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The following was sent to All One Heart by the
Womens Office of the White House:
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release September 13, 2000
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON HATE CRIMES LEGISLATION
The East Room 2:48 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Holder, thank you for your leadership. CommanderO'Malley, thank you for coming back and for being the embodiment of someonewho has changed his position on this and been
courageous enough to say so.
And, Mrs. Byrdsong, I cannot even imagine the courage it must take for you to have made this journey from your home, to stand up in front of us,
to say what you have said. I thank your Pastor for
joining you here. And I think I speak for all of us and for all Americans -- we thank you for trying to turn your pain into a positive gain for America. Thank you. (Applause.)
I'd like
to thank Justin Dart and Mary Frances Berry and so many other advocates of human rights and civil rights for being in this room today. I would like to thank the members of the Interfaith
Alliance who are here; and, of course, the members of our D.C. City Council.
Many members of Congress wanted to be here, but they are actually voting now, and in the House they're voting on this,
on amendments to this very proposal. So we're here at a very important time. The first-ever vote on comprehensive hate crimes legislation is scheduled in the House of Representatives
for later today, after the amendments have been dealt with. That would enable us to clear the last legislative hurdle to final passage of hate crimes.
In June, with the Vice President
standing watch in case a tie had to be broken, the Senate passed a strong bipartisan hate crimes bill. I was very moved by many of the things that were said there, but I want to say a special words
of thanks publicly to Senator Gordon Smith from Oregon, an Evangelical Christian Republican, for the speech that he gave on that occasion, reminding us that this is not a partisan issue. I
hope the House will follow suit.
As I have said many times over the last couple of years, it is for me a sad and painful irony that at the beginning of a new century I have done so much to try
to fill with opportunity for the American people and to bring full of hope to the rest of the world, with all the modern gadgets we enjoy, we are still bedeviled by mankind's oldest failing:
the fear of the other, which so quickly can lead to distrust, then to dehumanization, then to the kind of violence that ended the lives of Matthew Shepard and Ricky Byrdsong, far, far before their time.
We may not ever fully conquer the disease that seems to afflict human hearts everywhere -- the compelling need to define ourselves up by defining someone else down. But at least we can do
more to make sure that no one in our country is violated simply because of who they are. That's why we're here today. I would also like to point out that there is a connection between
the two ways that throughout history, and if you just look at the last century, hate crimes have manifested themselves.
Here we talk about sad people twisted inside who somehow felt they could fill a
hole in their own lives by taking the lives of other people away, people who had somehow been convinced that they were so superior to other people they could shoot at them, kill them. What
possessed that person in California to shoot at all those little kids walking into the Jewish community school?
I saw one person said that when he killed a fellow penal postal worker, he
thought he had a double success -- he'd killed an Asian and a federal employee. What makes people think that way? There are all kinds of explanations, but we know that it's profoundly wrong to
believe that you can ever lift yourself up by putting someone else down.
The point I want to make, just briefly, is that it's not very far from there to the awful examples we've seen in our time
of political leaders who try to get one group of people in the majority in the country to blame all their problems on another group of people in the minority. And then you have a holocaust,
or you have a Kosovo, where a whole country is just flushed out.
So this is very important. It is just not true that hate crimes are like other crimes. It is not even true that every
crime is a hate crime.And that is fundamentally at the heart of this debate.
We had the first-ever conference at the White House on this three years ago. Since then, we've increased the
number of federal agents working on these cases, prosecuted successfully a number of quite serious ones, formed local hate crimes groups with local U.S. Attorney's offices around the nation, and
worked with more and more police officers to identify the signs of hate crimes.
This coming year, one of the things in our budget I hope the Congress will adopt involves funds for extensive
training for local law enforcement officials in this area. But we have to do more. The Deputy Attorney General told you quite eloquently, precisely, and clearly why we need a federal
hate crimes law that allows the Justice Department to do so much
more than it can now. Commander O'Malley told you the devastating financial consequences that can come to local law
enforcement from simply trying to do the right thing without the necessary federal support.
