Bill Clinton: “The only point I made--[laughter]--don't get our two speeches mixed up. The only point I'm trying to make is, if you…”

“The only point I made--[laughter]--don't get our two speeches mixed up. The only point I'm trying to make is, if you ever have any--if you decide what the criteria of academic merit is, and let's say you decide the criteria is the grades plus the college boards--this is the only point; I'm making a narrow point. If you decide the criteria is the grades plus the college boards, and then you decide--you make a decision, which I think you could make a compelling argument is a legitimate decision, that athletics is an important part of university life, that it enriches the lives of all the other students who are there; you can make that argument--but the point is, once you make that argument, that's the argument you could also make for having a racially diverse student body. I was making a very--I'm not making a wholesale assault. Now, here's my problem with this whole deal--I know we've got to go, so I want to give you a chance to say what we really said before, which is, how do we give structure to this and what do you think the next step should be? And I'll give anybody else a chance. Look, when I was a Governor, I became the first Governor in the history of the country to sponsor legislation to require--[inaudible]--certified. I believe I passed the first law requiring kids in the whole State to have to pass an exam before they could actually go on to high school, because I didn't like the high school graduation--I thought that was closing the barn door after the cattle left. The reason I have consistently supported affirmative action programs--but I really have tried to change them and make them work--is not because--I basically think all that stuff you said is right. I am sick and tired of people telling me poor minority kids who live in desperate circumstances, that they can't make it. I think they should be told they can make it but they have to work harder to make it, and then I think we should give them a hand up to make it. I am tired of that. The reason I have supported affirmative action programs is very different, is--I have done it because I didn't want to see all these kids be sacrificed to a principle that I agree with, because the practice of life would not be fixed in time to give them a chance--number one. And number two, I have had the same feeling about police departments and fire departments and business environments and university admissions that I felt about the athletes--that I really thought that the institutions were better off and the white majority or whoever else, was better off if there was some intermixing because of the world they're going to live in. But I am always--I think we should all be uncomfortable, those of us who support this, for giving something to somebody when we deprive somebody that was otherwise more deserving, by the traditional criteria, of getting it. But I think on balance, that's why I've been very strongly--but I have never wanted to not have high standards, not be demanding, not do things. I mean, I've paid a pretty good price for this--[inaudible]--and I'm not ashamed of having done it. I think that the kids in my State are better off because of it. But we need to figure out, to recognize that what we'd really like is for people without regard to their race to be able to do the kind of business, go to the kind of schools, have the kind of public service jobs, and live in the kind of integrated environment that they choose if that is the choice they make, because there would be no differences in traditional measures of merit and how they did, so that people would be making their own choices and having their own choices. I think that's-- we all agree that that's the world we want. So I'd like to know what you think the next step should be. If you want to stay involved in this, you want to keep talking to us, you want to keep working with us, and you want to get some more different kind of people in here, what do you think we ought to do now? [Gov. Kean explained that he accepted the invitation to sit on the President's Advisory Board on Race because he believed it was the first time in his life a President was willing to take on this issue and to try to establish a dialog, and he believed it could do some good. He said that initially he believed the board had been too narrow, but that it was opening up to a broad spectrum of ideas. Ms. Thernstrom said she thought this was a wonderful meeting and that if this continued, it might go somewhere.]”