explain why citizens of this country aresegregated in certain strata, behave in ways that we findunwholesome, and need to be treated differently.

"Race" is a word that has divided and denigrated. Andnow by confronting it, talking about it, we hope to heal, to unite. I applaud the President. I applaud you, the Board, for taking thison.

Community is not something you create by executiveorder. It is not something that will happen because we want it to. It can only happen when people find that they have common groundand are better off because they cooperate than if they don't.

To make that happen across the racial divides thatexist in this country, we have to take it on, shine a light on it,bridge the gaps, and figure out how to make our institutionsoperate as supported, not antagonistic accomplices to the communitywe seek.

There are four points I wish to make. I'll state themand then develop them in more detail. The first point is that raceis not so much something that resides in the genes of a group ofpeople but in the social attitudes and beliefs of a society. Raceis social, not a biological construct.

Second, the significance of race rests in itscumulative influence on the psyches and social arrangements of anation who cannot isolate and segregate its influence in a givenera, a given belief, or a given person.

Third, race is a term who use and impact is far moreconsequential to those who have been targets of hostile actionsthan those who have perpetrated them or been the incidentalbeneficiaries of their consequences.

And, fourth, social/psychological research clearlyshows that ignoring race in a race-neutral or colorblind way may doa disservice to the targets of racial bias as well as to those whopresume themselves to be free of racial bias.

Let me begin with Point Number 1. Race is social, nota biological concept. One of the reasons why race is so divisiveis that it is associated with biological differences. Biologicaldifferences are thought to be hard-wired and mutable and todescribe some essential quality of people who are classified byrace.

The Swedish taxonomist Lenais described thepsychological as well as the physical characteristics on which heclassified American Indians, Europeans, Asians, and Africans. Byhis account, Indians are tenacious and ruled by custom, Europeansare haughty and ruled by opinion, Asians are inflexible and ruledby rights, and Africans are indulgent and ruled by caprice. Thesedefining characteristics or attributes are not only assumed to betrue of members of these racial groups but take on differentialvalue within the cultural system.

Race gives value and takes it away. It inflames asituation because it harkens to the days when it was widelybelieved that racial differences were biological and accounted forsuperior and inferior human capabilities.

American Indians were considered savage, wanting ofcivilization. Their salvation in this view was education, which inthe aim of civilizing them taught them to reject their culturalheritage.

Who Indians were as a race was defined by the UnitedStates government and inculcated in Indian schools. I'll give youan example of that, teaching, in a minute.

In contemporary times, basketball announcer BillyPacker referred to Alan Iverson as a, quote, "tough monkey." Almost immediately calls came in to the Capital Center, to CBScalling for Packer's removal. Why? Because a monkey invokesbiology: apelike, primitive. We Americans are stillhypersensitive to any reference to biology when it comes to race. The fact is that there is no biological basis to race that ismeaningful.

An American Association for the Advancement of Sciencepanel including Nobel Laureate scientists noted, quote, "From abiological viewpoint, the term 'race' has become so encumbered withsuperfluous and contradictory meanings, erroneous concepts, andemotional reactions that it has almost completely lost its utility. It is hoped that the understanding of the biological nature ofpopulations," their preferred term, "will eventually lead to theabandonment of the term 'race.'" So it's interesting that we arehaving Initiative on Race when scientists say we should obventionthe concept. And I will return to that.

An important question for us is: Why does racepersist given its terribly divisive and denigrating nature and itsscientific inutility? It persists because it has a meaningful andprominent place in our cultural history. Race helps us to makesense of who we are, where we have come from, and even where we aregoing. But the meaning of race is constructed from what we do,say, and think as a society. Just as we have created race by ouractions and deeds, we can uncreate it.

There is a strong push to replace the term "race" withthe term "ethnicity." The horror of race is its biologicalimplication and the association with biological heritability andthe immutability. The fixed nature of race is countered by theimmutable notion of ethnicity, a changing cultural identity that ismore fluid and under greater personal control.

There is merit in the notion of ethnicity. It willtake more than a semantic end run to eliminate race from our mindsand our hearts. Perhaps a conversation on race could have as itsmain agenda the negotiation of the demise of race as a meaningfuland acceptable way to think about Americans.

Second, the significance of race rests in itscumulative influence on the psyches and social arrangements of thisnation who cannot isolate and segregate its influence in a givenera, a given belief, or in a given person.

Our history as a nation is to a significant degree aracialist history. By that I mean that race has been a belief, asymbol that stands for a value-based division of people in America.

As early as the framing of our Constitution, thedebate over the humanity of slaves of African descent surfaced inthe most basic process of representation. Southerners wanted tocount their slaves in the enumeration of their state populationsbecause their number would bring them a larger politicalrepresentation in Congress. The Northerners wanted slaves countedas property so that slave holders would pay their fair share ofproperty taxes.

In Federalist Paper Number 54, Alexander Hamiltonconsidered that a slave could not be 100 percent person and 100percent property. In one of many political compromises that servedthe political ends of white businessmen and politicians, slaveswere divested of two-fifths their humanity.

This degradation of persons of African descent enduresas the beginning of the systematic dehumanization of that group ofpeople who helped found this nation. That inhumanity, though, isnot just an unfortunate handling of a bad situation, slavery, butwas tied to beliefs and attitudes that we have not fully ridourselves of today.

Thomas Jefferson wrote a doctrine of the inalienablerights of man and, thus, championed perhaps the most singularexpression of the American ethos: individual liberties andfreedoms.

Yet, in his heart, this is what he believed, "Ingeneral, blacks' existence appears to participate more ofsensation, rather than reflection. In memory, they are equal towhites; in reason, much inferior. And in imagination, they aredull, tasteless, and anomalous. I advance it, therefore, that theblacks, whether originally a different race or made distinct bytime and circumstances, are inferior to whites." Will not a loverof natural history, then, excuse an effort to keep those in thedepartment of man as distinct as nature has formed them?

A belief about blacks and the proposition that racialsegregation is a valid; indeed, natural, of consequence law is asmuch a part of our cultural history as is the belief in theinalienable rights of man. Addressing the contemporary influencesof this historical aspect of our cultural history is part of oureducation.

It is not a far distance from this viewpoint andbelief to the sale of blacks on Wall Street. There is a picture ofa slave trade on Wall Street. And we can ask what percentage ofdehumanization is too much. It seems perhaps not a surprise, then,given this history, that in 1919 in East St. Louis, a man can beburned to death while his execution is mugged for the camera.

The excitement shown by these men, -- and I thinkthat's a chilling aspect of this photograph; the burning body isbad enough -- the excitement shown by these men is reversed by theugliness and disdain and hatred shown by these young people who areso offended by Ms. Elizabeth Eckford's determination of going topublic school, high school, in Little Rock.

In recent days, we learn the apology of the youngwoman shown here hurling invectim and venom at Ms. Eckford tellsanother important story. We are substantially influenced by thenorms, beliefs, and expectations to which we are socialized. Notto excuse her behavior, but race is bigger than individuals who actin the name of race.

You have seen this photograph often in recent days asPresident Clinton and the Little Rock Nine and the citizens ofLittle Rock recalled that time. For some, it was a celebration ofprogress. For others, it was a diversion from the real andcontinuing racial problems that still beset Little Rock.

American Indians were thought to be savage anduncivilized. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Henry Price expressedthis view in 1881 in the following terms, "Savage and civilizedlife cannot live and prosper on the same ground. One of the twomust die. To civilize them," American Indians, "which was onceonly a benevolent fancy, has now become an absolute necessity if wemean to save them." Such as there was interest in one America, itwas in terms that denigrated the value and culture of people ofcolor.

One of the biggest concerns among American Indianstoday is rethinking what education means. Repeatedly and with asense of cultural survival, Indian education begins with thepremise that American education for Indian people is genocidal.

The following photograph shows Indian students at theCarlisle Indian School. The next slide shows the questions from anexam of a student at Hampton Institute in Virginia in 1885.

The first question, "To what race do we all belong?" The exam answer, "The human race." "How many classes belong tothis race?" The exam answer, "There are five large classesbelonging to the human race." "Which are the first?" "The whitepeople are the strongest" is the answer. "Which is the next?" "The Mongolians, or yellows." "The next?" "The Ethiopian, orblacks." "Next?" "The Americans, or reds." "Tell me something ofthe white people." "The Caucasian is way ahead of all of the otherraces. More than any other race, he thought that somebody musthave made the Earth. And if the white people did not find thatout, nobody would ever know it. It is God who made the world." This is education.

We would claim that we would no longer find such athing in a classroom, but when do such effects dissipate in thecollective minds of Americans? Certainly this civilization/savagedistinction was not distinguished by the Western movies of the1950s and 1960s. Although contemporary disagreements about thenicknames of sports teams have led to many changes, we are a longway from an understanding of Indian life that supports a unifiedAmerica.

The following slide offers another image that persistsin our collective psyches. President Franklin Roosevelt signedExecutive Order 9066 on February 19th, 1942 that gave authority tothe Secretary of Defense to exclude all persons, cetaceans andaliens, from designated areas to provide security against sabotageor espionage. American citizens are rounded up and taken by trainto San Anita Racetrack to be deployed to interment camps.

The next slide, perhaps as symbolic an image of racismas there is, the swastika is hateful and represents the lowest ofhuman ugliness.

These are images of America. These are images thatmust be confronted and incorporated into a unified America. Wecannot ignore them. We cannot deny them meaning in contemporarylife because they happened a long time ago. There is a cumulativeconsequence of race in this society that challenges our fundamentalnotions of fairness as well as personal responsibility.

We are influenced by our past in ways that are notalways obvious. It is too much to claim that four centuries ofbigotry and bias, institutional deprivation, and culturaloppression were eliminated by an act of Congress.

We have been on a constant course of improvingopportunities, access, and possibility across centuries. We havenot by any means undone the legacy of racism.

At the Unvaried of Delaware, I teach a course on thepsychological perspectives of black Americans. Students arerequired to make a class presentation in groups of two. A coupleof years ago, a white student asked the only black student in theclass to be her partner. The black woman declined, stating thatshe did not accept the white student's motivation for asking her. The black woman perceived the white student as curious about her. She did not want to enter into a partnership that made her a guineapig.

