Cabinet Secretary Hosts Blacks-Only Event

An initiative that President Clinton has billed as an effort to engage the country in a frank dialogue on race relations moved to Dallas late last week in the form of a closed-door meeting with only blacks invited.

The community forum, among the first in a wave of meetings being used to revive an initiative widely criticized as lackluster, was moderated by Transportation Secretary Rodney E. Slater, one of the administration’s highest-ranking black officials.

Sylvia Mathews, the White House deputy chief of staff who oversees the initiative, said Saturday: “Based on the facts I know, this is an isolated incident that won’t be repeated.”

Slater’s deputy public affairs director, Bill Schulz, said Saturday that his boss saw the meeting “as an opportunity to have a discussion on the race initiative. . . . Frankly, the secretary views the gathering as a missed opportunity to widen the discussion to a larger audience.”

At the time, Slater did not appear to object to the exclusionary approach. He told the Dallas Morning News that he would have welcomed people of different races but that “from our vantage point, it could be either way.”

Schulz said the guest list and the closed-door venue during Friday’s meeting at Dallas’ African American Museum of Life and Culture were determined by Dallas Municipal Judge Vonceil Hill, a “close personal friend” of Slater’s.

The meeting was “originally” planned as “an informal gathering,” Schulz said, but in recent days the invitation list was expanded and Slater decided to use the session to discuss the president’s race initiative. “That simply didn’t get communicated” to the organizers, he said.

Hill, however, has described the 35 people she invited as “community leaders,” including elected officials such as Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), business executives and educators. As for the racial makeup, Hill told the Morning News: “I don’t believe the president has indicated that every dialogue must start in the same way.”

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