JOHN STEWART: Thank you all for being here. I’m very pleased to welcome and to introduce Ralph Cooper.
COOPER: I know that many of you are probably wondering what all the veterans’ programs have to do with a discussion about race in America.
Well, I’m here to tell you that it has a great deal to do with this discussion. As you know, or may not know, it was the United States military where an integrated workforce was really started.
So we are really more than just interested in dealing with just veterans, and what’s going on in their life. We’re interested in dealing with what’s going on across the whole community, because we represent the community. They didn’t ask me what political party I belong to, whether I was Republican or Democrat; they didn’t ask me whether I was Italian, German, or… They didn’t ask me anything but one thing. Two things actually: are you fit and willing to serve?
And that’s why veterans are playing this kind of a role in this discussion today. So I am very, very, very pleased to be here, and to be a part of this most important discussion, working with the Pentagon, who is the other part of this partnership. And I’d like to introduce to you Major Garian A. Parigini, who’s a public affairs officer for the Pentagon. Major Parigini.
PARIGINI: Thank you. Good morning. I wish I could say that I was the public affairs officer for the Pentagon; I do work public affairs issues for the
Department of Defense, and in particular for your moderator for today. But to remind you that this was a military event… You know, we can’t do anything in the military without rules. Got to have rules. It was either that, or ask you to drop and give me 20, but I think we’ll hold back on that [laughter]. For our participants, you should have at least received one of these, and if not, we’ll get you one before the day’s out. But on the back were some basic ground rules.
First of all, you’ve been all invited here to bring to the agenda the issues concerning Boston and the greater Boston community. And, with that, we hope that you will be open and honest and frank with us, because what will happen is what is discussed here today will be captured and brought back to the White House and shared with them. So we ask, first and foremost, that you give us your most honest opinions in the forum.
This is not an issue that doesn’t go without disagreement, and it doesn’t matter what community we’re in. However, we ask that if there is disagreement, that you attack issues and not individuals for the topics.
Third, if you’re offended by something that’s said, we hope that you’ll share with us that you’re offended. And not only that you’re offended, but why that comment may or may not have offended you.
And with crowds this size, it is important that we are on a fixed timeframe, and so therefore it’s important that we allow everyone an opportunity to speak. So we ask you to not make soapbox issues soapbox issues, and be fairly succinct in stating your comments, only because we want everybody to have an opportunity to present their views.
So those are the four basic rules that we set out with. Does anyone have anything that they feel we should add to those rules? Okay. One other piece of business is, you’ve also received, as well as the observers, a form that says what you would like the President to know. Those are forwarded, with the report that I prepare, back to the White House, so it’s very important, before the end of the day, that you complete those comments so that I can collect those and bring them back with me.
Now the last part of business is now that we’ve gotten you into that military mindset and everybody’s so serious… Before I introduce our moderator, there is an expression that we tend to use when we’re in a joint environment. Being Department of Defense, that’s all the services represented, what we call “the purple suit” instead of… Though I’m wearing a blue suit that says “Air Force”. And the expression that we use comes from the Army. And there are a couple smiling faces; I know that there are a few folks here that have done some time in the Army.
But generally, when we have our young troops standing before us, and they want to acknowledge that they’ve understood something that’s been said, there’s an expression that they used. Sir, I don’t know if they used that back in those days [laughter]; do you recall the expression or the phrase I’m thinking about? Well, when these young troops want to acknowledge that they’ve heard or understood what’s been told to them, they say the word, “Hoo-uh.”
Now, I’ll demonstrate that without the mike, because I’ll blow out some eardrums here. And the derivation of that… One story comes that, you know, during the period of World War II, there was a hill that needed to be captured; enemy machine gun emplacements all over the place, and the commanding officer said to his troops, “Go take that hill,” and the Army troops said, “Who, us?” [Laughter.]
But when you’re in a classroom situation, or a forum like this, the way the students will say it is, “Hoo-uh!” Got to come from down here. So, when I introduce your guest speaker, that’s what he’s accustomed to [laughter]. Okay? He’s got to hear that. Not only that, it helps get the adrenaline going, and everybody then is fully awake. What the coffee didn’t do, “hoo-uh” will do for us [laughter].
So with that, and no further ado-- I’m not going to go into a long, detailed introduction, simply because you have his biography in the pamphlet-- all I will tell you is that the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Equal Opportunity is responsible for all equal opportunity, equal employment opportunity, and human relations issues for all the military and civilians in the Department of Defense. And with no further ado, please help me in welcoming Mr. William E. Leftwich III.
[Applause and shouts of “Hoo-uh!”]
LEFTWICH: Good morning! Come on, now! I know, I mean it’s early, but… Good morning!
AUDIENCE: Good morning!
LEFTWICH: Thank you. That’s a little better. First of all, I certainly have to thank the wonderful folks here at the Kennedy Library, John Stewart in particular, for providing such a wonderful facility to conduct this session this morning. In addition to that, my good friend Ralph Cooper, who is co- coordinating this. And then, there’s one other individual that I must mention, who for Boston served as the catalyst for me, and that’s Ron Armstead, who is here. You here, Ron? [Applause.] He’s very proud of the fact that he is also a veteran, right?
ARMSTEAD: “That’s right.”
LEFTWICH: Okay. Let me tell you a little bit about the President’s Initiative on Race. June 14, 1997, President Kennedy… [laughter] President Clinton. We’d better get this straightened out! President Clinton gave a commencement speech at the University of California in San Diego. In that talk, a great deal of the content focused on race and the challenges of race that exist-- that have existed, that exist now, and that we project into the future. He asked, during that speech, that the nation engage in a conversation about race, so that we, as a community, as a nation, can understand better the challenges that confront us. And in doing so, we end up being a little bit better tomorrow than we are today.
He asked that we engage in this conversation. He asked that we do it in a direct manner, that we do it honestly, and have frank, rich conversation with respect to the real issues.
President Clinton has been very bold, I think, because he has brought up an issue that most people don’t want to talk about. Especially given this time. President Lincoln had the Civil War, that dropped the issue of slavery and race on his doorstep. President Truman was outraged at the return of World War II veterans, African Americans to be specific, who, many of them, when they returned to their homes were assaulted, some murdered, while wearing their uniforms. The namesake for this building, President Kennedy, was around during a period of social unrest. So here you have three different illustrations of where social paradigm changes took place as a result of something that generated from the environment, from the people.
Right now, with President Clinton, there’s not really that type of imprimatur that’s there to create that type of focus. But his insight is one that tells us, and I think that for the most part we all know and recognize, that the issue of race is much larger than we really want to give credit to. Something that we need to pay more attention to. We do talk about race; we talk about race all of the time. But we do it in an environment where whites will talk to whites, blacks will talk to blacks, Hispanics to Hispanics, Asians to Asians, Native Americans to Native Americans. But very rarely do we stop and come together and come to a room, to a place where we can have an open, honest discussion with one another.
I’m here to tell you, this morning, that we’ve been dealt a hand that, as a nation, we need to be able to deal with. I don’t anticipate that whites are going to go back to Europe; I don’t believe that blacks are headed back to the West Indies or to Africa; or Asians are headed back to the Pacific Rim, Hispanics back to Mexico, Cuba, Spain, Colombia, Brazil. We can’t throw this hand in and ask for four more. It is in our best interest-- our community and our nation-- to have this honest conversation.
In the military, there is something that is unique about us. When we deploy to a foreign land, or take on a particular mission, we deploy whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, Native Americans, women, many in non-traditional roles. But what happens is that we, as a nation, we take that for granted. We, as a military, take that for granted, that what we have done is we have deployed this rich, diverse group to take care of the nation’s business.
And in most nations that we deploy to, if you were to hold up just the palms of your hands and look at them, the differences between those folks are no different than between your hands, except you’ve got a thumb pointing to the right and to the left. And they are at odds with one another, but here we have deployed this rich group, diverse group of people, to take care of the nation’s business.
There’s a message in that, that is sent to the nations that we deploy to. There is a message in that that we should understand as well: there is strength and creativity and good in the diversity that is possessed there.
So the question that I pose to you this morning is a simple question. I will ask you, “What advice would you give to President Clinton, and to your community, with respect to the issues of race?”
Now, the rest-- I’m going to let you provide that feedback to me. But that’s the question that I lead with. We’re going to recognize you by-- if you let us know, there are some ladies here that will pass a microphone to you. As mentioned earlier, try not to make a speech, because we want everybody to have an opportunity to put some issues out on the table.
Okay, who wants to go first? Who wants to go? Are you ready? Oh, okay. I thought… See, this is just like an auction. You scratch [laughter], you get called on. Okay, let’s get a mike over here to this gentleman, let him start off.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Whenever there tends to be a conversation about race, we tend to talk about the “I”s. We never talk about the “we” in very concrete, direct facts. Where, if I sat down with some colleagues, and say they’re white, we’re not-- we’re talking about what effect race, or the problems with race, may have had on me, but we have yet to have that conversation that deals with the concrete facts. And then, when we have that conversation, I believe that it will point back to the legacy of slavery, which America has yet to deal with.
So when you start talking about concrete facts, I’ll talk about my family not having a trust fund, or owning property, or things to that nature, where you can trace that back to a certain segment of the population being disenfranchised, and you can trace that back to the legacy of slavery. I work with young people, and the first thing we do is try to trace it back. “American.” And you said, what could be said to Clinton? Clinton, being the voice of America, should offer that apology to the black folks, to the folks that have suffered from slavery.
Because what you have is one party benefiting, and what tends to happen is, when you have a conversation today, folks will say, “Hey, I wasn’t around during slavery.” But you can see the direct benefits that slavery continues to have for a certain segment of the population. We’re dealing with a legacy here in America that we have yet to really address as a nation, and it starts, as I tell the young people that I work with, “Look, let’s sit down and talk, let’s apologize for what we’ve done, then move forward.” The conversation shouldn’t stop at an apology; we should start having concrete conversations about what can be done. But first we have to deal and address that legacy that still affects the ideology of America today.
ARMSTEAD: My name is Ron Armstead, and as Bill said, I was fortunate to play a role in, kind of, catalyzing, for lack of a better term, this event. And actually, the rationale for this was that, given the history of Boston, particularly coming out of the ‘70s busing experience, where the façade, as it were, of Boston being this intellectual bastion of minds, and that race… I can remember particularly when the civil rights movement was taking place down South, a lot of Boston people pointed to the South, “We’re not like that. We’re not like that. See, that’s happening down South, and that’s where you had racial segregation.”
And so it was, to my mind, there was a bunch of scapegoating that was unmasked during Boston’s trial period of the ‘70s. I was particularly aggrieved by the fact of coming back from the service in Vietnam, in the early ‘70s, that that would be the first thing that I was struck with: a man being stabbed by the American flag on the side of City Hall. This whole antagonism and violence that was precipitated by bringing black children into South Boston.
Now, to me, that had a two-pronged impact. One, how the history of South Boston’s high school in terms of graduating seniors prior to ’65 was for every four that went in, only one graduated. You know, and they basically went to the police force, and the docks. So I was particularly concerned why people felt that it was imperative to bring black children to schools that really suffered the same social demographics as black schools. High alcoholism, high drugs, high violence, high single-parent families; same social demographics. And saying that that would bring quality education to black underprivileged children.
So I think that there’s a number of social contradictions that are at play in Boston that are probably unique, and very tell-tale for a lot of other communities. So that was part of my argument to Bill to suggest that this was a very needed and a very timely conversation. I guess my recommendation would be that this really is a process; this is not an event, that we have this one conversation, we have this one discussion, and in one two-hour period, everybody puts all the issues on the table and we walk away with some consensus. I do not see it as that at all.
And I think that that’s been a failing that we’ve had in the past, that these things take on more of an event kind of venue, rather than understanding that this is a process, this is something that… Dr. Charles Pinderhughes, before he died, said that “Racism in this country is hard-wired into the psychic.” Right? And that any sort of redress of that is going to be a very long and protracted process. We’re not good at protracted kinds of struggles and processes that bring around change.
So that would be my recommendation, that these are ongoing discussions. There’s an ongoing process that’s developed to help surface and identify some of the issues that divide us, as well as identifying some of the common ground that unites us.
LEFTWICH: Let me just say one thing here. The ladies that are working the microphones-- the lady over here in the red is going to work this half of the room; the lady in the white is going to work this half of the room. We’re going to flip-flop back and forth. Make sure you get the lady who’s working the mike on this side’s attention, because I’m relying on those ladies to make sure that you have a chance to speak. We’ve got you.
Okay, let’s go over here… And make sure you get her attention, on this side of the room, if you have something to say. If you’ve got something to say over here, make sure you let her see that you want to speak. Who has the mike? Go.
DIETZ: I’m not about to try to beat Paul Parks to the microphone [laughter]. I’m Paul Dietz, from Newton. I’ve been involved in some discussions of civil rights here at the Kennedy Library this last month and a half, or two months. And I’ve had several feelings I want to tell you about, and then respond a little bit to Randy.
One of them is a sort of feeling of nostalgia. I was involved in the civil rights movement in Texas before most people knew there was one. And I left Texas because of that involvement, by request. But up here… Back in the ‘70s, in the bus crisis that you were talking about, I met with Paul Parks and Ruth Batson and some other people. And I miss seeing them now. I see Paul Parks when he goes into the hospital every once in a while; I wave at him on an elevator, or I see him here at the Kennedy Library. It was sort of a crisis mentality that we had then, that we had to do something together. And, in a sense, I miss that. But I don’t miss the crises.
I think the problems are more subtle. There’s still some issues. You know, the issue of economic disparity. Glen Lowry, who if I’d still survived at Boston University would have been a colleague of mine, had a piece in yesterday’s Times magazine that reminded me we haven’t overcome all of the problems in access to healthcare and in income. He tells the story that most black folks in America, even those relatively well-off, are still buying life insurance rather than investing in the stock market. Now, I’m not an economic analyst, but life insurance is not a very good investment. But that’s the way that black folks, a good while ago, could get into business, was with selling life insurance, and teaching, and preaching.
I’m nostalgic, also, because we don’t have any blacks in my church. Well, we don’t have many blacks in my community. And I went to the Democratic Convention in Worcester last weekend, and there weren’t many black folks there, and only Deval Patrick was on the platform, to the best of my knowledge. But that’s going to require some-- not just apologies, I think, Randy. That’s going to require some self-reflection.
So we think back upon the myths. And that’s going to require some attention to the obstacles. Why is it that here, in an area like Boston, which has the best medical institutions, or some of the best, in the world, the folks who live closest to those great medical institutions have higher infant mortality rates, less access to medical care, and it’s as true today as it was 20 and 25 years ago? And I just say we’ve got to heal some structural problems, we’ve got to do some self-reflection, we’ve got to find some opportunities in our communities, not just at the President’s level, to work on these problems and get back to talking.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’d like President Clinton to know a couple of things. I’d like him to know that even though it’s gratifying that he has mentioned race, it is more important that he take the strong moral stands that will make other people understand that he’s serious. It’s one thing to talk about, and say, “I’m for this,” but it needs to come from the top. If the Congress says, “We think this should happen,” and it’s clearly something that’s going to impact the nation socially, be it welfare reform, be it healthcare, be it childcare, the President is the person that the nation listens to. And I think we have to come to the point where right has to be paramount.
So I think that, if he as the President sees that these are things which are going to further divide the nation if they happen, he’s got to say, “No, this can’t happen.” He has got the bully pulpit. He can call the media; he can get his message out. And I think that has to happen.
I think another thing which has to happen, locally, is that there needs to be more of an explanation through the media, so that young whites and young blacks understand what has caused some of these rifts. You know, in Boston, it didn’t just happen through busing; it was before that. I grew up in Boston, and my mother and father who came here from the South in the ‘20s told me about being places and not being accepted when they first came to Boston in the ‘20s. So it’s not something new.
But I think that we need to create a historical context. Not dwell on history, but create a historical context, so that young people understand, both black and white, that they have something to gain by understanding how the races became divided, and what they have to do to really try to bring people together.
LEFTWICH: You know, I think you brought up a very significant point in stating that leadership is extremely important. I would also contend, along with that, that our state Representatives, our Senators, and President-- I think it’s great for them to lead in those issues, but I think the real dynamic-- I don’t think that we should look to them to carry the water. I think the change that is going to take place, and that will exist, rests with the folks who are in this room. I think you are the change that will make all of that happen, with respect to what you do.
I want the President to talk more about it. I want our Senators, and our Representatives, to talk more about it. But as we have these discussions, there at least 21 states now that have anti-affirmative action legislation on the books. So if you’re looking for the type of leadership that’s going to be pro whichever side you come out on, I think that it’s really up to the people in this room, as far as this community at large is concerned, and also to make the impact on the nation as well.
But I think it’s really up to us. We have to put leaders in positions to talk for us, with respect to what we want to have happen. They have to be vetted properly, and then put into those offices. But I think it’s going to be on us to bring about the community that we want to exist.
LEFTWICH: Where’s the mike over here?
KELLY: I have it right here. First of all, let me identify myself as President of the Boston City Council, Jim Kelly, and a resident of South Boston. I want to respond to what some of the previous speakers had stated. I, too, was at the Democratic Convention in Worcester, and the lack of minority representation of those in attendance jumped out at me as well. Certainly in contrast to the number of minorities that had attended the Democratic Convention back in the 1970s and the early 1980s.
But that has to be the responsibility of the people, black and others, to participate, get involved, like the other people. So if there’s any finger- pointing that should be done as to why there’s a lack of minority representation, it has to be directed at the failure of black and other minorities to get involved.
On the issue of finger-pointing, I hear Ron, one of the previous speakers, point an accusing finger at South Boston during the busing. Well, I think Ron and other people should be aware that thousands of innocent children and their families were victims of being assigned to schools for no reason other than the color of their skin. That, to me, is a form of racism, and it’s outrageously wrong, and people of all color should have stood together to prevent the implementation of court-ordered forced busing.
This gentleman over here, and I did not get his name… I mean, he’s going way back to the legacy of slavery. And he’s talking about his family, or not having a trust fund. I don’t have a trust fund either, and there are tens of thousands of people across the city of Boston-- certainly thousands of people in the neighborhood of South Boston-- that don’t have trust funds. And I don’t think that any of us should be held accountable for the legacy of slavery that happened a couple of hundred years ago. Not my fault. Never had a slave, never wanted to have a slave, so don’t blame me for slavery.
What I think we ought to do is take a page out of what Ralph Cooper had stated in his opening remarks; he said that when he was called to the military, they didn’t ask if he was Italian-American or an Irish-American or an Afro-American. They took him because he was qualified.
LEFTWICH: And he was an American.
KELLY: And he said that all they asked was, was he fit and willing to serve? In that case, serve in the military. I think that that’s what we ought to be asking of young people when they go into school, or to colleges and universities: are they fit and willing to study? Are they qualified? Race, gender should not be a factor. And that’s the way it should be in the job market: are they fit and willing to work? And that’s why they ought to get jobs, ought to get promotions; not on the color of their skin, but on their qualifications. Thank you.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I heard what you said. But it’s strange, in this country. We are victimized by racism. And racism is a poisonous substance, and we’ve got to realize that. Everything that has been said indicates that we’re clouded by racism. It’s going to destroy us. It’s equally as devastating and destructive as any of the environmental problems that we’re concerned with. And if we don’t recognize, all of us, what this is about, and that it is a poison, then we are in dire trouble.
PARKS: Interesting. Paul Parks is my name. First of all, you know, a good definition of racism probably should be where we all ought to get started, so people can understand what we’re talking about. It’s an easy term to use; it’s a very tough term to identify, because each of us brings to this table something that’s exceedingly different than another, and we see it in different kinds of terms. Poor people see it in one way; other people see it in another way. And it keeps going.
But let me just say that we have always… Unfortunately, in this country, we have always looked upon slavery as an absolute negative. We, as black people, bought into the concept of slavery being a negative. And the interesting thing about it is, we may not be able to have those investment trusts and all, but what we did, we built a nation. 300 years of free labor built a nation. This nation is strong and powerful because of the fact that there were 300 years of free labor on the part of slaves.
You know? All that you have to do is just look at the cities that we built, the infrastructure that we’ve built, the educational institutions we’ve built, and see that slavery was a positive, in terms of this nation. It was a negative because we weren’t paid for it, but it was a positive in terms of how this nation grew, and became the nation that it is. And we don’t have to take a back seat, or feel any kind of negative emotions about this nation, because we are.
And I think that message needs to be taken up. We need to talk more about the opening of the western lands, we talk about all kinds of things in this country. But we don’t talk about what happened.
Look. As an engineer… I own a company. If you could take away my need to pay people for their services, I would be enormously wealthy. [Laughter.] So just think about that. You know? When I build a building, 60% of my cost is labor. Take away the 60%, and then you understand why this nation is what it is. Why it has the stock market, why it has Wall Street. Because back behind there was 300 years of building on the basis of people whom you didn’t pay.
Now, once I say that, the other thing I want to tell you is that I still believe, and strongly…. There’s a paper out there that I have written on how public schools can educate our urban youngsters. I’d like for that to go to the President, if possible. It did appear as an editorial in the Boston Globe last year.
Now, the interesting thing… If we don’t do something about educating our youngsters, about the approach to educating our youngsters, and how we should educate them… It’s not enough to talk about the fact that we’re going to try youngsters as adults. If we’re creating a system that creates predators, then we ought to stop it. And our system does. We are putting 13, 14-year- old children out on the street. Expelling them from school because of some kind of irrational concept. We should be teaching them. We should teach them well. And we should have people who are teaching them who understand how to teach them. And, unfortunately, we’re not training our teachers and principals to understand how to train the urban youngster that they have in their service.
How do I know this? I volunteer to teach a course in a different Boston high school every semester. I see it personally. I’ve worked doing it; I was Secretary of Education for this Commonwealth, and I was chairman of the Boston School Committee. I have seen it. And I’ll tell you, it’s a negative relationship between most of the teachers and the youngsters in their classrooms. Because most of the teachers don’t understand how to educate the youngsters before them.
They don’t understand how to be successful. So that’s why I said, unless we do something about the places where teachers are trained, and send people into the system who understand that we are in serious, serious trouble. And racism, call it whatever you call it, but the day comes when we have a city like Boston that most of us are out of, and we surround it to keep the people inside inside, so they won’t come out and be predators in our houses and our resources, then we’d better do something about that fairly quickly.
And I think it’s not a matter of just saying, “education,” it’s a matter of who trains our children. You can say, give children examinations, and what happens when they don’t do them well? And the reason why they don’t do them well is because they haven’t been taught well. And so, unless we do that, unless we really concentrate on teachers and principals, we’re wasting our time.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: One of the problems, of course, with this format is that you want to respond to the six people in between when you got your idea, forgetting the… I just wanted to respond a little bit to your comments about leadership. Because while I think that the most important and lasting work happens in communities among people, I think that if Abraham Lincoln had taken a plebiscite, he never would have ended slavery.
I think that if FDR had taken a vote, and gone to community meetings to talk about how to end the Depression, it wouldn’t have happened. Leadership involves courage, and I think this administration is remarkably lacking in it. And missing a huge opportunity on the issue of race. There is a way to open, not just a dialogue, which is very important, but the importance of the issue for the country. And I actually do agree with you, that the issue of race and our inability to discuss it, and to move from where we are to a different kind of culture, could truly be the destruction of what you so proudly pointed out in the military can sometimes work.
This country has done a great job of actually creating a new paradigm about diversity. And we are completely stumbling on the issue of race. And leadership, clarity, proposals, willingness to be bold and to experiment. And when the experiments fail, or don’t produce results that we expect, we cannot say the whole idea is wrong. But to say let’s try another way, is what in fact is missing at the federal level.
LEFTWICH: Yeah, that’s why we say mend, not end. Over here.
KYUNG: Hello, my name is Peter Kyung, I’m a teacher and a resident of Boston. And I don’t like to count, but I always still do count, and I think I’m the only Asian American in the room. So, I want to start with referring back to Ralph’s opening point, and I think veterans have a lot to say in the conversation about race. And this coming Saturday, I’ll be going back to Hawaii to continue working on some research with Asian American Vietnam veterans. And I want to share just a couple of voices from interviews I was doing in January. Because they have ways of helping us understand this topic that we don’t often here.
So, here’s one who’s Japanese American. So these were Asian Americans who were from Hawaii, who looked like the enemy, but were fighting. They were fit, and they chose to serve. So, this is a Japanese American who said: “During training, kill the gooks, kill the slant-eyes, that’s the first thing you wake up and see on the walls. Kill the gooks, cut off their heads. That’s how they used to initiate us, you know? Just tuning you up to go overseas. That’s the way we were taught. Kill the gooks or the slopes.
“And hell, I was the same thing. I used to think about that, you know, because I was Japanese. I thought, ‘Hey, don’t do that to me, man! I’m keeping this green uniform on, man. I’m not going to put nothing else on.’”
Or a Philippino American who said: “We were fighting the people there who looked like me. A lot of them remind me of my family and relatives. A lot of them died and looked like my family, you know? There’s a lot of resemblance.”
Or another Japanese American, who’s also part native Hawaiian said, “The way they referred to white GIs, the way they treated us made you always asking, ‘Are you inferior?’ They look down on us. After that I don’t like that feeling. When I feel that feeling, I just don’t like it. They think they’re better than me. I see guys bleed; we all bleed red. I don’t care whether you’ve got blonde hair and blue eyes, or you got black hair, you all bleed red. I don’t know, it’s too late now. You should have done this research 25 years ago, because boy, that’s a long time to be carrying around all this bitterness.”
And then finally, another Philippino American, “There’s a lot of things that went down in Vietnam that a lot of people don’t even talk about yet. And race is one.”
So, looking like the enemy, when we think about the wars that this country has engaged in, a lot of those wars have been in Asia. And when you conduct war, you dehumanize the enemy. Well, there’s a lot of Asian Americans who look like the enemy, but they are our neighbors, our co- workers, our children. Now I’m making the connection from Hawaii to Boston. One of my former students is a bilingual teacher in an elementary school in Boston. And during her first year of teaching, she noticed that her students were being harassed a lot at this school. And she wanted to do something about it.
So the principal of the school felt, “Hey, no one is complaining, so there really isn’t a problem. You don’t document it. There’s no action that needs to be taken.” So we felt that we had to document it, and we worked with this one classroom. 26 fourth graders, all Vietnamese bilingual students. And during the month of April, we asked them to keep track of any incidents of harassment or violence that they experienced, that they witnessed, or that they heard about. So we had an elaborate way of documenting.
And in one month, 26 children-- fourth graders-- they documented 86 incidents of violence that they experienced themselves, 64 that they witnessed, and 24 that they heard about. So you ask what are children learning in school? Those children are learning a lot about race, about power, about who cares and who doesn’t care. And that courageous single teacher, she said don’t ignore it. And her headmaster continued to ignore it.
So there’s a lot of learning going on in school, and it has to do with race. It’s not necessarily what we want our children to be learning, but they are learning it nevertheless. And so then to connect it to South Boston High, which Ron and City Council President Kelly referred to, well, yeah those dynamics played out in the ‘70s. And when there was a race riot at South Boston High School just four years ago, all the reference points went back to 1974, but the school is different today. The demographics of Boston are different today. And there was a Cambodian bilingual program in that school, a large number of Vietnamese students in that school. And when I and my students went to do research in that school, to talk to them about their ideas about race, they said, “Everyone’s talking about black, everyone’s talking about white. But what about us? We’re Chinese. We’re Vietnamese. They don’t talk about us.”
And another Vietnamese high school student from South Boston High who said, “I feel like I get stepped on everyday in that school.” So those are just some connections between what those Vietnam veterans of Asian American ancestry went through in that war. After 25 years, they are still suffering. They have not been allowed to-- well, they have… The benefit claims that they have submitted have not been accepted because the VA does not recognize race as a source of trauma. That’s something heavy to think about.
And at the same time, the impact of being at war with Asia, and what that means for Asian Americans, for immigrants, for people trying to just survive in this society. Our kids are learning a lot, but is it what we want them to learn? Thank you.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I was in the fourth grade. I learned about the French Revolution. I learned about the potato famine in Ireland. I learned about the Holocaust. I learned a lot about European History. Western Civ in college is a pre-requisite. How many white Americans know about Timbuktu? How many white Americans know where Mali is? How many white Americans care about the passage from Africa over here, let alone know how many Africans died coming to be slaves in this country?
I was at the Democratic Convention. And I’m going to tell you why there weren’t that many blacks involved. Because Massachusetts only has 5% of the population that are African Americans. If you select delegates from towns in Massachusetts, then you’re only going to get African American delegates from communities that have African Americans in them. In Massachusetts there are a number of communities who don’t have any.
Marilyn Anderson Chase was on that podium. So wasn’t Ray Jordan from Springfield. I thought we were pretty well represented in the second Suffolk. But I know what you mean when you think that President Clinton isn’t courageous. But I think he is. I think he’s courageous for just bringing up the subject of race in America because you usually end up getting lynched.
After the Korean Conflict, I actually remember Meger Evans. You know, here was a hero. Here was a man doing something. See, I know the penalty for wanting to do change. It can often mean death if you dare try to be a man in America. Traumatized youth? Yeah, we got a lot of traumatized youth. And as a veteran’s organization, one of the things that we’re doing is we’re working with those traumatized youth. And who knows more about death and violence than a veteran, so we work closely with these youth, that 85% of them report they’ve either seen, been a victim of, or know someone close to them that has died violently. Or been attacked, or…
Yeah, so we are learning. Kids are learning. What should the President do? And this might sound really mundane compared to what we’re talking about. But the President should support an African American museum in Washington, D.C. So that all America can go and learn what has been shared here. That Paul Park said, that we built this nation. If you take away everything in a house that’s made by an African American, you’ll be standing on an empty ground.
PETERS: All praises due to God. I’m here, my name is David S. Peters. I’m originally from New Bedford. I’ve been in the Boston area for a number of years now. I work with the Massachusetts Port Authority as a police sergeant. I’m a Vietnam Veteran, Coast Guard, Combat Veteran, American and Cape Verdean ancestry.
I’m here also to discuss, without getting personal with anybody, that it seems to me white supremacy racism is the problem. It’s not white people’s fault, it’s just the system that we’ve been raised up under. We’ve been programmed to be at odds with each other, so that we the people cannot pursue happiness and prosperity. So I’m here to ask just that Mr. Clinton bring thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Thank you very much, and have a nice day.
WALSH: Hello, my name is Rita Walsh, and I’m originally from Boston. I graduated from Dorchester High School for Girls in 1943. And through the years that I went to grammar school, through the Depression and the Second World War, we always started class with the 23rd psalm. And I didn’t see that it was anything about the constitution. I didn’t… that was different from the 23rd psalm, that we’re all created equal. And I think if the children had continued to say that, we knew we were equal.
After I got out of high school, I realized that probably a third of my classmates were suffering from the Holocaust. But their parents weren’t talking about it. There were a lot of Jewish people there that suffered greatly. And I never… We didn’t have any black people in my community, but I was born in Roxbury and moved at a very young age, because my father was doing well in business and got a big house.
But they often referred to their neighbors, and I knew at some point that some were black and some were white. And some were Swedish, and some were Protestant, and some were Catholic. There wasn’t all this distinction of the blacks and the yellows and the whites. Now right now, in this library, everybody’s here, I think, has their head on straight. Because they’re not on drugs or alcohol, and those are the enemies in this country today.
These children that are coming to school are suffering from those things, and they’re not being taught their prayers in school or at home. So, I think… I’m very happy to be here. I love this library. It makes me feel hopeful, and I just love the diversity of everything here. But I want to say about the busing, I was a young woman. My husband was in law school. And I used to listen because I didn’t have the GI bill, and I couldn’t go to college. There was no healthcare. My father paid $18,000 for healthcare for my mother when I was in junior high school.
Hillary Clinton is a very courageous woman. And she was defeated on the healthcare bill because of the profit that talks in this country in insurance companies. That’s what we need for equality. We’re being separated from the poor on Medicare, and who can get their teeth fixed. We need a national healthcare. We need a prayer in our schools.
They took the prayer out and they put condoms in. They spent too much time. The junior high school that I went to, we were so delighted to go to the Woodrow Wilson Junior High School, where there was a cafeteria, and an auditorium. We were so happy!
When my brother, who died at 45 during the busing, protecting things that went on. I won’t go into detail about it, but he had an aneurism from a head injury. And there were problems in the school, and the principal used to lock himself in the room, and say, “Mr. McGurity(?) take care of it.” And he did because he loved all people as we were taught to do.
But when he went to teach in that school that we were so proud of, there was a policeman on duty. And a young man came up and said, “Want to buy a gun?” It’s just-- it’s incongruous. But we’re not divided in race here in this room. We’re all very fortunate to be here, and to be thinking and standing, and walking. Let us work on the drugs. Let us do that, thank you.
CHERRY: My name is Brenda Cherry. A few comments. I wanted to start by saying in conference to my colleague here, I’m not interested in an apology for anything. What I want is for you to do something, saying that your sorry means nothing to me. It’s what you do. And I guess I’ve heard too much rhetoric in my life, and all the apologies in the world from the President on down, wouldn’t make any difference to me. What would make a difference is action.