The white woman was crushed. She might have beenoffended but was, instead, devastated that her sense of fairness,objectivity, and decency was not only challenged but rejected. Sheburst into tears.

This had never happened before. And the only thing Icould think to tell them was, quote, "This is not about the two ofyou," unquote. This divergence in understanding and meaning couldbe traced to the troubled history of race in America.

In a sense, they were playing out the mistrust targetshave of racist oppressors. Moreover, they illustrated that simplyhaving good intentions is not enough in a society that is socharged with the distortions that our racial history has created.

It is my contention that we all live every day withthis cultural history and we should never assume that we canunderstand each other fully from the facts of our experience.

Our national conversation must try to unravel theseinfluences and reach a common ground that acknowledges thedivergence of experience, feelings, beliefs that come with ourdivergent racial experiences. An apology for slavery does littleto promote this understanding.

Third, "race" is a term whose use and impact are farmore consequential for those who have been the targets for hostileor discriminatory actions than those who have perpetrated them orbeen incidentally privileged by them.

In our society, the primary effect of race has been tomarginalize people who could be easily defined by racialcategories. One result of this marginalization is that one'sracial heritage is pitted against an American identity.

Consider the following interview of Jesse Jackson byMarvin Kalb on "Meet the Press" in 1984. This was Jackson's firstrun for the presidential nomination of the Democratic party, and hewas making a respectable showing in the polls.

Kalb, "The question is: Are you a black man whohappens to be an American running for the presidency or are you anAmerican who happens to be a black man running for the presidency?"

Jackson, "Well, I'm both an American and black at oneand the same time. I'm both of these."

Kalb, "What I'm trying to get at is something thataddresses the question no one seems able to grasp, and that is: Are your priorities deep inside yourself to the degree that anyonecould look inside himself those of a black man who happens to be anAmerican or the reverse?"

Jackson, "Well, I was born black in America. I wasnot born American in black," --

(Laughter.)

DR. JONES: -- which raises another issue about whatwe call ourselves, but maybe that will come up later. "You'reasking a funny kind of Catch-22 question. My interests arenational interests."

These are two perspectives to note here. From Kalb'sview, it seems that Jackson could not be both black and American atthe same time and in equal measure. One identity had to be primaryand one secondary.

We have created a conflict situation for many of ourcitizens of color by which their well-being is split into twohalves. America's image of race has dissected people of color. Ignoring race will not make them whole.

From Jackson's point of view, the challenge to be awholly integrated person whose racial or cultural heritage is notin opposite to but a contributing element of his American identityis one of the difficult and subtle psychological consequences ofhow race has been employed in America. Jackson's response to Kalbspeaks to this desire to be whole, to be one with oneself as wellas with the rest of society.

There is a flip side to this conflict. The majorityof Americans are advantaged in ways that may not reach theirconsciousness. It did reach the consciousness of one young whiteman, Joshua Solomon, who had an experience that very few peoplehave. He experienced his whiteness for 20 years, then by takingskin-altering medications became black. After only one week, youngSolomon abandoned his experiment.

He reported the following lesson from his experience,quote, "I have been white for 20 years, and I have always assumeda level of dignity and respect. No matter how much money I had inmy pocket, I could go into a store and be treated with respect. However, I realize that when I became a black man, all of that wentaway. I learned how much white privilege I enjoyed just by beingwhite."

While whites are generally privileged or at leastgiven the benefit of the doubt, too often persons of color aresimply doubted. Nat Hentoff described the following encounter oftwo young Latino men, American citizens returning to Philadelphiafrom vacation in Jamaica, "When James Garcia and Eberesto Vasquezreturned from Jamaica, they went to claim their luggage at NewarkAirport and were surrounded by Customs agents, put into separaterooms, and strip-searched.

"These searches revealed nothing illegal, and neitherdid a search of their luggage. Agents decided to X-ray James andEberesto and took them away to St. Francis Hospital in handcuffs tobe X-rayed. Shackled at the ankles and handcuffed to the beds, theX-rays were taken. Again, nothing illegal was found. Without somuch as an apology, they were returned to the airport and released.

"James Garcia asked the United States agents why theyhad been singled out. He was asked in return his nationality andage. He replied, 'Hispanic. And I'm 24, and my friend is 25.' The agent replied, 'Well, there you go.'"

Race matters in America. Its meaning hasconsequences, often harmful and usually troublesome. Research byCarmen Arroyo and Edward Zigler showed that the more adolescentsshied away from their racial identity, a concept they callracelessness, the better they did in school but the greater riskthey had for depression and poor mental health.

Embracing your racial and ethnic identity often putsyou in conflict with acceptance in broader American society,leading to a win-lose proposition. Our conversations on race mustconvert such win-lose propositions to win-win scenarios. There ismuch discussion on standards that must not be compromised by anyuse of race in decision-making in our schools or on the job.

Research by Claude Steele at Stanford has shown thata psychological state of stereotype vulnerability can explaindramatic decreases in test performance of both African Americansand women. Stereotype vulnerability refers to a disruptiveapprehension based on the fear that one will either verify or bejudged by a negative stereotype about one's racial group.

Steele and Aaronson tested this idea by having whiteand black subjects perform a very difficult test comprised of themost difficult items from the Graduate Record Exam. The test wasintroduced either as diagnostic or non-diagnostic of their trueability. Steele and Aaronson reasoned that only when the test wasthought to be diagnostic would it arouse stereotype vulnerability.

The next figure shows the result of performance underthe true conditions for black and white Stanford undergraduates. As the figure shows, when the tests were thought to benon-diagnostic, the right set of bars, of their ability, blackstudents performed just as well as whites. However, when theythought it might reveal their ability in a domain in which theirgroup is stereotypically not expected to do well, they did morepoorly than whites.

What is dramatically important about this study isthat by simply changing the context of the test, racial parody onperformance was obtained. Also indicative of the troubling meaningof race in our society, they found that having participants writedown their race prior to taking the non-diagnostic tests, whichshowed no racial differences, black participants then scored lowerthan whites.

The psychological process that leads to these findingsis fairly complex but arrests on the idea that the negativestereotype of your group may cause a level of apprehension thatinterferes with performance, even when the person themselves havehad success in the past. This finding underscores the perniciousand subtle effects race may have in our society.

What is perhaps the most important thing for you toconsider is that our assumptions that performances are due solelyto the ability or capacity of the performer may be wrongheaded. Weadopt standards based on the assumption that performance is anaccurate and reliable indication of a person's true ability. Butas this research shows, one's ability may be compromised by theinsinuation of race.

The more we seek to test the ability of our studentsand the less we understand about the racial factors beyond abilitythat affect their performance, the further they will be from aunified America.

The fourth point, social/psychological researchclearly shows that ignoring race in a race-neutral or colorblindway may do a disservice to the targets of racial bias as well asthose who presume themselves to be free of racial bias. The ideathat we must ignore race to get beyond it is a popular view thesedays, but people are treated differently. People are treateddifferently on account of race.

Social/psychological research demonstrates in studyafter study that race influences our most basic human responses. If we do not acknowledge that, if we do not believe that, we areignoring a very significant influence in our daily lives.

Next. It's a cartoon from the specialty of the NewYorker, "Let's just for a minute forget the fact that you'reblack." You look at that cartoon, and you wonder: To what extentis that person capable of forgetting the fact that he's black?

This is not about laws and government but about thedeep-seeded beliefs that affect us in ways silent and oftenunknown. Our racial expectations influence what we see in othersand what we feel inside. Moreover, these perceptions and feelingsaffect others with whom we interact. Race is a ubiquitous presencein our society.

There are numerous scientific studies that illustratevarious aspects of these racial effects. I'll describe brieflyfour of them: first, the general idea that expectations can causepoor performance.

Carl Word, Mark Zen, and Joe Cooper asked Princetonmale undergraduates to introduce several black and white highschool students and select one for their teams. These mixed highschool/college teams were expected to engage in some competitiveacademic gains.

The researchers found that Princeton men interviewedthe black students differently from the white students. Wheninterviewing black students, they sat further away on more of anangle, spoke less fluently, and terminated the interview sooner.

The authors next trained white Princeton men tointerview in a manner that reflected the differential racialpattern detected for white and for black students in the previousexperiment and then had them interview other white Princeton menfor a summer job.

The importance of this study is that white studentsare interviewing other white students. The interview stylefollowed either the white or the black pattern, but they'reinterviewing them as if they are black or white according to theirprevious work.

Independent judges who knew nothing of the interviewstyle variation rated the applicants. Results showed that thewhite applicants who were interviewed as if they were black werejudged to be less qualified.

The self-fulfilling prophecy suggests that wecommunicate our feelings, anxieties, or simple dislike to othersand, in so doing, we affect their behavior. Failing to realize howour own behavior has influenced theirs, we conclude confidentlythat we can draw objective conclusions about them. In this manner,we actually create the world that we expect. When it comes torace, we perpetually re-create the cultural notions of race in oureveryday interaction and encounters.

John Barge, Mark Chin, and Laura Barrows have done aseries of studies that indicate increased hostility reacts is aresponse to race. They showed that race affects basic expressionsof emotions. They suggest that thinking about a behavior canincrease the likelihood we will engage in it.

Just as trying not to think about something makes itmore difficult to expunge it from our minds, this research suggeststhat trying not to think about race may have the ironic consequenceof making race more salient.

Barge and colleagues suggest that race can prime us toact in ways that derive from or follow from our experience, notfrom our intentions. To show this, they had white participantsperform a very long and boring task of determining whether an arrayof circles on a computer screen consist of an odd or even number. This is a trivial task.

After 45 minutes and 130 trials, the computer flashedan error message that the data were lost and they would have to doit again. This is meant to evoke frustration. And a hidden cameracaptured their responses. Later judges rated them for hostility.

The experimenter came into the room, checked theequipment, told them they would have to start again, and ratedtheir hostility also. A critical variable, though, was whether ornot the participants had been subliminally exposed to black orwhite faces while they were performing that task.

