**** A challenge ***for ALL---get Bill Clinton’s work on Race to the Front page:

and please keep this kicked---lets have some fun!
*


Hit this post: from by ElsewheresDaughter


Forum Name General Discussion: Primaries
Topic subject Lets see if DU will put this one up on the Home page.
Topic URL http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5145290#5147136
5147136, Lets see if DU will put this one up on the Home page.
Posted by ElsewheresDaughter on Tue Mar-18-08 07:59 PM

I am sick to death of just seeing Obama threads on the Home page


OP:

Forum Name General Discussion: Primaries
Topic subject How President Bill Clinton addressed the issue of race
Topic URL http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5145290#5145290
5145290, How President Bill Clinton addressed the issue of race
Posted by journalist3072 on Tue Mar-18-08 06:09 PM

I've seen a lot of disenguous posts today by the Obama-can-do-no-wrong crowd, basically saying they've never seen a politician confront the issue of race like this, yada yada yada.

Let's take a little trip down memory lane, shall we?

And let's examine, specifically, what President Bill Clinton said and did regarding the issue of race.

- One of my favorite stories about then Governor Bill Clinton is how, in 1992 just before the Democratic Convention, Bill Moyers asked him if there was any issue on which he would NEVER compromise. He responded "Racial injustice."

Source: POTUS Speaks: Finding the Words That Defined the Clinton Presidency (page 167)

Author: Michael Waldman

Also, as Michael Waldman writes in his book:

It was widely recognized that Clinton's single most powerful speech as president had been delivered in November 1993 from the pulpit in Memphis where Martin Luther King Jr. had told parishoners he had "been to the mountaintop.".......He (Clinton) imagined what King might say in 1993. 'You did a good job,' he would say, 'voting and electing people who formerly were not electable because of the color of their skin...You did a good job in opening opportunity."

But he would say, I did not live and die to see the American family destroyed. I did not live and die to see thirteen-year-old boys get automatic weapons and gun down nine-year-olds just for the kick of it. I did not live and die to see young people destroy their own lives with drugs then build fortunes destroying the lives of others. This is not what I came here to do. I fought for freedom, he would say, but not for the freedom of people to kill each other with reckless abandon, not for the freedom of children to have children and the fathers of the children walk away from them and abandon them as if they don't amount to anything...My fellow Americans, he would say, I fought to stop white people from being so filled with hate that they would wreak violence on black people. I did not fight for the right of black people to murder other black people with reckless abandon.

(Pages 168-169).

Additionally, Waldman writes "He wanted to say how America's promise had been constantly undercut by racism."

(Page 170)


- President Clinton also established the "One America in the 21st Century: The President's Initiative on Race." One of the things that always saddened me about this is that with the intiative, President Clinton seemed to be trying to get the conversation going in America about race, and the way forward. But the Intiative was not covered extensively in the media, and some Americans probably aren't even aware that President Clinton had this Initiative.

Some might recall, however, that the Initiative was Chaired by Dr. John Hope Franklin.

http://clinton4.nara.gov/Initiatives/OneAmerica/america_onrace.html


- Additionally, in one of his last acts in the final days of his Administration, President Clinton sent a 26-page report to Congress in which he urged lawmakers to work with the incoming Bush administration on a number of issues of particular importance to African-Americans and other minorities, including electoral reform, ending racial profiling, and improvements in health care and child care for working families."

Source: http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/stories/01/15/clinton.mlk/index.html

For me personally, I've always been very moved and touched that President Clinton left Congress and the incoming Bush White House with a 'charge' if you will, on the issue of race. That spoke volumes to me, about his values.

So I just wanted to offer a bit of historical perspective for the folks on here who are attempting to portray the Obama speech as the most honest attempt by a politician to address race.

:kick: