Bill Clinton: “Thank you. Let me just say, I believe that it's a lot better. I grew up in the segregated South, so I have personal…”

“Thank you. Let me just say, I believe that it's a lot better. I grew up in the segregated South, so I have personal experience of how it's changed, since I'm one of those older people Jonathan talked about. [Laughter] I've actually gotten kind of used to it now. But to me, that makes this effort all the more important because what I want the American people to do is to have confidence. We know now we can make our economy work. We know now we can have the crime rate go down. We know now we can actually reduce the number of people on welfare and have more people at work. We know things that we didn't know just a few years ago, and we do know we can make progress on this whole complex of issues. But I think it's also important to point out that there is a lot of residue there, like what McHughson told, the little bank story, and that progress should give us energy for the work ahead, not put us into denial about it. That's the only thing that I want to make sure we don't do. Go ahead. What would you like to say about this? [Beverly Daniel Tatum, psychologist and professor at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, and author of ``Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, and Other Conversations About Race,'' described her course on the psychology of racism and other efforts to establish an honest discussion on race, and the role of fear in hampering that dialog.]”