The protracted war fever and buildup in the Middle East is only served to delay our coming to grips with our inability to compete economically in the world and to solve by internal problems and just so you know that I am bipartisan. I'm a registered independent the Democratic party and President Bush are a propensity for a lack of leadership on the major domestic issues that confront us. I am beginning to thank the leadership and politician is an oxymoron. Now doing what is necessary to achieve. The American dream is delayed in the process. The dream is that we will have constant constitutional goal of equality of Rights for all Americans that we will have real opportunity the inclusion of all and the protection of civil liberties and that we will promote diverse points of view that we will acknowledge and celebrate diversity and people and in ideas that is a dream of equality and of opportunity in the Constitutional dream our goal in our society and we've been retarded in this goal by past policies and present difficulties and usually when we talk about errors in our history we use president's it's a shorthand way of denominating eras in our history. And of course the most recent one before mr. Bush was mr. Reagan who left us a great legacy on this issue of achieving the dream. He left us a court system a federal court system to which he appointed most of the judges who are sitting right now. Who I have not been very much in favor of many of the things that would help us to achieve the great dream. He also left us and as we entered the 1990s as a great legacy, he left us more racial polarization in this country has seen in the last 30 years. And of course when I say this people sometimes point to celebrities the super black or the super Hispanic who is a movie star or somebody who's on a television show and they say well these people, you know, they don't experience racial polarization. I am talking about them, but also people who are not able to protect themselves and who are not celebrities and I know even though for Winfrey found some problems when she tried to shop in a store in New York City, you wouldn't believe that but it was true. Anyway, I don't mean to blame. Mr. Reagan for this problem people were real. I'd love to but I won't blame him for a people race it were racist before Reagan and that he engaged in racist behavior and his election in 1980 came in part as a result of a backlash against the removal Barry. That discriminated against women and minorities during the 1960's and 1970's at that time. It was euphemistically called the southern strategy. But Mr. Reagan did nothing as a holder of the most visible office in the nation which Teddy Roosevelt used to call a bully pulpit to educate the public or to alleviate the tensions. I think it's fair to say as Rosalyn Carter said on National Television that mr. Reagan made people feel comfortable with her racism and mr. Bush with all of his Kinder gentler talk did the same thing in his presidential campaign with the Willie Horton issue? And he is now playing the racial polarization card again in his attitude by Olga to the Civil Rights bill that is being passed by Congress and we have a generation of students who are at places like Hamline University in other places who grew up in the era of Reagan and who know no other presidency. They don't remember anything before that and who have defined the major issues of our day in these terms that make for Polarization racism by the way is not the same thing as Prejudice Prejudice is devaluing other people making up your mind. You don't like them or having a negative attitude toward them racist Behavior, which is what I'm concerned about is oppressing people who are different or against whom one is Prejudice and having the power to do so and exercising that power the Anti-Defamation League Clan watched the National Institute of prejudice and violence and police departments around the country report increases and racial intimidation and violence and harassment mostly against blacks and Jews and some against Asians and Hispanic Americans the community relations service. We at the justice department responds to increasing numbers of incidents each year. And this has been going on since 1986 when they've been keeping these increasing incident numbers you hear about the most widely publicized ones, but there are others that happen locally or in states or on campuses that are only discussed and I heard about within the community where they take place. The hostility the polarization the language of polarization is vocality vocalist at the highest levels of our nation. The last year's term of the Supreme Court by the way was a watershed in this in this regard. I won't discuss the details of what the court did but the short answer of what the Supreme Court did last year in 1989 is if you sued because you think your civil rights are violated and you're being deprived of a job or going to school or health care or anything because of invidious discrimination against people like you the answer of the court is this if you are a white male you are. All right, if you are a white female stick around and maybe we'll see if you're an Asian American Or Hispanic American forget it and if you're a black get way back and don't even bother asking us to help you now that in short is what the Supreme Court did last year the Supreme Court in its Reagan's court and now with the bush To make a quintet has essentially bought the position that reverse discrimination against white males is the major civil rights problem in America, and we sometimes don't know what to say when we're asked that question and this issue comes up. The best answer is one given by Mr. Justice Brennan in a dissent in one of those cases last year. It was about some firefighters in Birmingham like firefighters who didn't want black firefighters to keep jobs. They had gotten as a result of a civil rights decreed in a town in which there were no black firefighters at all, even though blacks played taxes until the civil rights movement and long after it had passed. Mr. Brennan said the white respondents in this case are not personally responsible for the history of discrimination, but they are nevertheless beneficiaries of the discriminatory practices that the litigation was designed to correct any remedy that seeks to create employment conditions that would have obtained if they had been no violation of the law. Will have an adverse impact on whites who must now share their opportunities with blacks Justice white employees in the past may have been innocent beneficiaries of illegal discrimination. So it is inevitable that some of the same employees will be innocent