And I recommend that President Clinton do something about the value of diversity. People do not understand the value of diversity. I think at all levels from the very beginning, there is no value in having blacks in your organization, of having Hispanics, Asian Americans, women. What value… Racism, or having a diverse population, is always a negative.
Why is it a negative? We don’t understand. We can see from our viewpoint as minorities, that there should be a value. But that value must be articulated. And it must, but be articulated in the conversation that people understand, and that’s money. I’m sorry, that’s what it comes down to. It has to be a resource. It must be related to something that is a common sense of barter. That’s money. That’s resources.
So I think on a national basis, in terms of supporting grants, or anything else, where research is supported, where you can show a value of diversity to institutions, to organizations, and to communities, that is what can be done on a broader scale. I would like to say as an educator, I have been very saddened as I’ve come. I’ve been in Boston 10 years. I came from the South, you could probably tell, but I’ve lived in the Midwest, overseas, I’m a veteran. I’ve lived all over the country, and in fact all over the world.
In the Boston area, I guess the greatest problem I see is that you don’t admit what is. In the South, it’s clear; you’re black, whatever. You’re segregated, whatever. You get to Boston, and it’s a lot of pretense here. It’s a lot… I don’t know whether you think that you’re enlightened because you’re New Englanders, I don’t know. But it seems that there’s a lot of fooling yourselves and others. And here it’s blatant. It’s blatant but you want to think it isn’t here, and my last comment, with my faculty and others, my biggest problem, and I think something that you really need to do something about, is not those people who say or admit that you’re racist, it’s those people who say that you’re not, and really believe that you’re not.
But, in your action, you’re so insensitive. And so, I’m saying that there needs to be something that we need to learn about ourselves as black, Asian Americans, or whatever. There are things that perhaps I am contributing to the problem. The problem is not just the whites, the Asians, the blacks. The problem lies in all of us. And I have contributed, I’m sure, with my attitude. Some of the things I don’t know whether it’s because I’m female, or because I’m black, or because I’m black and a female. I don’t know what the problem is, but I do know that I have an attitude about it. I certainly do.
And when things that may not have been intended to be how I perceive them, I perceive them very negatively and you get a negative reaction from me. And that exacerbates the situation; it doesn’t help. So I’m saying that value, I value myself and I see it. We have to work on a local basis, but certainly on a national basis. The value of that, but we need to look inside ourselves, as well as outside ourselves. Because it is a new day, and talk has to be converted into action, and that’s positive action.
LEFTWICH: Let me just take a moment to share something with you. A little earlier this year, I was back at my alma mater, at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. And conducted One America, and through the process of conducting that there was a woman that stood up. She said, “Mr. Secretary, when you go to work this salad bowl, this mixing bowl that we have, all these different types of people-- it’s beautiful, but it’s complex.” There’s a lot of problems that exist when you have this beautiful thing that we come to recognize as diversity.
And there’s one thing that came to mind when she said that. I said, “Let me do a survey,” and I’m going to do that survey here. How many of you get along-- and I’m talking to everybody in the room now-- how many of you get along with all the members of your family, raise your hand? Raise your hands high now, so we can see it! Okay.
So somebody tell me approximately what the percentage might be of the folks that raised their hand in comparison to the folks who didn’t?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: About 10%.
LEFTWICH: Okay, 10% raised their hands. Alright, now if you can’t get along-- you know where I’m going-- with the people in your own family, what would make you think that we’re not going to work-- or need to work-- as hard as we possibly can. In order to resolve the issues, to confront the issues that divide us. We’ve got to be prepared to roll-up our sleeves and really go to work! This is tough business.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I see racism as power relationships. It’s more structural than personal. We have bias, which is personal. We have discrimination, which is personal. Racism is structural. Institutional racism is what we ought to be looking at, and I would ask the President to look at racism from a structural issue. So that we’re dealing with institutional racism. If we can eliminate practices within institutions, we can eliminate bias, discrimination, and maybe even racism. But if we continue to talk about racism in terms of how I feel, and how you feel, we’ll never conquer racism.
And I want to say something. Usually in these discussions, I’m always struck by how we get into the issues of victimization. If I express my pain, you have to express your pain. In other words, we don’t hear each other because we’re busy equating their victimization to our victimization. So we can never solve a problem if we continue to think in terms of, “I’m more oppressed than you are.”
Now let me tell you how I’m oppressed, then we can’t get beyond the whole, what we call, the hierarchy of oppression. Who is most oppressed? So I wish in some way, we could discuss these issues without hearing and responding to victimization. And without swapping tales of victimization because that really stops the whole conversation. Because I think we can always find where we’re more victim than somebody else.
BLACKWELL: My name is Tiffany Blackwell, and I am neither a baby boomer, nor quite a Generation-Xer. So I’m in a unique generation of people who I think are the first level that really can discuss race freely. I think amongst my friends compared to my parents and their friends, we really don’t have an issue bringing race into the conversation. So I think as Americans we should applaud ourselves, and applaud our President, and applaud our forefathers for at least giving us this opportunity to discuss race. Because 20 years ago, this conversation, certainly a panel of this diversity, would not have happened. So we’ve definitely come a long way.
But the current threats against affirmative action threaten everything that we’ve done to get to this point. As a product of the South, and of a historically black college, I especially feel the threats against affirmative action. And I’m very proud to say that I’m a black woman, and I’m a black woman from the South. And a part of the reason that I live in Boston was because I was afforded an opportunity, both educational and professionally, to work here. And that’s something that 20 years ago would not have happened. I wouldn’t have the position that I have, and I wouldn’t live in Boston had it not been for affirmative action.
I’m also not afraid to discuss race, because I was raised in an environment where I was very comfortable with who I was, and what I had to bring to the table. Be it black, white, Hispanic, Asian American, woman or male. I also was raised in a very culturally diverse environment. And I think being able to go to a historically black college afforded me that foundation to understand what blacks contributed. But I think it was my background that allowed me to appreciate that foundation.
I think we need to not ask the President, but we need to ask the President’s constituents, which are Americans in general, to go back into educating our children at home. Not just about our own cultures, but about all the cultures, because I think that’s the only way that we’re truly going to get to a point where there’s racial equality. We’ve got to let our children know that there’s no such thing as one race. I cannot agree with that. I don’t mean to differ in opinion with you, Mr. Kelly, but I can’t agree with the fact that we all need to get to a point to where there’s one race. Because I think diversity is what makes this country so successful. You need people of various cultures, various ages, various genders, various religions to bring together that salad bowl that is successful.
But we all need to appreciate what each one of us brings to the table. So we can’t be afraid to discuss race within our homes. But we need to be able to discuss it positively, to be able to say, “Yes, African Americans are a part of slavery, and this is what we’ve done for the country.” We need to be able to discuss the Holocaust, we need to be able to discuss what goes on with
Asian Americans. So that our children have an understanding that everyone has contributed to this society, and everyone is going to make this society more beneficial in the future, if we intend on staying the type of country that we are.
And my final point is affirmative action needs to be something that is addressed openly and whole-heartedly. We need to not just educate people on our level, but we need to talk to teenagers and younger people who have no idea what affirmative action is. And have no idea what will exist if affirmative action is no longer. I have a 17 year old sister who’s graduating from high school next week. And she has an idea of affirmative action, but she doesn’t have an understanding of what will indeed happen if we allow these votes to pass. So we need to stop being afraid to educate ourselves, and educate our children on race and race relations.
So I think instead of asking the President to do something for us, we need to ask ourselves to do something for our future. And we need to start educating within.
WILLINGHAM: Alright, my name’s Misha Willingham, and I just want to share a couple of things. One is from a personal perspective of the responsibility of race. The second is kind of a perspective of those who may be in power, who kind of control wealth. From a personal perspective, I have both participated in, and stayed in activities that were both sexist and racist. And not that I excuse those things, but if you asked me at that time I had justifiable reasons-- I thought I had justifiable reasons why I did so.
The challenges that I have to face as I grow older, and even dealing with raising children and living in this country, especially. One is the idea of building alliances versus establishing enemies. I work in a public school system, that means I work on the premise of dealing with students from different backgrounds, and different cultural backgrounds and ethnic backgrounds, and different races. So when I form alliances, I have to decide on who I can form alliances with, understanding that that may be issue specific. That we may agree to do this on this level, but we may not on another. And when I define my enemies, that’s it. I can’t do anything else with them but see them in that place.
The second challenge I have is private interest versus public interest. That the minute something is public, and I just say all in general, we can all just do certain things, and we can all get along, we can all act a certain way. But when that becomes private, it becomes a different issue. Because then I began to be more defensive and protective of the things I’m concerned most about. And that can be very much a challenge.
And that leads to the idea of what am I willing to sacrifice, versus to invest in creating a type of situation in which diversity can occur and I can participate fully in the process. Because you can’t… Diversity cannot exist, and be powerful, unless there’s personal sacrifices being made. And to sacrifice something means that… In my opinion, admit that there’s a personal challenge that you need to deal with directly.
Now that’s from a personal perspective that I have to come with. There’s also this issue of people who are in power and control wealth. And when I mean in power, I mean not just wealthy people. I mean politicians, I mean people who are teachers, doctors, or lawyers, people who own businesses. People who are in a position of directly affecting someone else’s life. And to that degree, in this country, most of those people are white, quite frankly.
Now it does not mean that all of them abuse that power, but they are in those positions. And we don’t have to look any further than look at the Fortune 500 companies. And we cannot forget Texaco, and that’s my way that we can deal with the kind of subtly.
LEFTWICH: You can deal with it however you want to. Go ahead.
WILLINGHAM: And the idea of responsibility, because I think a politician that I would mostly respect is one that is willing to reach out of his or her shell. To go out and reach, and extend help to other people. But that’s not forgeting Texaco and the discrimination thing. Let’s not forget the MBTA and the racial stuff that’s been going on there. Let’s not forget the Ford Motor Company, and the housing and the interest rate issues that they’ve been dealing with. Let’s not forget that recent thing at the Holiday Inn, in determining which candidates were people of color, versus who were white. Let’s not forget the real estate issues and practices that have occurred nation wide, determining who goes into what neighborhood.
Let’s not forget right here. I teach at the Burke High School, so I always bring up the Burke. Let’s not forget the idea that a public school has had to agitate through its parents in order to get fair funding after existing in this state for how many years? After even being at a school level, being an all white girls school, and then all of a sudden becoming an under resourced, under supported public school. And now on the rise only through agitation, not through somebody reaching out and just saying, “I want to be diverse. And I want to help these people over here.”
Let’s not forget Dorchester High. Let’s not forget the issue with the exam schools, and addressing similarly what the young woman was saying there about affirmative action. The battle and the fight against affirmative action in contradiction of supporting other public schools that are right here, that need that type of support. When I look at those things, I think the conversation, or what I would recommend, is that there needs to start a personal responsibility. And then there needs to be some honest kind of reflection. And in one case, there needs to be some type of rewarding of those types of organizations and those people who actually try to put diversity in a positive effect, and that positively affects the country.
