Clinton to Push Policies on Race One Last Time

President Clinton, a man shaped by the turmoil of segregation that scarred the South, will make one final appeal to the nation today “to continue the work of healing the racial wounds of the past.”

“Race has been our constant struggle,” the president will say in a message to Congress. He will propose a potpourri of initiatives, such as more federal money to hire teachers, the extension of workplace civil rights protections to gays and lesbians and increased business investment on Native American reservations.

He would make election day a national holiday to extend the reach of democracy and increase voter turnout. And he would restore the right to vote to convicted felons, “who are disproportionately poor and minority,” after they have completed their sentences.

Congress will not enact any of these measures in Clinton’s final week in office. Rather, the president in effect is challenging President-elect George W. Bush, the new Congress and the American people to keep grappling with an issue close to his heart.

“Despite all the progress we have made in tearing down walls of segregation and barriers of opportunity, an old enemy lurks in the shadows,” Clinton says in his message to Congress. “It continues to poison our perceptions, undermine our progress and threaten our future.”

The president “will have lots to say on these issues as a private citizen,” Bruce Reed, the chief White House domestic policy advisor, said in an interview. “He wants to keep the momentum going. This has been the work of his life and it will continue to be.”

Clinton was 11 years old when nine black students, supported and guarded by federal troops dispatched by President Eisenhower, integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Ark.

“Though discrimination had always gnawed at me, it was the courage and sacrifice of those nine black children who endured constant attacks, both physical and emotional . . . that made racial equality a driving commitment in my life,” Clinton says in his message to Congress.

“Like most Southerners then, I never attended school with a person of another race until I went to college,” he says in a message to be issued today, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. He dedicates the message to “countless civil rights champions of all colors who have struggled since the time of Frederick Douglass for an America free from the bondage of racial injustice.”

Some of the issues raised by Clinton, such as hiring more teachers and improving educational standards, are likely to resonate with the new Bush administration. The new administration also may have a sympathetic view of the “New Markets Initiative,” encouraging business investment and expansion in low-income areas.

But other proposals will have little or no appeal to a Republican White House and Congress, which would regard them an unwarranted expansion of government powers. These include expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act to provide paid time off to those caring for newborns and the ill, extending civil rights statutes to gays and lesbians and providing job training to help noncustodial fathers pay child support.

“America is undergoing one of the greatest demographic transformations in history,” the president says in his message. “We are a changing people. Today, almost 10% of the people in the United States were born in another country, and one in five schoolchildren are from immigrant families. There is no majority race in Hawaii or Houston or New York City. In nine of our 10 largest public school systems, over 75% of the students are minorities. In a little more than 50 years there will be no majority race in America.”

African Americans, at 35 million, are the largest minority racial or ethnic group, he noted. Latinos, up from 7 million in 1960 to 31 million today, are the fastest-growing group. Asian Pacific Americans number more than 11 million.

These rapid changes prompted Clinton to ask a series of questions:

“Who, for example, decides who is white and who is a person of color? What will the terms ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ mean when there is no majority race in America?

“And perhaps, most importantly, will the black-white schism that has so defined racial struggle in America morph into new minority-versus-minority divisions, or can we build new coalitions for social change and equal opportunity across all racial lines?”