victims who must share the burden resulting from the redress of wrongs all he's really saying is that if you have a situation where you never hired anybody of color and then you hire somebody obviously there will be less opportunity to keep the people who are already there and to continue to perpetuate the Discrimination that is unfortunate. It is a solomon-like choice that no one has to make but in fact it is a choice we have to make because of our history that case as well as some others in summary end up having the effect that I pointed out on job opportunity and on re-emphasizing the notion that reverse discrimination against white males is the major civil rights problem of our time. In response to that case and others Congress passed Civil Rights bill which mr. Bush now says that he will be told let us pray and let us hope that he does not because it will be bad for the country and will only enhance the racial polarization that already exists and reaffirm the notion that we should Define all problems in terms of keeping the status quo. Certainly it should not be surprising given given what happened to National policy that on the campuses of institutions of higher education where the best and brightest should be we have demonstrations of the existence of racist attitudes and behaviors. We have resentment of the small numbers of African American students in predominantly white institutions. We have fear and anger on the part of African American students at being resented. So you've got resentment on both sides resentment of Asian American students and their small numbers because they have higher test scores and many white students and if those who professed possess file power follow their own pronouncement every Institution, Would be filled with Asian American students and just a few white students and the white students would all be in the humanities and the Asian students would be in everything else and when you go into rooms and institutions you have and I've done this for years when the discussion is about Admissions and about diversity and about affirmative action and when white administrators and faculty and trustees and people are talking to Black's they say if your test score was high enough we would let you in there wouldn't be any problem. You just don't have the right standardized test score. You don't have the right sat L sat I am cat or whatever cat the cat is but then they go into a room and they're Asian students who have the right stats and cats and then they say to them, you know test scores are not everything, you know while they important they're not everything which means that it's a game and which means that diversity and admitting people for all kinds of reasons has been the rule to make up a the class in a college or university and that people from every race and every group have Ability in order to be there, but because we insist on in pretending that standards of valid when we've been using all kinds of standards. Then the whole thing looks so silly. By the way. I must point out to you that the lowest standardized test scores are not made by blacks. They're made by poor whites. But nobody ever wants to talk about poor white people an editor. I once wanted to write an article about poor white test scores said no one was interested in poor white people. He said I'm not even sure pull away people interested in pull away people, which is a very telling commentary there's racism, of course in the classroom faculty members openly fight over including materials concerning racial minorities or about them in the curriculum. I was at an institution. Where was the debate where a faculty member got up and said that teaching the works of Toni Morrison would Sully The Works of William Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson and therefore he refused to have it taught in the English Department in his college and I had another one say I'm not opposed to courses or Rules about what women have done or what Hispanics are blacks have done and if you've done anything tell me about it and I'll include it but until then I won't students mistreat each other openly and that in fact and you have all these debates. I went to a campus where a white woman faculty member who's a friend of mine said to me Mary Frances. Look at the cafeteria. Can't you do anything about the fact that all his black students are sitting together all the time and I looked around the room and I said can't you do anything about effect of all this white students and sitting together all the time and she said I hadn't thought about it quite that way. It is true that white women Asians Hispanics Workforce. Mm. We have to be concerned about the fact that the we expect that the workforce will be increasingly black and brown and female given demography. We don't know what's going to happen with immigration, but fundamentally, the discussion about race in American society is usually about black people. That's where the real polarization comes. WB the boys once said the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line and he was correct and maybe it's because of the way we came and maybe it was because our people were held we were held in bondage so long and maybe it's because no one wants to be responsible for all of the legacies of that relationship and maybe it's because today as in 1700 many white people really believe blacks are inferior unless they behave exactly like them and even wonder if they are even if they do behave exactly like them, maybe it's because of all of that. I don't know but I do know that we must be committed to diversity diversity and ideas because the first amendment and the role and tradition of the University says we ought to be and we ought to be committed to retaining and educating and recruiting minority students for dick demographic economic reasons, and because it is right and because that is the highest goal of our constitutional philosophy and we must educate all students about diversity big for their sake and for our country safe. For enlightened self-interest and what we must do first is to recognize how and why things happen the history of change in this country. Why was it that at the end of 1979? We got a reaction against what had seemed so pristine and pure and hopeful and bright in the days. When the Civil Rights Movement took place in the 1950s and 1960s. When all those people got killed and went to jail and were injured and insulted and all that and what happened some people say that people got bored and went to sleep and that those who had benefited from the change didn't stay committed to the struggle others say that well once it was figured out that the past limited and