OLIVIER: My name is Frank Olivier. I work at MassPort. Two points. One, a couple of months ago-- this is something that President Clinton could do-- a couple of months ago, Jesse Jackson had a meeting on Wall Street. And I think it was supported by Donald Trump and others, so he can talk to the leaders of the economic community. In the United States of America, there is still a direct connection between economics and advancement, particularly for people of color.
That’s something that the President could do. You could use the presidency as a bully pulpit for the business community. It’s so difficult now to bring cases of discrimination. And when it does happen, like the Texacos and the Denny’s of the world, they come out and they’re bad. And Avis Rent-a-Car, and so on, there’s a whole string of cases. And it’s much more difficult to get those cases out. But it could be that the President could talk to business leaders, and show the connection between their policies, and the impact that it has on them and their community.
The second point I wanted to mention had to do with what Mr. Kelly said. I’m sorry he left. But just recently, the City of Boston and the state signed an agreement with the South Boston community about building their convention center here in Boston. And the political leaders of South Boston struck one hell of a deal. The South Boston community’s going to benefit economically, jobs, venders, office space, on and on and on. And it was pure politics, and you cannot describe it any other way! Because the South Boston community votes, and then goes back to a point that was made by Ralph and Paul Parks and others. Our community doesn’t vote, therefore we don’t get the respect.
And as a direct connection between economics and voting power. Relatively easy to vote. It’s relatively easy to register to vote, but that’s something that our community needs to do. We need to come together as a community, and say, “How do we get people to register to vote? How do we get those people out to vote?” And then you’ll get respect.
A lot of things are going to be happening in Boston soon. The Sea Port development, the Harbor development, multimillion dollar, maybe billion dollar projects. And if we don’t vote, we’re not going to be at the table. We’re not going to get the respect that the South Boston community has. It’s the perfect example of what can happen.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’m with the woman with the attitude, in terms of dealing with things that are concrete, and not getting torn up in rhetoric. And not talking about trust funds when there are more white people in poverty in this country than there are minorities. So what are we going to do, and one very obvious one is what Paul was talking about, in terms of the operation of our public schools.
The major thing, it seems to me, in public education should be looking at the first-time that a child drops below grade level. Thinking about that as being the inevitable road to dropping out of school. And putting the funds into urban schools, so that we will have schools that will keep their kids in, graduate all who are eligible to be graduated. And I think if we keep our children educated and in school, and make those schools of equality, that we’ll want children to stay in schools. That we will have accomplished a great deal right there.
What do we need in terms of dealing with the problems of discrimination? Where do we deal with that? The administration of justice has not been mentioned. We need a justice system, and I deal with the entire aspect from the policeman on the street, the judge in the courtroom, to the probation office or the parole officer afterwards. People have got to be treated as individuals. They’ve got to be understood, their problems have got to be understood. There shouldn’t be the kind of situation that existed when Dee Brown was arrested in Wellesley after a bank had been robbed because he was the only black man they found.
That’s the kind of situation that will continue racial problems in our country. We need to deal with that. We need to put money behind our words, and get really a society where we no longer have to have committees on the disproportionate incarceration of minorities. Because we will have eliminated it.
Paul made a reference to kids being put into adult court and the transfer system. And a lot of people have talked about states’ rights, and the Republican majority in the Congress is violating what used to at least be the Republican rhetoric of states’ rights. By now treating kids the way they used to treat highway fund money, that a state won’t get its juvenile justicem money unless it automatically puts into adult court children who have committed crimes of a serious nature. That’s not the way to improve our society.
STEWART: I’m John Stewart, as I said before. I have two points that I’d like to make. One is about this whole question of history. There is, as everybody knows there has been, a debate of sorts as to whether our country has made progress in the last 40, 50, 60 years, or whatever. I’ll openly admit I’m one of those people who believes that we have made progress, and very, very significant progress over time in America. I think one only has to look at some of the horrible problems relating to ethnicity that we see in other societies, and then compare them to what we have in America, and the conclusion-- at least my conclusion-- is that although, obviously, we have a lot of problems in America, these problems pale in comparison to the problems that other societies are facing. In dealing with the ethnicity and all of the whole situation, relating to people of different backgrounds, living together in a common society.
So I think we have made a tremendous amount of progress. The second point I would make, and other people have made this to some extent, is that it seems to me-- and I think this is so important in any discussion like this-- but it seems to me that we absolutely have to separate, and separate in a very, very hard and fast way those public policy questions that are essentially economic and social. And those public policy questions that are in fact related to race. And I think this is a very, very major problem in America, that in the last 20 or 30 years, too many people-- black people, white people, people of all kinds-- too many people have made sort of an automatic connection between economic and social policies and questions of race.
There are lots and lots of people in this country who, for example, when you talk about welfare, when you talk about Head Start programs, when you talk about a lot of other economic and social programs, they immediately think in terms of race. In my view, these are not racial questions; they’re human questions. And we should be dealing with them as human questions, and dealing with them a lot more aggressively than I think we have been.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: My comment to President Clinton, if he’s listening--
LEFTWICH: He is.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: --you should deal with these economic and social policy questions, and deal with them in a much more aggressive, much more courageous way than you have been. And as I say, I think these questions are overwhelming. And yes, the racial questions are important. Yes, there is racism in this country. But I think all of these questions, quite frankly, pale in comparison to the basic economic and social questions that have to be addressed.
LEFTWICH: Before we go to the next speaker, let me just give you an idea of how we intended on using this information. Under the President’s initiative on racism umbrella, the conversation is phase one. Analysis of the information is phase two. Phase three is the process that will ultimately either evolve to programs, policies, or even prospective legislation. There’s also a think-tank body that had dedicated itself to solely the study of these racial issues.
All of that will get thrown into a hopper, and then that will ultimately be condensed into a report. And I think one of your own citizens here, Professor Chris Edley, will no doubt be involved in that process too. And of course, the work that has gone into the task force, or the panel on race, that Dr. John Hope Franklin chairs. So all of that will be condensed, and there will be a publication that will come after that. Please?
ROMAN: Irene Roman, and I was born in Dorchester, and I’ve lived here my whole life. So I’ve gone through some of the very sad times that have happened here in Dorchester, Roxbury, Boston. The thing that disturbs me is that I’ve attended a number of sessions similar to this on the topic of race. And people attending from various backgrounds, various communities, and we go away saying, “Well, that was a very interesting discussion.” And that’s it.
Unless the President sees a way of getting this kind of ongoing, ongoing… And there’s no quick fix, as somebody has already said. This kind of discussion going on on the community level, because how many people I think of in my own community are even aware of this going on today. And the survival of our inner cities are certainly not going to be dependant upon the business downtown that will pull out in a minute if the bottom-line isn’t what they want in Boston. And yet the survival of the inner-city is not downtown, it’s the community.
And if these people in the communities are not learning how to live with one another, I think this is extremely serious. And you know, it’s fine having these discussions, but if you don’t bring it to the level of where the problems are, and have those people discuss it on an ongoing basis, it’s sadly going to be discussed many years from now. And that’s the one thing that’s sad, that we’re still discussing this in spite of the fact that we’ve had so many meetings on this.
So I think it’s very, very important that this get down to the nitty-gritty of the civic associations within the communities. Because who better can discuss the problem, than neighbor with neighbor, who understands where they’re coming from, understands some of their background? Because we’ve lived together in a community, and not a group similar to this, that we’re all coming from different backgrounds, but that usually is the end of it.
LEFTWICH: I’ve had a sense that somewhere along the line of the journey dealing with race, what we did is we got to 1964. And the omnibus civil rights legislation. Everybody sat back, took a deep breath, “Oh! It’s all done. It’s taken care of. We got it resolved. We can sit back and we can relax.” And so we took a seat on that bench along the journey, and we’ve been sitting there for a long time.
These discussions are to serve as a catalyst for a nation and for a community to do specifically what you talked about. This is not a two hour, two-and- half hour, one-shot chance to get the work done. You can’t do it! Not intended to do it.
What has to happen now is that with the help of the groups that have been out there before, the group that is here this morning. Hopefully there are individuals that will continue to pick up the baton, and to work this issue. With this group, and with extended groups, because maybe you have an idea, I’ve had it said in some circumstances, “Well, Mr. Secretary, you didn’t bring… You had an executive from United Airlines here, but you didn’t have the baggage handlers.” Well, you know, we got 45, 50 people here. So if you got another way that you think will be effective in terms of engaging in a community, you don’t need me to do it! I’m gone! At 5:00 this afternoon, I’m gone.
This community without question has leadership and a great deal of enthusiasm, and a great deal of ability. Go ahead and carry the baton. You got it. Go ahead.
BENSON: Hi, I’m Jocelyn Benson, and I’m a student at Wellesley College. And I have a bit of a cold, so I’ll have to apologize for that. But I just wanted to bring up a point that a lot of people are talking about, reaching out to the youth, and reaching out to young people. And teaching young people and education.
I conduct similar conversations around a group called Common Ground at Wellesley College. And one thing that we repeatedly hear is that no one’s listening to the young people. There aren’t conversations around these issues just with young people. There aren’t conversations being held at elementary schools, and high schools, in colleges with young people. There’s a lot of feeling that youth of America are being talked to, or, you know, told that they have to learn about the history. Told that they have to learn about the past, and many are eager to do that.
But also feel that there are issues right now concerning them, in their schools, that no one’s listening to their feedback, or no one’s seeking their feedback. And one thing that has been brought up, just among students who’ve I’ve talked to, when I said that I was going to come here today, was that, “There’s no young people on the Advisory Council, on the President’s Advisory Council.”
There’s no one under 30, I think, and definitely no students. And I think that that’s one recommendation that needs to be made, so that there’s at least some representation of the current youth population. So that they have a voice on the Advisory Council, and in the decision-making process.
LEFTWICH: Let me just add one piece to that, because I think you make a very important point. One of the things that the President has done with respect to the youth piece, and that’s 30 and under, is we’ve put together a body that is represented by those groups-- diverse, 30 and under-- at the Department of Defense, for instance, and it’s replicated in each one of the government agencies. I have, for instance, I’ve designated a youth, I guess you could say, leader. And what we have been doing from the youth perspective is there’s a couple things that have happened.
There was a two week period during the month of April when there was a focus specifically on college and high school aged students. In addition to that, just to continue to perpetuate being able to reach into that additional group of folks, who have a lot of ideas, and different concepts as well, is we have specifically conducted “One America” conversations, which is just like this. But what we’ve done, for instance in Washington, D.C., during “One America,” we had students from Georgetown, University of Virginia, George Mason, Catholic University, District of Columbia University. Just to give you an idea, we did that in Washington, D.C. and Chicago.
We went to Harold Washington Community College where they have approximately seven satellite schools. And in addition to those schools, we had the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Northeastern University, Roosevelt University, Columbia University, University of Illinois, Perdue University. We covered a whole plethora, and we had 75 students there. And it was broadcasted on Tel-Star 5, so anybody who had access to a dish could get it. And in addition to that, what we did is all those schools that I named were tied into a closed circuit broadcast. So we didn’t attempt to engage those folks at those remote locations, because it was really work to deal with 75 folks in a room.
But we did reach out, and I can tell you right now without any question and without hesitation, that college-aged students, folks 30 and below, are engaged and involved in this process.