The results in the next slide show that participantswho saw black faces, indicated by the dark bars, reacted with morehostility than those who saw white faces. That simple exposingthem to the racial image, a racial stereotype affected a legitimateemotional reaction to an event in their lives. Race matters at avery basic level of human response.

They followed that up by showing that having increasedthe level of hostility by focusing on these photographs, they thenhad them interact with another person and found that this personthey interacted with also became more hostile. So we have a chainof events that followed from simply being exposed to a heightenedracial response.

I'm almost done. Finally, in my last researchillustration, Rogers and Prestiss Dunn demonstrated that reactionsto a personal insult diverged with the race of the insulter. Participants were asked to use electric shock to train a subject inbiofeedback. Learners were either white or black, and half of bothraces insulted the participant. The degree to which theparticipants used a higher level of shock and held the shock buttondown longer indicated their aggression.

The next slide shows that when they were not insulted,which is the left set of facts, they were slightly less aggressivetoward black than white learners. But when they had been insulted,their aggression escalated significantly more toward the black andthe white learner. So there is latent -- and Dr. Dovidio will talkmore about this -- response, which is triggered by the simple factthat they were insulted.

Concerning the results of this research, you have toask what treating people as if their race made no difference means. We clearly know that race has been a central player in theevolution of America.

We are a different country because of the way race hasaffected us than we would have been had there never been slaves,never been Jim Crow, never been the Civil War, never been the1960s.

Race lingers in our minds and hearts. In a sense,race is heard to achieve. As Dr. Bobo said earlier, it is notpossible to achieve. We cannot be innocent.

I believe that the world looks different fromdifferent sides of racial divides. To approach the community ofone people in America, we must see the world from multiple sides. That is what a dialogue on race must be about.

There are plenty of social scientists who tell us howfar we have come and the best way to move further on the subject ofrace, but it seems to me that it is not up to others to tell uswhat matters and what doesn't.

That racism is over lies behind every social policy wepromulgate. I believe that we need to explore the depths of racein our psyche and try to understand the divergent perceptions, thepalpable anxiety and fears, the hopes, dreams, and expectations. And we should do this with honesty and humility.

By creating community, we can't create openconversation on race by executive declarations, but there are manypeople who are already talking and want to talk more. In spite ofthe fact that race opens wounds, talking about it is an importantway to create one America in the Twenty-First Century. Not to doso leaves unchallenged and unexamined the variety of ways in whichrace insinuates itself in our everyday life.

Let me summarize in very simple terms the points thatI have made. One, the historical legacy of race influences what wefeel and believe. Two, although race has no biological legitimacy,its demise cannot be asserted but must be negotiated by affectedparties. Three, subtle effects of race influence what we feel,think, believe, and how we act. And, four, race effects arecomplex and ubiquitous. Ignoring them is not an option.

I close with the haiku that I wrote to reflect one ofthe important reasons we have to have a conversation on race. "Iam color. And America is colorblind. So do you see me?"

(Applause.)

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Thank you very much, Dr. Jones.

I think we will save any questions we have until wehave these three presentations to make certain that we get allthree presentations in first.

I am pleased to present Jack Dovidio, who is a CharlesDana Professor of Psychology at Colgate University and a consultingeditor for Social Psychological Quarterly. He will speak onunderstanding contemporary racism: causes, consequences,challenges.

Dr. Dovidio?

DR. DOVIDIO: Thank you very much.

Basically today I am going to be talking aboutcontemporary forms of racism. As we heard this morning, the overtforms of racism Dr. Bobo make a very strong case have seemed tohave declined in fairly dramatic ways. The surveys and pollsclearly indicate that more white Americans today than ever beforeare committed to principles of fairness, justice, and equality.

We can attribute some of these declines in the overtracism, I believe, to the legislation of the 1960s, the 1970s,particularly the civil rights legislation, which clearly defineddiscrimination as being illegal and helped shape our views asAmericans of discrimination as being immoral, unfair as well. Sothis legislation I think really shaped our ideals and brought uscloser to the ideals of a society that is fair, just, and equal forall Americans.

What I'm going to talk about today, it's a very simplemessage that despite the significant decrease in old-fashioned,overt forms of racism, contemporary forms of bias continue toexist, they continue to pervade our society, and they continue toadversely affect the well-being of people of color in significantways.

Now, what is this contemporary racism? Well, thiscontemporary bias is subtle, rather than overt. And that's whatcharacterizes it and makes it different than the old-fashioned formof racism. One of the messages I want to communicate here isalthough the bias may be expressed in subtle ways, its consequencescan be severe.

Second of all, this subtle, contemporary bias isrooted in normal psychological processes. It's routed in processessuch as social categorization. That is, we tend to categorizepeople into groups, people who are like us and those who are notlike us, ingroups and outgroups and wes and theys.

Once we categorize people, we tend to value people inour own group more, and we tend to devalue people in other groups. This is normal. It happens cross-culturally. It happens almostautomatically.

One of the ways we categorize people is based on whatwe see. What we see almost instantaneously and automatically is aperson's race and a person's sex. And, not coincidentally, thisforms the basis of two very pervasive biases in our society.

Now, this view really is a different view than theold-fashioned view of racism. The old-fashioned view of racism wasthat racism is abnormal. It is a psychopathology. It's like acancer. And if we could just cut out those people who wereprejudice, we would solve all the problems of our society.

What this suggests is that if these are routed innormal processes, the normal, well-meaning people may likely beexhibiting the subtle form of bias. So it's a much more difficultand pervasive problem than the old-fashioned view led us tobelieve.

Because these are rooted in normal processes, thissubtle bias is often expressed unintentionally and often existsunconsciously. Many of the people who have this subtle form ofbias truly endorse the principles of fairness, justice, andequality at a conscious level. They truly embrace these principlesat a conscious level, but because they're normal, they'resusceptible to these normal processes.

And they're likely to develop negative beliefs andfeelings about people of color. They may try to reject thesefeelings. They may not be fully aware of these feelings. They maytry to suppress these feelings. But these feelings still exist.

That means when these feelings are expressed, they'retypically expressed in subtle, indirect, and rationalizable ways insituations where what's right and wrong is not clearly defined, insituations where what's appropriate behavior is nor clearlydefined, or in situations where people can rationalize or justifythe negative response to a person of color, but on the basis ofsome factor other than race.

And in that way, discrimination will occur as itprovides systematic advantage to one group, systematic disadvantageto another group but in a way that insulates and protects thatperson from ever having to believe that their behavior was raciallymotivated. Why? Because they always have an excuse, they alwayshave another reason to justify it.

And, finally, with respect to this contemporary formof racism, what makes it I think different than the traditionalform of racism, there is more bias expressed toward higher-statuspeople of color than towards lower-status people of color becausethese are the people who threaten, either directly or symbolically,the traditional role relationships in America that we have had formany years that have benefitted particularly white Americans.

Now, what evidence do we have of this modern, subtleform of bias? We have accumulated substantial evidence in thelaboratory. I will just touch on a few major points.

First of all, this bias is frequently expressed moreindirectly in terms of a failure to help blacks and other people ofcolor than in terms of overt attempts to harm them because thoseovert attempts could easily be attributed to racial bigotry. Andthis is a subtle form of bigotry, not an overt form.

We found evidence across a range of helpingsituations, from donating time to intervening in emergencies, thatwhites are less likely to help people of color than they are tohelp other whites, particularly when they can justify it orrationalize it on the basis of some factor other than race.

For example, in one experiment, we exposed whitebystanders to a staged emergency but a threatening,life-threatening potentially, emergency involving a black or awhite victim.

When our subjects were the only person available tohelp, they helped black and white victims just the same. That is,there was no old-fashioned racism here, where you let somebodysuffer and die solely because of their race.

But when we changed the situation slightly and we gavethese people an excuse not to get involved, we led them to believethat someone else could help or would help, in that case, our whitesubjects helped the black victims half as often as the whitevictim.

If this were a real situation, -- we're talking abouta life and death situation -- that black victim would have diedtwice as often as the white victim. Although the bias is expressedsubtlely, its consequences can be quite significant.

This modern, subtle form of bias is also expressedmore in terms of a pro-white bias than an anti-minority bias. It'snot the old-fashioned belief in the inferiority of people of colorbecause that's overtly bigoted. People know that's bigoted, andthey censor that response. But what persists here is a belief inwhite superiority.

We find in our laboratory that people do notacknowledge or do not say that blacks or other people of color areworse than whites. They're very guarded about that. But whatcomes up over and over again is the belief that whites are betterthan people of color, and particularly blacks and Latinos. Sothere's this implicit belief in white superiority. It's a bias,nonetheless.

This modern, subtle form of bias is often expressedcommonly in decision-making, particularly decision-making understress or time pressure or in complicated situations.

It's expressed -- in fact, Dr. Jones mentioned it'soften expressed nonverbally in the behaviors that we can't control,in the behaviors that we can't monitor, rather than in the overtexpressions of exactly the words that we say and what we say. Soit's expressed in subtle forms, very spontaneously but verypervasively.

And, finally, we see evidence of this in the archivaldata. We see evidence of it in the glass ceiling effect. Theglass ceiling effect clearly demonstrates that the disparitiesbetween women and men and between whites and people of color tendto increase as you start dealing with occupations and positions ofgreater power and prestige.

We see this pattern in terms of industry. We see itin the military. We see it in the government. And that'sconsistent with the way this subtle form of bias operates.

Again, although these biases may be subtle, theirconsequences can be quite severe. And let me explain what some ofthese consequences are. First and most obviously, the subtle formof bias presents barriers to employment and advancement of peopleof color. Minorities may be seen as good, but, as we'vedemonstrated, not as good as white people with objectively the samecredentials. And we've demonstrated that over and over again.

We see that these biases tend to come out insituations where decisions are complicated, where decisions mayhave to be made in periods of stress, where pressures may beinvolved. And that involves much of the personnel decisionprocesses that we engage in the actual world.

Another aspect of this is this contemporary form ofracism helps to create divergent perspectives of the world,fundamentally divergent perspectives of the world, between whitesand people of color.

Because whites exhibit their discrimination subtlely,unintentionally, and unconsciously, we're not aware that we'rediscriminating. And, in fact, if we monitor our behavior closely,we don't discriminate.