we're really talking about slavery slicing up a limited pie. The people who were Advantage didn't want to recognize that they were simply advantaged and not the best and brightest and all the most wonderful people in the world others say it was the riots that took place in the 19th early 1970s and the late 1960s in which people said, well we tried to help those folks and now they're out there riding. Maybe we shouldn't do anything and then finally at bottom line that a way of life was really being challenged and that what we are at now is in this has been going on since the 1970s is a few that until all minorities are okay stereo types of Justified and that none of us are okay until all of us. Okay, and that some people got through the window of opportunity and some didn't and it's their children who are still on the streets and the struggle came down to in some people's mind sharing power and sharing resources. And then you hear people saying there would be no race problem from the perspective of from our perspective if the minority's did not insist on good jobs want to go to places like everyone else. I had a fellow commissioner on the Civil Rights Commission Reagan commissioner say to me that, you know, if minorities would stop demanding to get included in everything. We wouldn't have a race problem. That's a run that by me again. That's about all I can say and in many ways. It's more comfortable to deny problems rather than to try to solve them. Now what works in achieving the dream lot of things work first as Citizens, we have to demand good public policy to enhance the possibility of success in achieving upward mobility and opportunity and we know how to do that to Scholars who look at public policy issues tell us we need three things first. We need the economy to be productive because while you can make progress when the economy is not very productive. It's easier to make progress when the economy is being productive and you're generating more jobs and more opportunities for people and people are more optimistic that it's more likely that you will get those who are advantage to join in. So we need economic productivity and at the second thing we need is that individuals have to be motivated toward achievement. They have to make the effort and they have to have human capital. That no amount of opportunity works if people don't make the effort human capital that is Education and Training good education and good training and that civil rights enforcement to see to it that we share equitably is simply the icing on the cake. Once you have those things and we all know that there are problems in those areas on the economy. We have a major problem of generating legal jobs that people can do at Living wages and I said legal jobs, not mug and people are selling drugs legal jobs. The macro picture has an effect dollar going up and down budget deficits trade deficit Wall Street up and down and I finally figured out what trade deficits are the trades every problem is that we buy what we don't need from people. We already owe more than we can pay. And it's that and it's our companies corporations and no notes National citizenship and American multinationals manufacturing other countries take advantage of Chief wages, which you should in the prophet sense and she appear for sale and do not even manufacture Goods here and Eastern Europe is being added to the places where this takes place and it has an effect here and it has been too often said and it is true that we are a nation of people who market sell and service things and we're less of people who make things and we're also in the economic Arena less a people who control our own destiny as a nation and it's not only that we don't make VCRs and television sets but much of the computer hardware. I was told this by the defense department somebody out over there the other day and electronic equipment that we use in our military equipment this right over there in the Middle East is made somewhere else and not in the United States and if the people who made a decided not to sell it to us we'd be in big trouble. And when we talk about the trade deficit in the deficit problems, we have some people who always cry. Well, why don't we just have you know restrict Imports and that'll take care of the problem, but we can't do that either because if we tried that the Japanese and the West Germans have to buy a debt. We're having a problem now because they've stopped buying as much of it and they also with the British have been buying up American land real estate and companies as fast as you can seal them for sale and you can't keep somebody out by trade barriers when they're already inside you and on you. We are in what the people in the streets where I live call a bind on these issues. Actually, they don't call it that but I can tell you what they do called. The people who have the money he who pays the piper calls the tune and we don't have the money and that's where out there while we out their hat in hand begging for money for the American troops and not saying that the mercenaries and while this goes on our pressing National problems have to be put on the back burner and it's happening in the budget debate every day. You see it. We can't afford to pay for the things that we need the resources to do something about our infrastructure and I'll problems here and when I say all this I'm not Foreigner bashing. It is bashing us for not being willing to do what will make us competitive as we dig our own Graves by continuing to consume to access. We can't even complain too much when people talk bad about us as Japanese governmental officials do in public and in time they want to I go to Japan every year twice for meeting of a unique un thing in that I'm on and I spent a lot of time. I'm the only American that goes to these particular meetings that I go to and they say anything about us they want to say they ignore their own racism and classism at home toward Koreans. And anybody else is different. They did nominate African Americans as inferior and Americans in general as stupid that we are their biggest consumer Market, but we will buy anything they decide as necessary and then we will decide that it's necessary and that we have to have it on education empowering people so that they can function we're not doing what we ought to do. We have education reform and every state including, Minnesota. The President says he's for it, but I'll he's forgotten about that recently, but he's supposed to be for Education reform but people are playing and they're not serious when they talk about this. I hate to say that but it's true education in this country is bad for everybody but it's worse. If