Where are we next? Okay, please.
WOOD: My name is Christine Wood, and I’m a communications professional. And one of the things that strikes me in most of these conversations, is the concept that we’re not dealing with racism as a systematic poison if I can use the metaphor that my sister used. It’s so ingrained in everything that we do or say or think, that to have social issues conversations, or to have conversations around education, or to have conversations around… It’s a moot point. I mean, you can’t discuss racism while you’re using terms interchangeably like black and African American. Because when you talk about African Americans, or you talk about the culture of Asian Americans, Latin Americans, or you talk about… You’re talking about their culture, and you’re talking about who they are and their traditions, and their language, and their rituals, and their ceremonies.
But when you start talking about black versus white-- my sister, Tiffany, I think used some terminology around black, white, Asian-- you’re crossing issues. And when you talk about black versus white, or you talk about minority versus majority, as our Council President mentioned, you deal with systemic issues. And minority as a concept is such a relative term, and me being in this room doesn’t necessarily make me a minority in this room. Or I know in certain situations why people can go into certain rooms, and they will then become the minority.
But when you start referring to people of color, or people of certain ethnicities as minorities, by nature you’re reinforcing the systemic nature of racism. And you can’t talk about it unless you start to deal with those. I guess as a communication professional, I’m very interested in the language that we use. Until we start dealing with the language behind this system that continues to keep people of color oppressed, then I don’t think we can ever deal with the root of it. I mean, we’re not dealing with the root of the basic psychological damage that’s been done to us as a people.
I mean, slavery’s not something that Europeans created. I mean, slavery existed for centuries before us. But it’s an interesting concept that we’re one of the few institutions where the oppressor and the oppressed continue to reside in the same land mass. And how does that psychologically damage the black male, or the African American woman? And what does that mean, and psychologically, how does that affect all of us systemically? I think we need to start talking about those issues instead of talking about the cultures. Because we’re all very different culturally, and I don’t know if looking at someone who I perceive to be white, is an Italian American, a Greek American, or what their issues, or their experiences are. They could be very different from what my experiences as an African or Haitian American might be.
So, disregarding the culture, let’s just start to deal with it as the systemic poison that it obviously is.
DIPLESIUM: Hello, my name is Derek Diplesium. I’m a student. I think one thing that we’re doing is putting a lot of blame on whomever, and doing a lot of finger pointing. And putting out words with isms, and things of that nature. I don’t think we need isms, I think we need to reach out to the different people that are having the problems. I myself had a certain view, a one dimensional view of the things that we have to deal with. You know, the conflicts and the issues that the young people have to deal with. And that our society, we don’t really give the young people a chance to talk to other young people in other neighborhoods. To reach out and do things in the other neighborhoods, and do community service, do things that are different.
I’ve gone skiing myself. I’ve been to the Midwest. I’ve been to the Southwest, I’ve been to Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico. And that’s because I’ve been given the opportunity to do different things. And it’s made me not only a more well rounded person, but also a person that’s more understanding of the different problems in our nation.
I was in the Navaho Reservation last summer, and I was with a group of very wealthy kids, pretty affluent kids. I mean, millions of dollars here. And we had very similar problems. There were drug problems, there was alcohol, there was loneliness. You know, we had to deal with like suicide, things of that nature.
LEFTWICH: Peer pressure.
DIPLESIUM: Peer pressure. Everything you could possibly think of. But we had so many presuppositions, and so many things that we were taught as we were growing up in school. That, you know, I’m black, I have to listen to rap music, and I have to be ignorant. They’re white, they have to be snotty, and they don’t care about anybody.
And after a while, we were on the Navaho Reservation thinking that, wow we’re not really that much different. We’re only people with conflicts and problems. So why can we take out all the isms, and just concentrate on the human race. It’s one thing to respect and to maintain a knowledge of different cultures, but it’s another thing to treat humans as they should be treated. And if we’re concentrated on getting apologies for the Holocaust, getting apologies for slavery, and that’s not only the African experience, but the Irish experience, South America. We won’t go anywhere.
We have to put different people in different environments, and force them to look into each other’s eyes, and see what the other person’s dealing with. And then you don’t need your history. All you need is the two people, and they talk, and they resolve. Thank you.
SIDBURY: My name is Tyra Sidbury(?), and I’m really impressed by some of the richness of this conversation. I asked Mr. Secretary how many of these he had done, and this is number 20, and there’s 12 more to go. My concern is that when the President’s report is done, I expect that it will capture the richness of these discussions. I expect that it will deal with the personal accountability that each of us has as a stake in this effort.
I also expect that it will deal with institutional racism, and systemic change. What I hope that the report will also contain is concrete strategies for how we can get there. And I don’t think there is in our lifetime, but it’s a process, and it is a way for us to have a blueprint, so that we can all feel better about moving toward the future. Thank you.
LEFTWICH: I think you just said the key. Process. This is not just a one- time shot. It’s going to take us… Well, if you go back to as far as you can remember in history, there’s been some type of challenge between people who are different from one another. Would you agree or not?
Still going on today, so that means that we constantly have to work at this thing. We can’t just think that the type of resolve to these issues is going to fall out of the sky, right into our lap like a Christmas present wrapped with a bow. The only Christmas present that you have is what’s existing here, and that’s a desire and a willingness to sit down and talk about it. And if you don’t do that, it’s lost. You can expect no better than what you have, if you don’t put some things into place to move beyond where you are now. Where’s the mic? Please, madam.
WHITE: Yes, my name is Joan White. I’m a Bostonian. I’m an educator. I want to refer back to some of the comments-- I don’t know your name, but you made-- that Sarah made. And to the woman with an attitude, I too am a woman with an attitude, and I’m thrilled that someone else was here today. A young person to speak about the human family. Bill, you referred to it before, we don’t get along with our family. We don’t get along with our human family.
We need to get along with our human family. I think that what is affecting the human family is an equal opportunity pathogen. It affects all of us everyday, and the words are not mine, but those of a friend, “For this country, and in this city where I was born, which is a wonderful, racist city. The black male is an endangered species. The black female standing there with him is an endangered species.” I hope that some of us here today will continue to get together and continue to bear witness for the human family. Thank you.
LEFTWICH: Let me just tell you that before we shut down, I’m going to make sure that everybody that wants to talk has a chance to talk. We’re not going to shut down until everybody has had a chance to speak at least once. You with me on that? Okay, where are we?
ALMOND: Hi, my name is Eunice Almond, and first of all, I’m a product of slavery. That would seem odd, wouldn’t it? But I’m Jewish, and slavery has been around for thousands of years, and I’m a product of that. When I walk in a room, people look at me, say I’m a blonde, blue eyed woman. I’m a success. My life has been a struggle.
I started off as a teenage wife, mother. I was divorced. I brought up two teenaged sons through a period of time when they were taller than me, and controlling two teenaged sons is no easy task as you know. The thread that has run through my life as a single woman and mother, grandmother, and whatever, has been education. Education has been a way out for me in my struggle to become what I am today. And in the last few years, I decided to go back to graduate school after being out of school for many years. And I decided to get my degree in English as a second language.
My background as an educator was in English, and I got my degree many years ago. But it has changed my life because it has given me the opportunity to be around, and have sort of a forum with people of diversity. And encourage young people to have a voice. In this country we are lucky, and I feel very fortunate that I’m participating in that. That young people can have a voice, and it can happen in the classroom.
And as a teacher, I can participate in that and encourage it. I feel very lucky to be in this room. In another country we wouldn’t be able to do this. We could be in a place like Japan, which is very closed to minorities, and not have a voice. And be very closed to different perspectives. Here we can have a different perspective, and be respected for it hopefully. As an educator, I don’t want to be a gatekeeper. I want to provide, if I can, strategies for success for people of all kinds. For young people to be able to make it, no matter what color they are, no matter what their background. Thank you.
LANG: Hi, my name is Simon Lang(?). I have three points, so I’m glad that you said that everyone will get a chance to speak. The first thing was I wanted to come back to someone who said-- I think it was Cindy. That racism has quite a lot of subtlety in Boston and around. And it reminded me of an anecdote.
I’m a student at Boston University, and every year they have a week of celebrating Martin Luther King because he went there. And this professor from the School of Social Work related this story. That she went out with a bunch of her white colleagues to Pizzeria Uno. And she sat in the middle of the circle, and every time the waitress came, she always seemed to serve this black professor last even though she was in the middle of the circle. And it’s so subtle that-- And the waitress didn’t even realize that she was doing it, and the professor wrote a letter, and got it cleared up. And she was very apologetic.
But you know, you have to realize a lot of the sub consciousness that I’m sure that the white community in the 50s, and that, “Oh, they don’t mind sitting in the back of the bus.” There needs to be a raising of consciousness that people do need a good education and the chance to succeed in universities.
And the second thing that I wanted to say was to respond to something you said at the beginning--
LEFTWICH: What’d I say?
LANG: That there has been a lot of leadership and that it’s now up to us. But I think there’s a lot of things that government still needs to do. That there are such things like cocaine; It takes 500 grams of cocaine powder, which is used by the white community that snorts it, to have a five year federal fine. But only five grams of cocaine base, primarily used by the black and Hispanic community, to have a five year sentence. It’s just one of those laws that even though it’s the same exact substance, the way it’s used. And we need to have leaders look at their laws, and make sure that there’s no bias in them. Thanks.
LEFTWICH: Where’s the mic over here?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay, enough of this brotherhood BS. Let’s get down to cases. John Lewis sat right over where that camera is a couple of years ago, and said, “Race discussion? That’s something we haven’t had yet.” And we’re not having it here this morning.
I’d like to revert to John Stewart’s point, and the point that this very well spoken young man said over here. I can’t see your name tag, sir. And that is to look at this from the human condition. Now I don’t think there is a lot of agitation in the Swedish parliament to bring in Norwegian, Danes and Fins to provide diversity to the Swedish population.
In West Side Story, when Maria fell in love with Tony, she was advised by her friend to stick with your own kind. We have people in Ireland, which has sent most of its excess population to this part of the country, fighting each other because they go to different churches. The human condition is not designed to get along with one another.
To celebrate diversity as a goal and something worthwhile is utter and errant nonsense. The human animal wants to stay with people like himself. White men hire other white men, that’s why black kids can’t get jobs. So that’s the introduction. Race in America is a white construct. We created it. We sustain it. We like it. It is based on the very human condition of “other.” That is someone different from ourselves. That other is to be feared, despised and avoided. Otherness is a very human construct. I’ve cited ethnic strife in different places.
Blacks are “other.” Whites fear blacks, just because of their otherness. Thus, blacks have had to make their way in a society that was designed to exclude them. Denied access to the means of accumulating wealth, many live in poverty. Denied an education available to whites, many lack functional skills. Denied jobs, we find unemployment in young blacks in the inner city at sometimes the rate of 45%. Whites do not want integration. And I believe many mature blacks don’t either. The young people here are talking about brotherhood.
