Bill Clinton: “I agree with that. You know, I'm very sympathetic with what you say. And I want it to be as you say. And I agreed that…”

“I agree with that. You know, I'm very sympathetic with what you say. And I want it to be as you say. And I agreed that we have all kinds of overlapping stereotypes that we haven't even talked about. One of the things that came up after Los Angeles riots, you know, the attitudes of the African-Americans to the Korean grocers and the Arab grocers and the Hispanic customers and all of that--it's a lot more complicated than it used to be. But as a factual matter, if you just look at the prison population-- you wanted to bring that up--if you look at all the unemployment rate among young, single African-American males without an education, if you look at the physical isolation of people in these inner-city neighborhoods--we have the lowest unemployment rate in 28 years; there are still New York City neighborhoods where the unemployment rate is 15 percent--if you look at these things, if I could just come back to sort of what I think is practical here, I think it is imperative that we somehow develop a bipartisan consensus in this country that we will do those things which we know will stop another generation of these kids from getting in that kind of trouble. My best model now, I guess, is what they're trying to do in Chicago in the school system and what they've done in Boston with the juvenile justice system. In Boston, they went for 2 years without one kid under 18 being killed with a gun. Unheard of in a city that size. And if you look at what they did in Houston, we need to at least adopt those strategies that will invest money in keeping these kids out of trouble in the first place and try to keep them out of jail and give them the chance to have a good life. And if there's disproportionate manifestation of race, then so be it. Then we ought to have an affirmative action program, if you will, that invests in those kids' futures and gives them a chance to stay out of trouble. To me, it's the kids that are being lost altogether and the disproportionate presence of racial minorities among those kids that is still the most disturbing thing in the world. Because if you get these kids up there, 18 or 19, heck, they'll figure out things. Our kids will figure out things we weren't smart enough to figure out. That's how society goes on. That's what progress is all about. But I think we have to recognize that's still a big race problem in this country, especially for African-Americans. Mr. Lehrer. Clarence raised the point, Sherman, about race talk in his family, and the President--Mr. President, you have said you had trouble getting people to talk bluntly and honestly about race.”