So it's only when we're not paying attention that wediscriminate. It's only when it's unintentional that wediscriminate. It's only when it's unconscious that wediscriminate. As a consequence of that, we tend to see racism asnot a problem and particularly not a problem for us.

However, from the perspective of the people of color,they see these subtle biases. They experiences the consequences ofthese subtle biases on a daily basis. And they see a discrepancybetween what we say overtly, which is about fairness and justiceand equality and the subtle biases that pervade our society and theway whites behave. And they create a situation of distrust, wherethey don't believe whites and where they tend to see this biaseverywhere. And let me just give you just one sort of hypotheticalexample of how this operates.

Let's take a situation here where I'm a whiteinterviewer and a black person and a number of white people areinterviewing for a job with me. I may see the black person asbeing very good. I may tell the black person that he or she is verygood.

But when it comes time to make that complicateddecision, I may say, "That black person is good, but I think thiswhite person is a little bit better." Why? "Well, this whiteperson really has the sales experience that we really need thatwould really benefit our organization."

So I make that decision to hire the white person. AndI would say it has nothing to do with race because I canobjectively point to the sales experience of the white person andsay, "This is why I made that decision." I walk away from thatwith a clear conscience.

That black person will go for another interview witha white interviewer. That second white interviewer, much like me,will say, "This black person is very good." They will look at allof the different qualifications of all of the candidates and thenprobably conclude that, "Although that black person is very good,this white person is a little bit better" and hire that whiteperson. Why? Because that white person perhaps has the technicaldegree, instead of the liberal arts degree that that black personhad.

So that second white interviewer will walk away fromthat interaction with a clear conscience saying, "Race had nothingto do with his or her decision. Here's the objective reason why."

And then that black person will go for a thirdinterview. And in that third interview, again, the whiteinterviewer will say, "You are very good" but then will come upwith a reason not to hire that black person. Why? For some otherreason that has nothing to do with race. And that whiteinterviewer will walk away from that situation, again with a clearconscience, saying race was not a factor.

From the perspective of white people, race is not aproblem. It's not a factor in their decision. And they can eachexplain why. But from the perspective of that black person, whatties that first experience with me, that second experience withanother interviewer, that third experience and a third interviewer?

What's the most simplest and parsimonious explanationfor this? Is it a technical degree? No. That only applied to onecase. Is it sales experience? No. That only applied to one case. But what is the constant that goes through this? It is that theyare black and they were not hired.

So, from that perspective, blacks may be verysensitive to seeing racism everywhere because they can see itsconsequences, even though whites deny it. And whites are verylikely to deny that racism exists.

That means if we follow the extension of this, thatthis suggests if we understand this contemporary form of racism, wecan expect to see a society where the races mistrust one anotherand are in great conflict with one another.

We mistrust one another because we can't see eachother's perspective. We don't understand each other'sperspectives. And on the hand of whites, what we have is denialthat race is a problem, denial that race is an issue, denial thatwe are engaging in racism. And from the perspective of blackpeople and other people of color, what ties their experiencetogether, it is that there is a systematic bias that seems to bebest explained, most parsimoniously explained in terms of race. And that's what I think is characterizing America today.

What are the challenges? Okay. The challenges, thesolutions I think are these. It is, first of all, I thinknecessary to make people aware of the existence of this modern,subtle form of bias.

We need to do that at a level of the society in orderto let people know that racism is not a problem that we've licked. We need to make people aware of it to let them know that racism isnot a problem with people out there, that it may be inside each andevery one of us, no matter how well-intentioned we are.

We need to do this at an individual level because it'simportant that people become aware of their own potential for bias. What are the reasons we have these automatic bias responses? Because they're over-learned. They become habitual.

We live in a society that fosters this kind of habit. Prejudice becomes a habit for us. Habits that are learned can behabits that are also unlearned. I think it becomes important thatpeople become aware of their own potential for biases so that theycan begin to work on these biases to eliminating them.

One of the things I want to point out here that isvery important is we're talking about good, well-meaning,well-intentioned people. And if you point out that they may bebiased, then those good intentions, those well-meaning intentionscan motivate them to make significant changes in their own livesand in the lives of people around them.

The second thing I think we need to do as a challengehere is to accept the validity of different perspectives, that wehave to understand how this modern racism can produce verydifferent perspectives between people of color and whites.

And we need to understand that two people and twogroups of people can come to the same interaction, can come to thesame events. They come with different histories. They come withdifferent experiences. They come with different expectancies. Andit makes sense for them to come out of it with divergentperspectives and divergent explanations for what has occurred.

It becomes important, rather than denying each other'sexistence, denying each other's perspectives, that we come toaccept and understand what the other person's perspective is, tounderstand the perspective of all groups because until we can fullyunderstand these perspectives, we can't begin a true dialogue. Wecan't develop a foundation of communication, which any initiativeon race needs in order to succeed.

So, rather than deny it any more, we have to acceptit. And we have to understand that we're both at fault, and we'reboth involved in the situation and both needed to come up with asolution.

And finally, we need to develop proactive policiesversus passive or reactive policies. If we're dealing with publicpolicies that are really designed to punish discrimination after ithas occurred, it's too little too late.

It's too late because the discrimination has occurred,the discrimination that validates the mistrust that people of colorhave in whites and in America today. It's often too little becauseto prove discrimination is occurring, you typically have to proveintentionality. And you have to prove that racism is the cause.

This modern, subtle form of racism occursunintentionally, and it occurs usually when we can justify it orrationalize it on the basis of some factor other than race. It'salmost immune to many types of traditional forms of persecution.

We need to have sort of proactive policies, proactivepolicies, that allow us to assess accurately discrimination when itis occurring and disparities when they are occurring.

What we have seen is it's easy to deny that race ishaving an effect on any individual decision. We can explain itaway. But if we look at these decisions across time and acrosspeople and if we see a consistent pattern of disparities wherewhites get better outcomes than people of color, then that shouldbe evidence clearly that there is discrimination in the system. Itmay not be overt, but it is clearly discrimination. And then whatwe have to do is make people accountable, accountable to takeaction to remedy these injustices.

So what we found in our research is that if people donot feel personally responsible, they will not help. If people donot feel personally accountable for taking action, action will notoccur.

Let me give you one example, a quick example, of howthis action can occur. It has to be quick because I only have twomore minutes. So I'll try to be very brief on this.

This happened with the military, with the Army. Andwhat the Army had noticed was that over a number of years, they hadlooked at disparities in promotion rates between people of colorand whites and between women and men. And what they observed overa many-year period is that there were consistent disparities withwhites being promoted at rates higher than people of color, menmore than women.

They were concerned. They looked at these results. They were sufficiently concerned that they set as an objective fortheir promotion boards that minorities be promoted at ratesequivalent to whites and women be promoted at rates equivalent tomen.

What they did was they built in some accountability. They simply said to their promotion boards, "If you do not achievethat -- this is not a quota. We're not requiring you to do this,but we want to know why. We want an explanation why we did notachieve that objective."

Well, when they applied these principles to thepromotion boards, in that year there were no disparities, nosignificant disparities, between minorities and whites and womenand men. And when they applied it the next year, again there wereno disparities whatsoever.

By coming up with a system that was proactive thatdidn't require on proving intentionality of bias, they were able toeliminate the disparities in very effective ways.

Well, what I want to do is simply summarize here now. In summary, what I want to do is emphasize that this contemporaryform of racism is largely unconscious and unintentional. It isrooted in normal processes and, therefore, can affect well-meaningpeople.

Second of all, it's expressed in subtle and indirectways, in ways that make it a hidden type of bias. It's not obviousto other people and not obvious to ourselves who may beperpetuating this type of bias.

Again, I want to emphasize although these biases maybe expressed subtlely, their consequences are significant. Theysignificantly and adversely affect the well-being of people ofcolor. And ultimately they'll affect the well-being of us all.

Finally, I want to conclude by saying that because ofthese subtle, contemporary biases, we need to understand that theplaying field is not level for all groups. We're not starting witha system that's balanced for all groups. Because of this, we needto understand, as history has demonstrated and I think aspsychology can clearly demonstrate, this is not a problem that willgo away if we ignore it. We have to take positive action.

Thank you.

(Applause.)

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Thank you very much, Dr. Dovidio.

Finally I want to introduce Dr. Derald Wing Sue. Dr.Sue is Professor of Psychology at the California School ofPsychology in Alameda, California. She is also a professor at theCalifornia State University at Hayward. She's the coeditor ofCounseling American Minorities: A Cross Cultural Perspective andcoauthor of A Theory of Multicultural Counseling and Therapy,published last year.

It's my pleasure to introduce him, Dr. Sue, who willbe speaking on creative conditions for a constructive dialogue onrace, toward equal access and opportunities.

Dr. Sue?

DR. SUE: Thank you, Dr. Franklin. Good afternoon,members of the panel.

What I would like to do is quickly acknowledge howpleased and honored I am to have this opportunity to share with allof you some of my research and work in race relations and diversitytraining.

I believe that if we are to become a fair, just, andequitable society, we must heed President Clinton's call for aconstructive dialogue on race. It will succeed, however, only ifwe are able to acknowledge our biases and preconceived notions tobe open and honest with one another, to hear the hopes, fears, andconcerns of all groups in this society, to recognize how prejudiceand discrimination hurt everyone, and to seek common solutions thatallow for equal access and opportunities.

Achieving what I call the cultural mosaic of oneAmerica is a monumental task because it requires two things thatare so difficult I think for many of us to do: an honestexamination of unpleasant racial realities, like racial prejudice,racial stereotyping, and racial discrimination; and, secondly,accepting responsibility for changing ourselves, our institutions,and our society.

My two other learned colleagues have alreadyestablished the fact that bias, prejudice, and discrimination aredeeply embedded in individuals, institutions, and our society.

Unintentional as it might be and unconscious, one ofthe great difficulties with white Americans and having themunderstand the issue of racism is that they perceive and experiencethemselves as moral, decent, and fair people. And, indeed, theyare. Thus, they often fair to realize that their beliefs andactions may be discriminatory in nature.