Brown versus the Board of Education was a bad decision. Consider the poor blacks of Topeka, who had the worst sort of school situations where Miss Brown lived. Living across town from the rich landlord in one of his holdings, in a building that leaked, was cold in the winter, and was totally unsuitable for habitation. Instead of petitioning the landlord, or walking in front of his house and saying, “Fix this dump. We can’t stand to live here any longer. You are mistreating us!” They said, “Oh, never mind this dump. We’ll just come and live with you.” And wasn’t that landlord pleased. That’s what happened as a result of the Board of Education.
Now I think it’s too late to turn the clock back. That was the wrong to-do. The only way blacks and whites are going to live together in this country is if we whites enable blacks to achieve a level of self determination that we, whites, can admire and respect. Then we will acknowledge blacks’ worth as a people, or as Barbara Jordan would say, “The Community.” And realize that the historic differences, this “otherness” that I spoke of, do not any longer exist.
When Roxbury has the third or fourth highest average household income in Massachusetts, displacing Dover and Sudbury, integration will have been accomplished.
WASHINGTON: Good morning, my name is Ernie Washington. And my comments have a couple of dimensions, the first being an African American veteran, the other being an employer in the inner city. And the first is, I’d like to suggest to President Clinton and his designees that he look at the products of the military. Especially the African American products in the military, especially during the Vietnam theater. I don’t think anyone will disagree that the military went through a transformation, and a lot of that was induced by negative racial behavior.
I give all respect to World War II and before, and I know there was racial turmoil, but I don’t think it really compared to some of the racial negativity that came out of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. And I think as a result of those conflicts, those individuals that were veterans, that were kind of dispersed into society, are really champions in building their communities. And I think there are several-- more than several examples in this room. And I think there are many, many examples across the country of veterans of all colors, that have learned from that lesson in the military. Where we had to deal face to face with a counterpart that would happen to be Caucasian that didn’t like us. That didn’t work with us.
It was kind of a direct confrontation, and we worked it out. The military worked it out. I think the value of it is when I make a command visit to Parris Island now, which I do on an annual basis. I see that there’s some real genuine opportunity for African Americans and other military personnel of color to advance, and to do well. And I think that he needs to look at that particular process that took place during the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, and part of the ‘80s, and I think a lot of that will transfer itself into what we need to do out here in the community.
Secondly, as an employer in the inner city, with a workforce of over 40, all of them being people of color, I sort of used my situation as a laboratory. I’ve always been a relative nonconformist. I finance my own programs. I try to convince entities in the economic area to work with me, especially with juvenile offenders and people that have no opportunity and no skills. And I think the biggest note is I have a hard time even convincing my employees to work together. So, when you spoke of, “Do you get along with your family?” I can’t get employees that come from the Caribbean to deal with other employees that come from the Caribbean. I mean, I have a hard time with the folks from Trinidad, dealing with the folks from Jamaica, and the folks from Haiti.
And I think we need to look in ourselves to do a better job there too. And with the Latin community, you know, Mexicans and Cubans. They don’t even get along. So I’m trying to school them into looking into themselves, to make my organization better, but to also… And there’s an economic piece too. I think that as long as you have money, and you give an honest day’s work, that kind of changes your mentality about a lot of things.
And I think it works, but I think it’s a big issue, in terms of looking at ourselves and finding out whether we can get along with each other within a race before we can get along with others from other races. And I think in particular my work has resulted in at least my ability to convince my clients that this is worthwhile. Because I think that their mentality is if you don’t have a skill, then you’re of no value. And I’m trying to convince them that the only skill that a person of color that’s been disadvantaged needs is a good attitude. I think if he has a good attitude, and you train him to do a particular piece of work, he can do it. And that’s where they need him to move forward.
So, the two points as a veteran, I think there needs to be more of a look at the past and what the military did to make a better place for all races to work. And I think as an employer I think empowerment as a concept is a good one. But it’s so politically skewed that a lot of the funds don’t get to the entities that could use them most. And there’s been a lot of bad baggage here in Boston that I’ve seen, with the administration of that kind of a program. So maybe a closer look at who ultimately gets the funds, in terms of the small business, who are really employing the people that we’re talking about. And how it can be used most effectively. I think that’s most important.
LEFTWICH: You know, while you talk about family-- not family, but the dichotomy that exists between people, while we may not be able to achieve the goal of being family, we need to be more family-like. Where’s the mic right now? We got to go over here, and then we come over here. Okay, go ahead.
GARRETT: Hi, I’m Brad Garrett. I’m the Director of the Kennedy Library. But I wanted to speak as someone who lives in the city of Boston and has two kids who go to the Boston schools. And one of the reasons that my wife and I decided to stay in Boston is because we like living in the city, but also because we think that there’s some real benefit to our kids going to an urban school system, which has a lot of diversity. And one of the things that is interesting from the perspective of being a parent in the Boston schools is that you get to see the people that leave the school systems for the better school systems in the suburbs. Or for other different reasons.
And one of the things I think is our kids really benefit from being in a very diverse school system. And I think that they are very comfortable mixing with different kids from different races, different backgrounds, different religions. And one of the things that I sometimes wonder about is how can we have these conversations, and bring together people who live in the city and people who live in the suburbs. And for people to feel comfortable together, because I think my kids are clearly learning something. Even though the school system may not be as good as in some of the suburbs, it’s a real benefit to them to meet different people and associate with different types of people on a daily basis.
LEFTWICH: Let me just remind you that we are trying to wind things down. So I want to make sure again that everyone has a chance to talk that wants to. So we’re going to make sure that we talk to folks who have not had an opportunity to speak yet, but want to speak, and then we’ll work it from there. Go ahead.
DESMOND: Thank you. My name is Charles Desmond. And my family’s lived in Massachusetts for five generations. And so I want to say that I think there’s a quote that says, “If you don’t study history, you’re destined to repeat it.” So I really do think that history is very relevant, and history is very important in that we have to take the time to understand history if we want to understand where we’ve come from, and where we’re going as a people.
And to respond to the gentleman across from me, whose name I do not know, I agree with you. I do think that in the United States, this is an issue primarily at rest on the shoulders of whites in America. But I think that whites in America have… There are whites in America who’ve pointed the direction in which this nation is heading. And that’s a nation of democracy, and equality for all people, and that’s a legacy and a history that people have put their lives on the line for. People have sacrificed wealth, position, power, everything that they’ve had, acceptance in their community because they believe that democracy and equality is something that this nation stands for. And something worth fighting for, and something worth dying for.
And let me just say that for the veterans that are in this room, Paul Parks who is sitting beside me, who marched into Dachau to free Jews in Germany. To Vietnam veterans that are here that fought in Vietnam. To other veterans who fought. My own family who fought from the Revolutionary War, and every other war up to and including what’s going on now. That this fight for democracy is real, and we’re not fooling around when we say we believe in equality for all people, and opportunity for all people.
With specific regards to the President, I think the President has to get serious about what’s going on in the rest of the world. He’s got to get serious about what’s going on in Africa. He’s lost a very aggressive agenda in Africa, but he’s got to look at what’s going on in Europe right now. He’s got to look at what’s going on in Asia right now. And the United States has to intervene and be involved in those issues as well.
With specific regards to the United States, the only legacy that any of us sitting in this room is going to leave is the young people that are coming behind us. And in my opinion, we have to be concerned about what it is that we’re leaving for the young people behind us. And let me just make one point. Since 1940 to 1990, there’s been a 70% reduction in a number of schools in the United States. We’re making schools larger, we’re collapsing the schools and making them much larger. We’re increasing the teacher to student ratios to numbers that are virtually impossible for teachers to be in the schools that they’re teaching in.
The President has to launch a major initiative to make American schools competitive with the schools that we are now competing with, which are the nations that we defeated at the end of World War II. Japan outperforming American schools. Germany outperforming American schools. England, although our ally, outperforming American schools. Russia outperforming American schools. So these very schools that we invested billions and billions of dollars to reform, are now outperforming our own schools in our own nation. And so the President, in my opinion if he’s serious about looking at race, and making our schools more competitive in the global landscape, needs to invest the dollars, as we’ve invested in other places in the world, in the young people in those countries. Thank you very much.
LEFTWICH: Who has not had an opportunity to speak yet? Okay, so we got three over here, four, five. Okay, we got to get them all. I got to have you wait because you kicked things off. So I got to make sure I get these folks here first, and these folks over here. Okay, go ahead.
WILLINGHAM: Good morning. My name is Kimberly Willingham, and consistent this morning in discussion has been the theme of education. And I think education is a powerful tool, a powerful resource. I do believe as a former teacher, and a person that works with youth now, that education is very important. However, I think we are fooling ourselves if we think education is the answer to dealing with issues of race, and racism in this country.
There are people of color who are educated beyond educated, that are denied opportunities everyday because of power, because of the color of their skin, because of the lack of power. So if we suggest that all we need to do is educate children, we are wrong. We are wrong in that thinking because there are people who will oppress them because of the color of their skin. And not even care about their qualifications.
In an ideal world, in a nation that cared about all children and valued all people, there would be no need for magnet schools, there would be no need for exam schools. Because all children would be equally educated. So we need to look at systems, not just educating children. We need to look at the systems that educate them, and think about how those contribute to the lack of power, and contribute to oppression in this country.
So, for me, education is not it alone. We can’t just simply say, “Oh, let’s just educate kids.” That’s not it. It goes way beyond that, because you can be educated and denied opportunities every single day. We read about that in the paper, we see that every day. So it goes beyond just educating someone, and thinking that that’s going to solve the problems.
LEFTWICH: Over here. Please, go ahead.
BOWEN: Good morning. Kevin Bowen from the William Joyner Center at UMass Boston. And I want to reiterate some of the things that were said before, particularly about the role that Vietnam veterans have played here in this community in Boston. And I mean, Ron, Ralph and Ernie have really done an incredible job. And also the educators. My remarks are going to be directed toward education, and I’m thinking about people like Stevie Leonard and Roger Harris, veterans who came back and really dedicated themselves to improving the schools in the city.
I grew up in this city. I grew up in the west end of Boston. I went to public schools. I was drafted. I went to Vietnam. I came back here. I have two young children, and they’re both in the Boston Public Schools, but I look around at my friends in the white community, and their children aren’t there. I think this is a major issue that we have to really address, and address honestly. I look at the people in that community, and they say, “Why are you sending your kids to the Boston Public Schools? I mean, they’re going to be penalized for that! They’re not going to learn!”
I look at my kids in the schools, and they’re learning. I mean, they’re learning songs about Martin Luther King. They’re learning more about working out problems about having dialogues about race than I ever learned, and than the children who are going to private schools, and parochial schools. They ask me that question, and I feel like Thoreau when Emerson asked him, “What are you doing in jail because you’re opposing the war?” And his answer is, “Well, what are you doing out there?”
I mean, I really think that people in this community have to… Are we citizens or are we consumers? You know, if we’re consumers then we make the choices as consumers. If we’re citizens, if we believe that we need to live together, that we have to live together, we have to work out our problems as human beings, then we make decisions on that basis.
And I think if I had a message to the President, I would say that you have to do something about urban public education. You have to send a message to the people who aren’t sending their kids to those schools. You have to do something about those schools. You have to do something for teachers.
There’s this perception, why should children be afraid to go to school? I think that’s just horrible. And I fought in the war and I was afraid. And then to come back, and have my children be afraid, and see other children. I visit young Vietnamese children in their homes, who are going to Boston Public Schools. They’re afraid to go to school. To come from that war to this country, and to relive that experience.