you're poor whether you're poor white black Hispanic Latino and some groups of Asian American children, we reform but we focus not on the children who need it most the first ones who need it most of those who are not at school and all to be there and then there are those who are at school. They're not learning and what do we do instead of doing what all the experts tell us to do and by comparison other people do longer school days School in the summer more resources in the classroom evaluating teachers to see if they can teach some people know a lot but can't teach and some people don't know anything in a good teachers and then they can tell you something but they don't know anything and we need to evaluate teachers and we need to have longer school. We need to do all of these things that are done everybody. You do them in all of our schools. Oh, no, what do we do? We talk of choice and vouchers and magnets and restructuring if I've been to one meeting. I've been a thousand meetings on Choice vouchers Magnuson restructure. I called these the oat bran of Education reform. You know about oat bran. It's kind of good for you. If you didn't it's kind of feeling but you still don't deal with the fact that you're eating too much fat and cholesterol and you're not exercising. But anybody ask yourself why you don't brand every day, you know, these remedies may help the future over who are able to get into decent schools with them, but the most deprived kids with the weakest family structures will be left behind in schools. The public will care less and less about and I will never understand why we do not try to make all schools good schools instead of some schools. How can we say to a child it's in a school not a good school that we don't care your parents. Don't care broken family your poor whatever color you are. We don't care. We're going to make some schools good schools. Not all schools. They will come back to haunt us motivation. Nothing will lessen your motivation like drugs and alcohol, which have become obsessions in many of our neighborhoods and you haven't heard much about drugs lately because we get tired of hearing about things but still a major crisis in this country and what do we get hot air from the drugs are mr. Bennet. He just announced that he's winning the war on drugs. He's all talk no action in Texas. We call that all hat and no cattle. That's what mr. Bennett is and pretty soon. He'll announce that he can resign to go on to something better because the war is won and the problem will continued on the campus while we work for good Public public policy. There are things we can do to the first thing we need to do is to tell the truth about what the role of the university is that by definition it has to be committed to diversity that there is no quality without diversity in ideas and people tell the truth about admission standards and stop making up stories about how people admit it and so on and tell the truth about test scores, let's students in who have the capacity to do the work and the interest but tell them it will be difficult and if they're from groups that have not been represented before and that easy and that the climate will not change overnight for them and then people will do all kinds of hostile things who feel threatened by them. And also look at the fact that even though they are Reagan babies 29.8% of freshmen men in the last survey believe promoting racial understanding was essential a very important as the 34.2% of the women so we can build on that. It's not as much as we'd like to have 30% and a little over 30% with women that's remarkable given what they've been exposed to at home and in school before they came to college so we can build on that make students work together give them reinforcements not just sermons about racism and diversity but make them work together on lots of things where the success of any of them depends on the success of law preach to the converted those who already believe but also the non converted talk to the parents and orientation. Tell them about these issues so that they're involved understand and that they can reinforce the children. Let's hope we can do that explain to them. Why and how test scores are not Everything diversify The Faculty there are ways to do it maybe even send some students to graduate school who were minority students who agree to come back to teach at the University people do that for doctors in underserved areas. I don't know why they can't do it for a faculty members hold everyone accountable in the university for climate not just the president of the to top level administrators everybody staff faculty and don't shut off civil liberties with your harassment policies. And I'm sure you haven't but punish perpetrators of abuse against other people. They have to be people have to be punished if they abused the policy otherwise no one will take the policy seriously and also be a change agent be a change agent whether we can achieve the dream constitutionally quality. I don't know the campus can only do what has to be done. If Society helps and Society will only do it if people are taught appropriately it's sort of a chicken Edge a catch-22 problem, but in doing what we can do here within University we will be helping to solve the problem. The other thing I would ask you to do finally is to use judgment and critical thinking which is what the university is about when people debate these issues and they say the problem either or something that's wrong problems than ever either or they all usually both and and something else you haven't even thought of when someone says we either have to have effort or opportunities and know you need effort and opportunity to create Excellence. If someone says will either have to help the poor are we have to help the middle class know we need to help both. If someone says we need to work on the root causes of crime or we need to punish criminals. No, we need to do both we need to do both so use judgment and crew and try to keep more than one. I didn't you hit at the same time. That's a very useful thing to do. People will try to force you to just have one idea. No try to keep to Do these things and be committed and if you do so we will help the nation to conclude successfully the historic battle for equality of opportunity in education and Society higher education. The search for knowledge will be Advanced by having as many educated Seekers as possible. So let us dedicate ourselves to the end of prescriptions and thought and people and let us commit ourselves to celebrate diversity and an increased commitment to tapping all of our resources and providing opportunity to all thank you very much.