What, however, can we as individuals do about this? We need to realize that racism, prejudice, and discrimination arenot just intellectual concepts for objective study and for theother person. It has very personal consequences for those who arethe victims.

For example, not only have I been stereotypedthroughout my life and I could certainly share many of thoseexamples with you, but the sanctity of our home was violated at onepoint by the community police in our society.

I believe that the responsibility for change residesstrongly in two major domains: individually, on an individuallevel; and institutionally, on a societal level.

Time permitting, I would like to also talk about theinstitutional changes I think are important, but, in essence, Iwant to focus this afternoon upon what we as individuals can dopersonally.

While many of us are willing to acknowledge thatracism must be addressed at an institutional and societal level, weoften avoid addressing these on a personal level and fail toidentify personal growth experiences that we need in order tosucceed.

I would argue that it is difficult, if not impossible,for any of us to become racially unbiased without understanding andworking through our personal biases and prejudices. It must entaila willingness to address internal issues related to personal beliefsystems, behaviors, and emotions when interacting with other racialgroups.

There has to be a personal awakening, a willingness toroot out these biases and unwarranted assumptions related to race,culture, and ethnicity. When confronting racism on a personallevel, several psychological assumptions can guide us infacilitating this difficult dialogue on race.

One of them is this: No one was born wanting to be aracist or bigot. No one was born with racist attitudes andbeliefs. None of us willingly came into this world wanting to beprejudice. Misinformation related to culturally different groupsis not acquired by our free choice.

These are imposed through a painful process of socialconditioning. One is taught to hate and to fear others who aredifferent in some way. In a strange sort of way, what I findhelpful in working with white Americans to begin to explore theirbiases is the fact that all of us in one way or another need tobegin to understand that we are all victims.

We all are socialized into a society with biases. And, as a result, white Americans in a strange sort of way areequally victims as persons of colors, although their victimizationis quite different from that of persons of color.

For example, for me to believe that I have been bornand raised in the United States for some 55 years withoutinheriting these racial biases, stereotypes I believe is the heightof naivete and that if we are to facilitate an honest andnon-defensive dialogue on race, maybe one of the things that we cancommonly start from is that we, too, have these biases within us.

Secondly, having racist attitudes and beliefs isharmful not only to persons of color, but to white Euro-Americansas well. It serves as a clamp on one's mind, distorting theperceptions of reality. It allows some white Americans tomisperceive themselves as superior and all other groups to beinferior. It allows for the systematic mistreatment of largegroups of people based upon misinformation.

Thirdly, people of color also grow up in anenvironment in which they, too, acquire misinformation aboutthemselves and about whites and other minority groups as well. They may come to believe in their own inferiority of their group orthemselves.

Kenneth and Mamie Clark, Kenneth Clark, the firstblack President of the American Psychological Association, did oneof the ground-breaking studies on doll identification studies,suggesting how this insidious process can occur with respect toracial/ethnic minorities who are told in some way that they areracially inferior.

Fourth, overcoming our biased cultural conditioningmeans that we must overcome the inertia and feeling ofpowerlessness on a personal level. People can grow and change ifthey are personally willing to confront and unlearn their racistconditioning. To accomplish this task, we must unlearnmisinformation not only on a cognitive level, but on an emotivelevel as well.

If we could eradicate racism simply by cognitiveprocess of reading books, we would have eradicated it a long timeago. We need to experientially move into the reality of what thisdoes to people.

Unlearning our biases means acquiring accurateinformation and experiences. Much of how we come to know aboutother cultures is through the media, what our friends and familiesconvey to us and through public education tasks.

I would propose that we have to counteract this. Andthere are four basic principles that I feel have been evident inour scientific literature, social/psychological literature of howto begin to do this.

Principle 1, first we must experience and learn fromas many sources as possible, not just the media or what ourneighbor may say, in order to check out the validity of ourassumptions and understanding.

For example, reading literature by and for persons ofthe culture, this applies to both fiction and nonfiction. Whilethe professional and nonprofessional literature often portraysminorities in stereotypic ways, writings from individuals of thatgroup may provide a richness and experiential reality that many ofus lack.

For example, how many of us have read Now I Know Whythe Caged Birds Sing, The Joy Luck Club, Return to Manzinar, TheTrail of Tears: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of WhitePrivilege, My Son Wind Wolf, all of these stories, or The House onMango Street? All of these stories come from minority authors orindividuals who taught about racial issues. And it gives us anunderstanding, a way to enter into the world of people that we onlyknow from a distance.

But that is not enough. Another principle that weshould adhere to is that a balanced picture of racial/ethnicminority groups requires that we spend time with healthy and strongpeople of the culture.

The mass media and our educational texts written froma primarily Euro-American perspective frequently portray minoritygroups as uncivilized, pathological criminals or delinquents.

No wonder the images we have are primarily negative. We must individually make an effort to fight such negativeconditioning and ask ourselves: What are the desirable aspects ofthe culture, the history, and the people? Education can do much inhelping us in this direction.

Principle Number 3, we must supplement our factualunderstanding with the experiential reality of the groups we hopeto understand. It may be helpful to identify a cultural guide likeI had with Malachai Enjou, a deep African-American friend whohelped me begin to understand the black experience in America,someone from the culture who is willing to help you understand hisor her group, someone willing to introduce you to new experiences,someone willing to help you understand your thoughts, feelings, andbehaviors. This allows you to more easily obtain valid informationon race and racial discrimination issues.

Another example I can give you, -- and these arestraightforward, simple examples that we should have known all thetime -- how many of us attend cultural events, meetings, andactivities of the group? This allows us to view people interactingin their community and observing their values in action.

Hearing from church leaders, attending open communityforums, and attending community celebrations allow you to sense thestrengths of a community, observe leadership in action,personalizes your understanding, and allows you to identifypotential guides and advisers.

The last principle, Principle Number 4, our lives mustbecome a have-to. Now, what do I mean by that? We have to beconstantly vigilant in manifestations of the biases in ourselvesand in people around us.

People of color never are given an opportunity to restin dealing with racism. And I ask my white brothers and sisters totake also the opportunity for them to deal with race as a have-toissue. This is an important one here.

Learn how to ask sensitive racial questions from yourminority friends, associates, and acquaintances. Persons subjectedto racism seldom get an opportunity to talk about it with anundefensive and non-guilty person from the majority group.

White Americans, for example, often avoid mentioningrace, even with close minority friends. Most minority individualsare more than willing to respond to enlighten and share if theysense that your questions and concerns are sincere and motivated bya desire to learn and serve the group.

When a white person listens undefensively, forexample, to an Asian American, an American Indian, AfricanAmerican, Latino, Hispanic American, both gain.

When around people of color, I also ask you to doanother thing, to pay attention to racial situations that maycreate feeling of uneasiness, differentness, or outright fear.

When you find yourselves walking down the streetseeing a group of black youngsters approach you, do you cross thestreet or clutch your purse more tightly? When you interview anAsian American candidate -- and this is the converse of what Dr.Dovidio said. If you are interviewing an Asian American candidateand you are using certain criteria to judge whether they would makean effective manager or not, one of the things that you look foroftentimes is the standard talk about: Is this person assertive,outgoing, taking charge?

And many Asian candidates may be placed at adisadvantage because their tendency is to work suddenly behind thescenes for main group consensus. If the corporation uses astandard that is primarily what we perceive to be evidence ofleadership, we lose out in the fact that this Asian Americancandidate might have been the most productive individual on theteam in getting the team to work but tends to avoid the limelight. So leadership can also be a key element that we look at in terms ofdoing this.

Dealing with racism means a personal commitment toaction. It means interrupting other white Americans or gettingthem to become sensitive when racist jokes are told, when you seebias and discrimination.

Some additional thoughts that I have to quickly coverhere as my time comes to an end. Many of these suggestions thatI'm giving are applicable to persons of color as well.

In addition, racial minorities also need to do severalthings: realize that many white Americans are eager to help andrepresent powerful allies. We cannot do this. Persons of colorcannot overcome bias and bigotry if we depend primarily onourselves.

Recognize that we need to reach out to one another toform multicultural alliances and to realize that race, culture, andethnicity are a function of each and every one of us. It is justnot an Asian American thing, an African American thing, a minoritything. I find many white Americans do find their own race lacking;that is, that they are not conscious that they come from a racialheritage and background.

Thirdly, we must avoid the who's more oppressed trapbecause all oppression is damaging and serves to separate, ratherthan unify.

Lastly, we need to realize that we all need anopportunity to learn and grow. And that's the primary message. All of us will make insensitive comments to one another. We willcommit racial blunders. If I say something -- and many times ithas happened. If I say something that is insensitive to a group,I would not like to be dismissed without an opportunity to somehowbe educated on that. So let us try to understand that we will allcommit blunders and forgive one another because we are in a commonboat together.

These are the three areas, in summary, that we canlook at in bringing my presentation to a close. A constructivedialogue on race requires that we acknowledge that we all havebiases, stereotypes, and preconceived notions. Secondarily, weneed to take personal responsibility for combatting prejudice anddiscrimination. And, thirdly, we need to begin to think aboutallowing equal access and opportunities in our society andinstitutions.

Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: These have been stimulating andinformative papers. And we want to thank Dr. Jones, Dr. Dovidio,and Dr. Sue for their contributions.

We certainly want to give the members of the AdvisoryBoard an opportunity to raise questions with these threedistinguished gentlemen. If you have questions, please?

MEMBER COOK: I have one. First I want to thank youall also for your presentations. They were excellent.

Dr. Sue, I had a question for you. I especially likewhat you said about people of color are never given a rest aboutthe race issue, and I certainly concur.

What do you think would be helpful in terms of gettingthose who are not normally at the table talking about the racequestion? Beyond spending time with healthy representatives of theculture, how do you get one to that point when there's beenclosure?

DR. SUE: This is an excellent question because indoing these presentations and training, the people who usually comeare least in need to hear the message. You're preaching to thechoir, --

MEMBER COOK: Yes.

DR. SUE: -- as many of us know what's happening. Ido a lot of diversity training in different corporations andinstitutions. And in work here, what I find is that generally athird of the audience is very receptive and enlightened about theseissues. Another third is borderline. They can swing one way oranother.

And there is a third group, which is a much smallergroup, that generally, no matter what you do, you are not going tobe able to sway them. I direct primarily most of my energiestowards the middle group and the first group and enlist the firstgroup to help.

Now, when we talk about the fact of what about ouryoungsters, I believe that the only way that we can begin to havean impact is through preventive measures. And, again, education isthe key. All of our youngsters have to go through an educationalsystem.

And I believe that if our educational system is trulymulticultural -- in my community, for example, it's 85 percentwhite Americans. Asian Americans represent, I think, the smallestgroup. But we're up to about I think 15-20 percent now.

One of the things is that when we first work with aschool, they say, "We don't need it." They didn't see the need forany discussions of race, culture, ethnicity.

The way we approached it was to tell the educationalleaders that "You are derelict in your educational responsibilitiesif you do not choose to teach your kids the skills, knowledge, andability to function in a pluralistic society that they indeed areill-equipped in the world of business that is becoming very global. And the population that they need to work with is increasinglydiverse, as we heard the statistics on demographics this morning.

MEMBER COOK: So you believe the hope is in the youth,then, in raising our next generation?

DR. SUE: I don't want to sound pessimistic. I thinkthat much can be done, like public policy can be done, in terms ofeliminating these overt forms of discrimination. But our hope,really, at some level is to begin to change the structure ofeducation and I think the world of work as well.

MEMBER COOK: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I want to welcome Ms. LindaChavez-Thompson back. She represented the Board this afternoonover in the Department of Housing and Urban Development whenSecretary Cuomo made the announcement with regard to the newinitiatives that the housing agency, the department is going totake with respect to enforcing fair housing and bringing legalaction in cases where it's clear that the housing policies havebeen violated. Welcome back.

MEMBER CHAVEZ-THOMPSON: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Glad you're here. We're going totry to educate you.

MEMBER CHAVEZ-THOMPSON: I know.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: All right. Any other questionsdirected to the panel? Yes?

MEMBER THOMAS: I am not sure to whom this would go. Dr. Jones, you mentioned the Rev. Jackson incident. And then, Dr.Sue, you talked a lot about the perception of race. So maybe I'dstart with you, Dr. Jones.

Do whites perceive themselves as part of a race?

DR. JONES: I am not sure I can speak for whitepeople.

MEMBER THOMAS: You studied them, though.

DR. JONES: Yes. I have some insight.

(Laughter.)

DR. JONES: I think one of the things that is routine-- I ask my students this from time to time. I say, "When you wakeup in the morning, do you look in the mirror and say, 'Wow, I'mwhite'?" They don't. They typically do not think of themselves aswhite. At least they haven't historically.

But I think as we mount the discussion of race andcertainly in specific situations where the majority status is notas evident as it may normally be, one is very conscious of one'srace. And it has consequences for how they come to think ofthemselves.

I think there's a certain threat and a certainintimidation that comes when you talk about race in terms that putthem on the defensive. And I think becoming conscious of your racewhen you're white in this time is not a very comforting situation.

DR. SUE: Let me just quickly. It's like a fish inwater. If you're in a society that is like the water and the fishis in it, they're used to it, they don't see it. And it frequentlyhappens to me that people will come up after a presentation and sayto me, "Derald, you're really lucky that you have a culture." Andit's generally white people who will do this to me.

And it surprises me. I'll sit back and say, "You meanyou don't have a culture?" And it stuns them. It's reallysomething that I find very powerful. And that's one of the majorbarriers in which we have difficulty dialoguing about race.

There's another issue that I want to say reallyquickly because I felt like I didn't have enough time. You know,please forgive me, but race is not the problem. Being black isn'tthe problem. Being Asian isn't the problem. Being white isn't theproblem. It's society's perception of color or race that I feelstands at the crux of the problem.

DR. DOVIDIO: Can I respond to that real quickly, too? Your question was: Do most whites think of themselves as race? Ithink whites don't. And it goes back to your question, Rev.Johnson Cook, about bringing people to the table because when youtalk about the racial problem, I think most whites think of it asa problem of somebody else.

Most whites don't have a lot to do with race. Wedon't think about race. We don't have to think about race duringthe day. And many whites grow up in white communities.

I just want to say that earlier today you were talkingabout taking these models about what works successfully inmulticultural communities and multicultural schools.

Well, I think the other part of the challenge I thinkis: How do you change the racial attitudes and the racial beliefsand the racial emotions of the many whites who don't live inmulticultural schools or residences, the many whites who do notlive, the majority of whites who do not come in contact with peopleof color?

And so you can have all the wonderful models you canto work in multicultural settings, but we also have to develop --and I would suggest that one of the goals would be -- to developmodels of how you deal with the race issue dealing with people whodon't think about the race issue, dealing with whites who live inwhite communities.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: This raises the question, Dr.Dovidio, about your earlier point. You said that we must acceptthe validity of different perspectives. Now, if the whites wholive in these communities have a perspective that, they're whiteand have a perspective that, is based on that, then we must takethat at that -- take them for what they are, accept the validity oftheir perspectives when, as you suggested just then, that maybethere's something wrong with that perspective?

DR. DOVIDIO: As a place to begin the dialogue, weneed to understand where people are and where they think they are. I think we really need to adopt a perspective.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Oh, yes. I can see that. But yousaid accept the validity of their perspective.

DR. DOVIDIO: The validity of it from theirperceptions. Again, I think that what often happens -- I'll goback to what Dr. Sue said -- is that occasionally I will slip andsomeone will accuse me of doing something that's racially biased.

My first response is, "No, I'm not racially biased." I'm going to deny what you just said. I'm going to deny yourexperience. And what is more productive is for me to, first ofall, say, "I am sorry for what I did. Now explain to me what Idid." And then I would try to explain to people what I did.

Now, that doesn't mean valid in the sense of right butvalid in a sense of what is the basis for making these things,rather than to try to convince -- people may accuse me of beingintentionally biased, and I will say, "I'm not intentionallybiased." But I can freely admit that I may be biasedunintentionally.

And so to begin the dialogue, you have to sort ofunderstand that common ground and where those perspectives aredifferent.

MEMBER OH: I just have a question for any one of thethree of you. And that has to do with the fact that we are goingto move forward with this discussion. And we don't have a commonvocabulary. And we don't have a common set of assumptionsoperating except in the largest sense. I hope this Board has madeclear that those values have to do with compassion and have to dowith some intelligence. They have to do also with vision.

What are some of the problems that you see, some ofthe risks that you see us running into over the next several monthsas we engage people in various parts of the country in thisdiscussion?

And do you have any insight into some tools that wemight be able to use to reduce or minimize the risk of unnecessarypain or unnecessary indignity in this discussion?

DR. JONES: One of the problems I'm almost certain youwill have was suggested by Dr. Sue about the extent to which onegroup seeks to claim more oppression than the next group.

I think we have as a society marginalized so many ofour citizens that there's a struggle, competition, as it were, toget attention and to get respect and be able to get legitimacy inthe debate about what this society ought to be. I think managingthat in such a way that you can have constructive dialogue isprobably going to be one of your most difficult challenges.

There's no silver bullet here, but I think that itbegins with an ability to make respect part of the approach thatthe Board takes, that you insist and you demand it, that your goalis progress, your goal is unification, and that whateverdifferences come up have to be brought back to that fundamentalgoal.

And I think if you exude that and present that, itwill force others to try to look at ways in which they're upset,maybe contributing to the positive dialogue.

DR. DOVIDIO: One other word I would put in isliterally one other word, to avoid blame. Blame is the mostdestructive aspect of this, where people begin to blame one anotherfor past injustices, for present injustices. You can't begin aconstructive dialogue with blame. And so you have to avoid that atall costs. That would be one thing I think that we really have tobe very careful about.

DR. SUE: There are two things that I'd like tocomment on and slightly different in this respect. I think thatwhat this panel is talking about when you talk about a constructivedialogue on race, you're talking, really, about individual,institutional, and societal change.

Change does not come easy, nor without pain. Nor canyou ever avoid a certain degree of intense emotions, feelings, andconflict that will arise. And oftentimes what we have to do isaccept the fact of intense conflict and emotions as arising as anopportunity for change because if people are too comfortable, itmay indicate we're not moving people or institutions fast enough. So I would like us to look in terms of that area.

The second one is that I think it's really importantfor this panel to begin to identify what I call the core valuesabout what you're all about. What are the core values?

Ms. Oh talked about the issue of compassion. I thinkthat we can talk about the core value of equal access andopportunity that everyone buys into. And I think that we can listthem down.

In fact, if you go to the Declaration of Independence,the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, you will find certaincore values. They may not have been interpreted in a way that hasbeen humane, but there are certain core values present.

The difficulty is that, first of all, these corevalues I think you will get general agreement from everyone thatthese are things that we want: compassion, equal access andopportunities, respect, and on and on. When you begin tooperationalize them is where it begins to create difficulties.

And that's the next level I think that this panelneeds to get. What does equal access and opportunity look like? What does compassion look like in terms of how you translate itinto behaviors, into policies, into practices?

That's where the big battle, the disagreements beginto occur because a change in a policy or a practice hasimplications for those who have been comfortable with thatdevelopment. And I maybe should stop there.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I have a big question, which Ithink I will pass on because the time is up. And I very muchregret it. But I do want to thank these three panelists forstimulating discussion and raising some very important points andcreating some questions in our own minds, to which we want answers. We can't go further here, but we certainly will take yourobservations to heart and will continue to reflect on them as weproceed with our work in the future.

And I do want to thank all of you for your verywonderful presentations.

(Applause.)

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Godspeed. We're sorry you have toleave us.

I would like to bring your attention, the members ofthe Board who are remaining, to the draft work plan for us for thisquarter's activities. I want to thank all of you for what you havebeen doing in, especially Bob Thomas and his staff, helping usthink through this work plan and to really provide us with someguidance and advice.

Before we begin, I'd like to say that we view thiswork plan as an ever-changing document. That is, certainly it'ssubject to revision, it's not set in stone, and that we'll bemodifying it as we go along, if necessary.