I think maybe that’s why veterans are so involved, because they know that kind of trauma. And they’re trying to see that their children don’t relive it. But I see it being relived everyday, and I think it’s a tragedy. And I think we really have to address it. Boston is a city with a great racial divide. And the public schools are really where that divide begins. And if we’re not honest about it, we’re never going to solve the problem.
LEFTWICH: Okay. Who over here?
POLICK: Hi. My name’s Erin Polick(?), I’m a student at Cornell University. One thing I’ve noticed a lot during this conversation is that people are talking about racism as something of violence and power. And one group, especially whites going to blacks or Asians, or something like that. And the way I’ve seen it, growing up in Newton, it’s something that we do to ourselves a lot. And there’s a lot of self-segregation. I mean, I learned about Martin Luther King and civil rights, and the Civil War and everything. And still there were the black kids and there were the white kids in the cafeteria that you could see at the tables.
And now at Cornell, which is a relatively diverse school, it’s all divided. I took a course on Toni Morrison last year, which was mostly women. But it was still divided right down the middle. There were the black girls on one side, white girls on the other side. And we had a discussion about it. And that wasn’t enough. We mixed up for a couple days, then after that we went right back to the same seats. And it wasn’t that it was groups of friends; nobody knew each other before that. We just fell into our places that way.
So I don’t really know what we can do about that. But just remember it after leaving this discussion.
LEFTWICH: Keep working, keep working.
SHINE: Hi, my name is Pat Shine. Just two points briefly. I wanted to challenge what I feel was an inherently cynical viewpoint that you put out as a truth. Which is sort of reflected in what this young lady just said now, that people always want to be with their own. As a white Irish Catholic from Boston, I can assure you I don’t want to hang with my own! [laughter] I’ve had it with my own!
And the second point, I just wanted to make for President Clinton is that there just has to be zero tolerance for racism in any part of the federal government. Period, the end. These are the consequences, that’s what will happen.
PHILIPS: Hi, my name is Debbie Philips. I grew up in the Midwest, but I live in Boston now. And thank you for coming here, and thank you for the richness of this process. And one of the things that struck me is that everyone’s comments to me today were really inspirational. And if I had one thing to say to the President, it’s that I think it’s time that you turn the leadership of this issue over to the young people in this room. Because one of the things that the fact that there’s an exquisite amount of sensitivity to those of you who are probably 30, 35 and under. And there’s a comfortablility with this issue, which is something that I think those of us, even though I’m a baby boomer and 42, I think there is a fear, and there’s a lot of kind of ugly history about it.
And I feel very, very hopeful for all of you in the room, who said what you said today. Who are young, and hopeful, and you made some really marvelous comments. And I just close by saying that one of my favorite proverbs is an Ethiopian proverb, that says, “When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.” So, go for it, guys!
FLYNN: My name is Walter Flynn, and I lived the resolution of this problem. Or at least I lived a resolving of the problem. We’ve talked about veterans, and I was a veteran. I spent 22 years, 11 months, and 16 days in the military. I was threatened by blacks in Vietnam. I was threatened by Guamanians in Guam. I was a minority in Guam, and I was a majority in Vietnam amongst the military.
If the military model has been so good, and Charles Desmond said it was, Ralph Cooper said it was. And I’ll tell you it was, it still is. If it’s so good, what is it about it that works? So let me offer you a slightly off-the-wall alternative.
Compulsory federal service for all children from our system after high school. And I’ll tell you what, once they’re forced to live with their fellow man and fellow woman, outside the confines of community, they will learn how to get along with each other.
MULLEN: Good morning, my name is Dan Mullen. The military experience is used as a nation-building process in many other nations. But I’m not certain that a compulsory nation-building process such as that would work. I think this is a voluntary nation-building process, which can be effective as well. If we can take what we learn in here, and spread it among our friends, and they tell their friends, and so the story goes on.
But quickly I would like to thank Mr. Leftwich for holding us over, and taking his extra time here. If I were to advise the President, institutionally I would like to see a comprehensive overhaul of the justice system. It includes double standards along racial and economic lines, and perpetuates racism. I would also like to see a comprehensive overhaul of the education system. It is based on property taxes, and perpetuates an equality of opportunity, which lasts throughout the lifetime.
As far as very educated individuals still being denied opportunity, I think that’s a political problem. And in addressing that political problem, we’ve seen in the ‘60s an effort to register voters. We have to move beyond that. We have to politically evolve beyond that from voter registration to voter education. When you educate the voters, when you reach out to those disenfranchised, disaffected by the system, then perhaps if you can market directly to those who are not touched presently, you can involve them in the system.
LEFTWICH: Miss Kim.
KIM: Oh, thank you. My name’s Lavina Kim, and I work here at the Kennedy Library. And I wanted to address actually a comment that you made about Brown versus the Board, what you said about that.
I think it’s important that decision was made, especially because before Brown, there really was no assurance of legal equality in this country. So I think it was very important that that was carried out. The problem is we have legal equality, but how it’s handled after these decisions are made, I think that’s the problem.
The whole issue of integration, as you saw what happened after Brown in ’54, and then with busing, how it was handled-- it was handled poorly. And I think that’s where a lot of the problems come from. And you would think that with legal equality, and I believe at least we do have legal equality. What we don’t have in this country is equal opportunity. And you would think that with legal equality, we would have equal opportunity, but we don’t.
And I think what’s important is that we need to make it, rather than talk about equal opportunity as a right to everyone, or speak about it theoretically. It has to be, as other people mentioned, grounded in concrete policies, concrete actions. It has to be something that’s a fact of reality. I mean, I could go on and on.
But I just wanted to say that it was important that that decision was made, Brown v. Board, because before that we had Plessy versus Ferguson, and that’s separate, but equal facilities. That’s not what we had. I think it was important that we did have that decision handed down in ’54.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think I’m the last one in the room to speak. I just want to stress, being one of the younger people in the room, the importance of teaching history so that we don’t forget. Especially for people my age and younger. Things that happened in the ‘60s, things that happened in the 1800s. That was history, that happened a long time ago.
I can’t imagine what it was like to have different water fountains to drink out of because of the color that you are. Because I grew up when supposedly that was taken care of. But I was taught that at a young age in school, so that I could appreciate what did happen. And I think as time goes on, we might forget what it was like when things were segregated like that. And I can’t imagine being a woman, and not being able to go to college, where a long time ago you couldn’t if you were a woman.
Because I grew up at a time when I was given these opportunities. So I think it’s important to teach so that we don’t forget. That we remember what happened in the past, so we don’t repeat some of the same mistakes.
LEFTWICH: Let me just say one thing, because our hour is such that we need to wrap up. Everyone in the core circle has had an opportunity to speak. There are others that I would like to invite to speak. They’ll just wait, I’ll spend some time with them personally, and chat with them.
There is a form that was passed out to you. I saw some of you jotting some notes on it. Major Parigini, would you hold one of those wonderful forms up? Everybody take a look at that form. We want you to memorialize some of the comments that you’ve made, so that we can take those back to us. The memorialization that you provide, that information goes back into that hopper. I mean, we’re going to take this entire discussion, and we will condense it. But it is important that you write it down too. That you condense your thoughts, and then just be very short, but then just put it down.
On behalf of President Clinton and Secretary of Defense William Cohen, and I must also add my direct report to Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Rudy De Leon, who has given me the baton and said, “Bill, make this stuff work. Do it. Figure out where you got to go. Go, talk to people, make it happen. Do us proud.” And so I thank them for the opportunity of serving in that particular capacity.
But certainly most importantly today, I thank all of you for taking this big block of time and saying, “Look, we’re going to come here and we’re going to be as honest and direct as we can. And we’re going to share with you in hopes that you will do more than just listen. That you will accept our thoughts, that you will take our documents back, and then do something with it. So that we see and/or hear something that will evolve to something positive.”
I pledged to you this morning that I will do exactly that. On the back of the one tri-fold, you will see an e-mail address. That is my e-mail. Now, I cannot tell you that I will become a pen pal! But I would suggest to you is that if you have some ideas, some thoughts after you leave this building, that you think will be important for me to pass on, please do that. Even as I travel, I have a remote unit. I get it when I travel as well. So I pick those up, as well as everything they want me to do back at the Pentagon too. So, I’m not missing anything. And as long as there’s a telephone and I have my AT&T card, I got it covered!
Certainly, I have to give a thanks to Ron Armstead for engaging me with this idea to come here. Mr. Ralph Cooper for being a partner in that. And certainly Mr. John Stewart and the Kennedy Library.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you, sir. You did a good job.
LEFTWICH: Thank you very much. That’s the best-- most gratifying. [applause]
I would like to bring Mr. Stewart up at this time. He has some closing remarks. John?
STEWART: Thank you. Thank you very much, Bill. And I can tell you, he is accessible. He and I had a 15 minute conversation last Thursday or Friday, and he was high up over the Rockies on his way to California. And he called me from the plane, and we went over the format for this morning. So he is very, very accessible.
I would just like to suggest a very practical next step. And the very practical next step is I will make a commitment to go over this video tape of this discussion this morning, which I really see as a session in which we all sort of laid out our agenda. We all had a chance to say what was on our minds, and I think it was a very, very good start. A very, very productive session. But I will try. I will do it in the next couple of months. To take this video, and to sort of systematically analyze the comments that everybody made. And see if I can lay out sort of a common agenda.
And then we will try to reconvene as many people in this group as possible to come back to the Kennedy Library some time in the fall. And I don’t know what the format would be, and I’d love to hear suggestions. Maybe it’s an informal breakfast session, maybe it’s a luncheon, maybe it’s a dinner. I don’t know what we’d do. But we will reconvene as many people in this group as possible sometime in the fall, after I’ve had a chance to go over the comments. And as they say, write up some kind of a common agenda of the things discussed this morning.
So I think this was a very, very good start. And I look forward to working with Ralph Cooper more, and to reconvene this whole group. Ralph, do you want to say the final word?
COOPER: The only thing is, is that Veteran’s Benefits Clearing House will be happy and honored to work with you in helping you put that forum together. And I look forward to seeing you all there then.
LEFTWICH: One other thing before you leave, those forms I asked you to memorialize. Could you give them to Major Parigini? In addition to that, on July the 26th through the 29th, in Birmingham, Alabama, I am holding what we call an equal opportunity conference. I’ve invited the President to do the kick-off on the 26th of July, that evening. It’s the commemoration of the signing of Executive Orders 9980 and 9981. For the military, Executive Order 9981 integrated the military 50 years ago. And July the 26th of this year represents the 50th, or the Golden Anniversary, to the day.
And so we intend to have a very rich dialogue there. It’s primarily going to be focused on DOD and the military, but there are going to be some people there. I’m sure that for those who like the study and do analysis in the area of equal opportunity and diversity, there’s going to be a lot to listen to. And a lot of good folks to talk to, and there will be people there talking about hate crimes, experts in virtually every social infrastructure area that you can think of.
So the information is on the Internet. It’s out there. I have a school called the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute. If you can’t find it, e- mail me, I’ll make sure you get all of the stuff. Folks, take care. Thank you very much.