Clinton Plan Gives Grants to Poor Youth

Decrying racial disparities in the United States, President Clinton on Saturday announced $223 million in grants to help provide education and job training to up to 44,000 poor young people across the country.

In his weekly radio address, Clinton marked Black History Month and said although there had been strides in improving the economic and social situation for all Americans, worrying gaps remained.

“More Americans--and more African Americans--are going on to college than ever before,” the president said. “But we must give every child that chance, and we must help their families shoulder the burden.”

Clinton said the money would help people 14 to 21 in 36 low-income areas as diverse as Watts in Los Angeles, inner-city Baltimore and the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota. The Los Angeles allotment will be $11 million while San Diego and San Francisco will each get $7 million.

On the Pine Ridge Reservation, which Clinton visited last year, the Oglala Sioux tribe and several partners would use $4 million to set up job training, drug and alcohol counseling, tutoring and other services for an estimated 750 young people.

There are “wide and disturbing disparities in health, income, perceptions of justice and educational achievements that break down along the color line,” Clinton said.

“It is clear we must do more to close these gaps and give all our citizens a chance both to contribute to and share in our growing prosperity and promise,” he said.

“This will provide a lifeline of opportunity to any young person willing to work for a better future,” Clinton said.

The grants emphasize placing young people in private sector jobs along with efforts to keep them in school, encourage enrollment in college and provide work experience.

They are a part of the “Youth Opportunity Agenda” that Clinton has proposed to increase by more than $1.3 billion in his budget for fiscal 2001.

The money comes from a $250-million fund in the current budget. The White House envisions a five-year, $1.3-billion program with participation from government, business and nonprofit groups.

Clinton coupled his remarks with a tribute to national Black History Month.

The observance highlights the achievements of black Americans such as abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the Tuskegee Airmen, World War II black fighter pilots who “fought fascism in the air and racism on the ground. . . . They helped lead the way to this modern digital age in which there are virtually no limits to how high our people can fly.”

House Republican Conference Chairman J.C. Watts Jr. from Oklahoma said that while he agreed with some of the president’s ideas on the government’s role in healing the racial divide and closing the income gap in the U.S., he took issue with some of Clinton’s ways of dealing with the problems.

“Unlike the Clinton-Gore administration, Republicans don’t equate the word ‘minority’ with an inability to determine one’s future,” said Watts, the highest-ranking minority member of Congress of either party. “We place our trust and resources directly with the people who we are looking to help.”

Watts, an African American, said he had tried to pass the American Community Renewal Act since coming to Congress in 1995. He said the act provides tax incentives to encourage prosperity in struggling urban and rural communities--many of which are minority communities.