As you can see, the plan articulates a mission tobuild one American community which celebrates our differences, yetis united by our shared values. The plan is organized around threegoals which are parallel to the President's goals. They reflectthe dues and objectives of our staff as well as the members of theBoard itself.

Goal 1, to engage in public outreach andcommunication; Goal 2, to enlist leaders to build and sustain thiseffort; and, 3, identify priority areas for policy action anddisseminate promising practices.

We have activities by the Board as a whole, individualmembers of the Board, and members of the staff. I want tohighlight just a few of the areas with which we will be concernedand which constitute some planning.

First, we receive many inquiries about town meetings. Somehow that's caught on. And I suppose that every community inthis country would be pleased to have a town meeting. At least Ihave several hundred letters which would indicate that as a sample,that's where the communities wanted to go.

As has already been announced, there will be townmeetings, some carried on by the President or conducted by thePresident, others which will be meetings sponsored by this Boardand, of course, large numbers of meetings which are already inprocess at the local level. And so there will be manyopportunities for participation at the town meetings of variouslevels.

In support of this initiative, the staff is going tobe developing how-to kits. We made reference to this this morningin passing when the President suggested getting certain materialstogether for towns that want to host their own town meetings ordialogues. And we will be developing programs and materials thatwill assist them as they make their own plans.

The staff is also developing a clearinghouse ofpromising practices so that when we travel around the nation andlearn about the many things that seem to be objectively favorableand that are successful, we can be sure that the information getsaround to other communities that are just in the process of makingtheir own plans.

Our final illustration of the work we have beenengaging in is leadership. I believe that each of us has aresponsibility for encouraging leadership in the sectors of thecommunity in which we are active so that those communities will beable to function effectively. For example, I have some connectionwith the academic world. And I will be working with leaders in theacademic community and encouraging dialogue and discussion andactivities that will promote our program.

I think the Executive Director referred earlier to themeeting of the American Council on Education in Miami, Florida, themiddle of this next month. And she and I will be there to discussthese problems with the educational community. And Suzan JohnsonCook, with her strong ties with the faith community, will bedeveloping connections there and encouraging them.

And Governor Winter will be doing the same thing withthe leadership area, leadership in the community and areas in whichhe is active and with which he has had connections over the yearsas he and Governor Kean know so many governors and do many of ourpolitical leaders.

Surely Bob Thomas as the President and CEO of Nissan,U.S.A. and one of the leaders in thinking up ways in which toproject this program in the corporate world, will be active there.

I've already, as I said earlier, sent letters to thecongressional leadership. And many of us have had contact withleaders at the other levels of politics and at the community level,too.

Large numbers of community leaders were here thismorning. And some of them are still here. We solicit theirsupport and their activity in connection with this program.

Yes. I think that, Suzan, you wanted to say somethingelse in this regard. I don't know.

MEMBER COOK: I just wanted to encourage ourparticipation and our dialogue with the youth. I think that's veryimportant that we find avenues to connect. And whether that leadsto a youth town meeting or some other vehicle, I think that it'sgoing to be very important to speak with a generation other thanour own. We represent several generations, but certainly a youngergeneration than ourselves. And I think that's going to be crucialfor the dialogue.

MEMBER CHAVEZ-THOMPSON: Might I suggest something? If we're going to have a town hall meeting, then perhaps either theday before or whatever time we're going to start the conference,maybe an earlier hour before, but I don't want to have just one.

MEMBER COOK: Exactly.

MEMBER CHAVEZ-THOMPSON: If we're going to have fourtown hall meetings in different parts of the country, I want to beable to speak to the youth groups in each one of these places, evenif it means we come in a day before, and some of us sit down withthe youth to talk.

I think we shouldn't just have one but, rather, oneattached to every town hall meeting or a public hearing. Whateverwe're going to have, it's got to be spread across the country,instead of concentrating on just one.

MEMBER COOK: I agree. I agree.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Is there any other point of viewyou wanted to make with respect to this?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I believe this is one area inwhich there's full agreement that we must do something about this. I think Linda's point is well-taken that perhaps each time we meet,each place we meet, we must make a point of having this kind ofcontact with young people so that they will feel a part of thiswhole program because if we don't get it going and solved in thenext four years, it will be theirs anyway. And we must makecertain that they are cued in very early and that they become quiteactive, if possible, in the program.

Is there something else? Is there anything else youwanted to say about the youth part of it? I want to get as much ofthis in as possible before lunch.

MEMBER WINTER: If somehow we could spotlight someschools where true integration is taking place and reflect whatthat is, how that is influencing and shaping the students in thatschool? I still believe this is the best hope for a trulyintegrated society is to create an integrated system of education,where the students not only learn reading, writing, and arithmetic,but learn the essence of living with each other, respecting eachother, understanding the different backgrounds. This is asessential in the education process as any other aspect ofeducation.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I agree with you, Governor Winter.

A lot has been said about Little Rock and about thelimited amount of contact of white and black children in theschool, even in 1997, in Central High School.

I thought that the observations and criticism wereperhaps a bit harsh in view of the fact that that school has beenso much in the spotlight and there has been reaction, perhapsblame, as applied to so much that certain segments of the communityand perhaps parents are quite sensitive in this area.

Perhaps if the spotlight will just simply move awayfrom them, they might be able to move a little more successfullytoward the kind of school that you were talking about.

I come from a school that was also completely and itseemed when I was there irrevocably segregated in Tulsa. And, yet,it's not segregated at all now. When I go back in December, I'mgoing to look at it with a little greater care to see how much realcontact there is between groups of students, black and white, andNative American and so forth.

It was my impression when I was there in March --maybe I wasn't looking so critically and carefully. It was myimpression that that was a very extensive amount of desegregationand probably even integration.

And I think that if we combine these youth and youngpeople's activities with our own; that is, so that we can see toit, assist them, I believe that we can be certain that we can movebeyond just the formal desegregation ordered by the courts, andthen to some real contacts, like Governor Winter is talking about.

MEMBER WINTER: Mr. Chairman, that's a picture of whatthe school ought to look like.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Yes.

MEMBER WINTER: That's a school in Oxford,Mississippi, where 35 years ago a civil war was fought over oneblack man being admitted to the University of Mississippi. It wasin that community that that took place.

Now, this is what the schools there look like now. And if Oxford, Mississippi can make that sort of transition, itseems to me that every community in the country can achieve thatresult.

And I see what it means to my grandchildren, who arein these classes, in terms of their ability to relate to childrenof every other background.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: This photograph was passed aroundthis morning. President Clinton was making some very favorablecomments about it when it came to him. You could see what's goingon there, and it's most heartening, really.

I just want to say this. I wonder if we can becertain that as they move up into the next round; that is, intohigh school, that it will have the same thing. That's what I verymuch hope for.

Yes?

MEMBER THOMAS: One of the things I wanted to mentionwhile you're talking about youth is we'll always have the tendencyto be able to and encouraged to talk to the youth who are involvedand who are engaged in the future.

I think we really have to also look at that group ofyouth that are disenfranchised or not involved. We have to thinkof some way to reclaim them and get them back into this equationbecause there are so many people who have lost hope to the degreethat the concept of having dialogue on that issue wouldn't evenhave come up to that.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I think that's true. As we moveinto this area and get the assistance of specialists in the area,like we have Dr. Jones and Dr. Dovidio and Dr. Sue at that level,perhaps we need some guidance, some guidance at that level ofyouth, and how we can more effectively draw them into our purviewand get them to working and get them active. I think we'll be ableto solve some of these problems in the future.

Yes?

DIRECTOR WINSTON: I just want to add a word to that. I mentioned this morning the findings of the Center for LivingDemocracy in their survey and the finding that suggests that all ofthe types of organizations that have been involved in promotingdialogue, interracial dialogue, the religious organizations wereranked first and the media at the very bottom in terms ofpromoting. Perhaps this comment should have been reinforced thismorning.

Think of the extent to which our youth tend to to theextent they receive information or have the opportunity to beengaged on this issue, even in communities where there issubstantial racial isolation.

It is the media, different types of media, which areI think perhaps most influential. And it seems to me that perhapsthe Advisory Board would want to explore further with the staff andothers how we can use the rich technology that we have developed inthis country over the last 40 years at least, technology that wasunavailable to us as a country at some of the most difficult timesto reach our young people in ways that they can appreciate, in waysthat they may be willing to pay attention to using some of theinformation and strategies that our three panelists suggested wemight think about. So I just wanted to add that for yourconsideration.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I know that Bob Thomas' group inCalifornia already is in contact with what might be regarded as thecelebrity community, the film community, and so forth, that indeedmight be willing, even enthusiastically willing, to participate indisseminating this kind of information in various media, to thevarious media. And I look forward to developing even closercontact with you.

MEMBER THOMAS: There is great interest of people whowould want to volunteer their time and their personal leverage tosupport us. I think that's a terrific opportunity for us.

MEMBER COOK: That will be important, very important.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: Is there anything else?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: What can we say about the meetingthe next time, from here on out?

DIRECTOR WINSTON: I think your work plan doesreference the fact that you do intend to meet regularly. I knowthat you have talked, at least at the last meeting, about yourinterest in coming together at least once per month, though it maybe in different fora, not necessarily at an Advisory Board meetingof this type.

I know that we have already on the schedule a numberof events that some members of the Board will be participating in. We have, as Dr. Franklin indicated and others indicated, a plethoraof invitations on which to build your activities.

And so I just thought I would point out that yourintention, as indicated in the work plan, to be involved asindividuals and collectively as a Board I think has everyopportunity to be successful and implemented.

But I don't know if you wanted to say somethingspecifically about the specific issues that you might wish to coverthe next time that the Board meets providing an opportunity forstaff to have some options about how we can support your interestin certain --

MEMBER CHAVEZ-THOMPSON: I just wanted to make anobservation that I had made to Robert while we were in San Diego,and that was that oftentimes we get requests as individuals fromthe group of folks that we come from and are most comfortable with,me, of course, from labor, business to Robert, and faith communityto Rev. Johnson Cook.

So I have absolutely no problem being very comfortablein going there, but I think what we should do -- and I had made thesame offer to Robert as well as the rest of the Advisory Board --is that let's not be comfortable. Let's go into other areas. Iwould like, although I might wear a bulletproof vest, to go speakwith some business people --

(Laughter.)

MEMBER CHAVEZ-THOMPSON: -- or maybe have Robert puton his bulletproof vest and come over to the AFL-CIO Council.

But, I mean, when we get an invitation, we don't needjust to accept that invitation and go to be comfortable but perhapsring each other up and find out if there is one of us available togo with each other because the invitation may just come to one ofus, but that doesn't mean that we can't advise someone else along. We need to go into those areas for the purpose of letting everybodyknow how serious this conversation is.

I think the President's visit with us today, as Imentioned to others, continues to put the importance of what we aredoing at the highest level of the President coming to stop by andvisit with us to talk about this issue, that we need to do the samething into other groups.

I will go almost anywhere depending, of course, alsoon my schedule. But the same thing is that I want someone comingto the Executive Council meeting. I will make sure I tell JohnSweeney that we need to issue an invitation for someone or a coupleof people who are available because I don't need to be talking tothem. They need to be hearing from others and in reverse.

MEMBER COOK: Since the faith community made it thehighest, perhaps I'll go with both of you and I'll pray.

(Laughter.)

MEMBER COOK: I do hope that maybe some of our nextpresenters will be some of the grass roots faith leaders andcommunity leaders on all levels who would like to present theirfindings and what they're doing on a local level.

The Vice-President spoke today about the pain that hasto be acknowledged. One of the most moving experiences I wasinvited to last week was at a local church. It was called theMahafa Conference.

It was a totally black audience, but it was dealingwith the whole issue of slavery and how it's been three or fourgenerations that have been painful. It was a step towards racereconciliation in the fact that they could not go forward untilthey released some of the pain. And it was one of the most movingexperiences.

I think some of the grass roots presenters need toshare what they're doing in terms of steps for internal healing andthen also in terms of what they can do to promote externaldialogue.

MEMBER OH: My comment was going to be very similar tothat because I would like to see more information brought forwardinvolving Native populations and Pacific Island people because Ithink these are populations that have struggled with some of thepower dynamics that go along with racism and discrimination in thismainstream culture as we know it. And I think there's someintelligence to be gathered there that we may be missing out on ifwe don't specifically go out and seek that information. And it'sthere.

So I would urge that staff try and find out moreinformation from those populations, on the one hand. And the otherthing is that when we come together the next time, I'd like to talkabout some specific things we could be doing now or proposing now. I know we've talked in the past about a national report card. Whatwould that look like on race in this country?

I've mentioned this in passing, but I really thinkthat maybe we should consider some kind of national treasure in thearea of people or organizations or programs that really exemplifythe kinds of things or values that we're saying are a part of thiseffort that we're trying to give some texture to in terms ofreflecting the spirit of what is one America.

Who are those people? What are those organizations? What are those programs that are out there really reflecting thespirit of what we're trying to do? Can we recognize them in someway? I don't know if it would be a combination of monetaryrecognition and something else.

These are small things, but I think that we need tostart talking about some specific things that we'll be doing.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I just wanted to say to Angelawith respect to the first point about the Native groups, NativeAmericans and Island people, now that we have Laura Harris assenior consultant, a very distinguished and accomplished NativeAmerican, whom we are pleased, -- we had to settle with her assenior consultant, rather than her coming to the staff, becauseshe's terribly busy -- I think we will be able to focus more onthat sort of thing.

I've been in correspondence, too, with people in Guam,for example. And we're setting up some kind of correspondence withthem so that they will be involved. And that will be true of otherIsland people as well.

I think we are moving in that direction a bit. Perhaps we need to go a little more. And I do agree that weperhaps at the next meeting ought to be giving some attention tosome unique and special ways in which we can dramatize the matterwith which we are concerned, either with treasures, a nationaltreasure, or something like that. That plus the Hollywood crowdand whatnot will maybe help us to get our message across a littlebetter than it is at the present time, although I'm not complainingat all.

For the next meeting, I hope: one, we will dosomething very specific and very special in terms of planning inthe youth area. And then we will be reporting about education andabout what we must be doing in that area.

I hope that will be combined with some more abouteconomic opportunity and, if possible, some visitation of the otherareas which we have identified as issues for possible topics atupcoming meetings. So we will have a full agenda with our reportsas well as our planning.

We hope, too, that kind of action that was taken todayby the Department of Housing and Urban Development and theemployment of existing legislation and existing regulations to pushahead the whole matter of equalization, in this case of housing butof other areas, I hope that we will be able to get some more actionin that area because the combination of developing our dialogue andcarrying forward our discussion will action in specific areas willI think be the thing that will convince the country that we areabout the business of really improving the climate of race and therelations of races with each other in this country.

Is there further -- Yes, Bob Thomas?

MEMBER THOMAS: There are two or three things I wantedto mention. One is I wanted to talk just a second about businessbecause we reference it, but you can just tell by the series ofquestions you get very few questions come that way and it's a verynontraditional solution to racial issues. I think that thereinlies a problem and opportunity.

One suggestion I'd have is perhaps with the assistanceof the White House staff and the Initiative staff, that maybe wecould have a call to action of business leaders.

The terrific thing about business is we're basicallyproblem-solvers. So I think if you get this problem in front ofthe right people, we can put some heat on it. And the other thingis that with business, you have to start at the top. You have tostart with the leaders, the opinion-makers, the Board of Directors. That's why I think we need a sponsor type of conference to beginwith. Then I think with that preparation, we can get to thedialogue that Linda was referencing.

The other thing to remember about business is that wecan contribute in many different areas: the resources foreducation, coalitions with foundations, and different entities.

We're the group that provides the hope for education. And then it's that food chain that begins to as they get theeconomics going between levels and levels and group to group -- youcan see how this is very exciting to the group next door.

(Laughter.)

MEMBER THOMAS: We're talking about money.

But the other thing that working with business does isbusiness is going to say, "Okay. What do you want to accomplish? What's the objective? What's the outcome?" They're going to putpressure on us to say -- and I think this gets back to what Angelawas saying -- the report card, how to measure this thing. What'sthe measure of healthy race relations? And that is going to forceus to tackle a couple of tough issues.

I think the starting point -- and all of this willcome out if we get the right people in the right room and we beginto work out through this thing.

I think business, even though it's been anontraditional piece of this, absolutely can be a great piece inthe future. I mean, that's where people aspire to spend a goodportion of their waking hours in, again, the monetary engine thatfuels the rest of the economy.

The one last thing I would say just in general -- Istarted to say this before we were interrupted by the President andVice-President today.

(Laughter.)

MEMBER THOMAS: That was that I want to complimentJudy and the staff that she has gotten together. We have beenfortunate enough to meet with them, an extremely talented group.

As the Board begins to come together and the staffstarts to really gel, a thought comes to mind, and we have talkedabout it. That is whether or not the use of Chris Edley, forexample, as a consultant or a support person for the Advisory Boardas a measure of dialogue at the staff level might be useful, too,something to get us from meeting to meeting in a very orchestratedmanner.

So that's two suggestions. One is the White House andInitiative support for a business conference. And the second oneis maybe an individual support for the Advisory Board.

MEMBER WINTER: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to say a wordin support of what Bob has just said. Judy Winston has assembleda remarkable staff. There's so much talent and so much dedicationrepresented there. We are fortunate to be able to work with them. Judy, thank you.

(Applause.)

DIRECTOR WINSTON: Thank you very much. I am very,very grateful and excited that we have been able to attract suchtalent. And it is talent that not only represents the very best interms of skills and professionalism and dedication and commitmentto this issue. It is also extraordinarily diverse, representingthe kind of thing that we want to see at the end of this process.

And it's diverse not only in terms of racial andethnic groups represented on the staff but also in terms ofgenerations. There are several people on the staff who could be mychildren -- that's true -- and who bring a perspective to thisissue that I think is very, very much in keeping with the concernsthat you on the Advisory Board have indicated you want to have inthis discussion.

And we have been able to pull together this wonderfulstaff with the understanding that we at the moment, at least, havea year that we can offer. And that is an extraordinary thing thatpeople would be willing to come aboard to lend their talentswithout knowing where we will be going with this a year from now,though I have no doubt whatsoever that every member of this staffwill be productively employed and contributing somewhere for a verylong time to come.

I thank you. We will follow up on the suggestionsthat you have made. I think it is an excellent suggestion that weuse our consultants in a way that supports the Board and thatprovides that bridge that you need between your busy schedules, theAdvisory Board activities, and the staffing we provide here.

If Chris Edley can extricate himself from his academicresponsibilities a little bit, I'm sure that he will be willing todo that. I know that he remains absolutely committed to this work. And if he has to work 24 hours a day, I am convinced that he wouldbe happy to do it. He's smiling, I can see.

So I thank you very much for those suggestions. Andwe will be reporting back to you at the next gathering on theprogress we've made in responding to your assignments and yoursuggestions.

CHAIRMAN FRANKLIN: I just want to thank each andevery member of the Board not only for their presence here todaybut for their work since the last meeting and their commitment towhat we are trying to do.

I don't know how many hours Bob Thomas and his staffhave spent, but it's a lot of hours. And they are providing a kindof guidance, not merely in their own area, but for all of our workthat I want to acknowledge publicly. It is extremely valuable, andI deeply appreciate it.

Finally, let me say that the staff, I've been incontact with it perhaps a little more than some others because I'vebeen in and out since they began to assemble the staff here inWashington. I must say that we are most fortunate, most fortunate. And it shows in every conceivable way -- most fortunate to havethem, great talent all around. Every time I walk into the NewExecutive Office Building and see them, I'm even more grateful forwhat they have done and are doing and will continue to do.

If there are no other observations or suggestions orcomments, I would declare this meeting adjourned.

(Whereupon, the foregoing matter was concluded at 4:00p.m.)

Meeting of The President's Advisory Board on Race

Dr. Reynolds Farley

Dr. Lawrence D. Bobo

Dr. James Jones

Dr. Dovidio's Presentation to the Board

Dr. Derald Wing Sue

Advisory Board Meeting Script

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