But underneath it all, and far more important than everything else, are the stories: the
life young Matthew Shepard had, and the one he might have had; the wonderful life Ricky Byrdsong had, and the one he might have had. Last year, or in 1998, that's the last year we have
figures -- there were -- listen to this -- 7,755 reported hate crimes, nearly one every hour every day.
More importantly, we know this is only the tip of the iceberg. Today, we have new
evidence that confirms what many have long suspected, and that is that hate crimes are under-reported. A survey conducted by Northeastern University found that as many as 6,000 law
enforcement agencies may have encountered hate crimes over the past year, but failed to report them to the FBI.
We also learned that 85 percent of law enforcement officers responding to the survey
agree with Commander O'Malley's belief that hate crimes -- hate-motivated crimes are more serious than similar crimes not motivated by bias.
That's why I'm directing the Justice Department
today to work with local authorities to develop a plan within 120 days to make sure we report all hate crimes so we'll know what the scope of the challenge is. It will examine a number of
strategies, from pilot programs in states suspected of under-reporting, to increasing training to help local officials identify such crimes.
This is all very important. But only Congress can do
what really should be done here. That's why the House must vote yes on the hate crimes legislation offered by Congressman Conyers today, and yes on sending me the final hate crimes legislation
before the adjourn for the year. Both yeses are important. (Applause.) Thank you.
I also ask Congress to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act before it's too late so that
we can continue to build on its success.
You know, over the last several decades, over and over again, when it came down to protecting the lives of innocent Americans, Congress has been
willing to take bipartisan action to do the right thing. I hope and believe it will do nothing less with hate crimes legislation and the Violence Against Women Act.
Let me just close with
this. One of the cruelest aspects of the systematic hate crimes that were perpetrated by the Nazis is their attempt to prove that somehow it was justified by science, by some sort of innate
superiority.
One of the happiest aspects of most recent scientific developments in biology is that we can now scientifically confirm what fates have always taught, that the most important fact of
our common existence on this earth
is our common humanity.
The human genome research project has documented that we are genetically 99.9 percent the same. Furthermore, that the
differences among people within the same ethnic or racial groups are greater than the genetic differences between profiles of different racial groups.
Now, this is a stunning thing. In
other words, this is not an affair of the body, it is an affair of the heart, of the spirit. It is, therefore, an even more dangerous kind of infection.
I don't think any of us believe
we can ever root it out just by punishing people. But the most important thing is that we do have the tools we need to take a strong stand before these things spread even wider. That's what
Sherialyn said, and that's why she came.
We've got a chance here to reaffirm America at its best. And I hope we can do it. Because the most important thing, if we want to make the most
of all this modern, wondrous economy we have, is to get rid of our oldest demons and build one America. Thank you very much. (Applause.)
___________________________________________________
Attached Please find two documents:
Statement by the Vice President: HATE CRIMES AND THE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT
Talking Points: URGING PROMPT PASSAGE OF HATE CRIMES
LEGISLATION
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Vice President
For Immediate Release Contact: James E. Kennedy
Wednesday, September 13, 2000
STATEMENT BY THE VICE PRESIDENT
Today I join the President in calling on the Congress to enact strong hate crimes legislation. In June, I was present in the Senate when it approved Senator
Kennedy's bill. I said then, and repeat today, that passage of hate crimes legislation is a victory for the American people -- because Americans stand for decency, for tolerance, and for goodness.
Hate crimes are targeted at America's heart and aim to destroy our values and purpose.
It has often been said that our laws reflect the values we share as a society. Passage of a strong hate
crimes law will send a clear message that we value everyone in our society, and we will work together to oppose those who use hate to divide us.
I support the President's directive to the
Department of Justice to join with local and state law enforcement officials in developing a plan to improve the reporting of hate crimes. As the study released today demonstrates, many hate crimes
are not reported to police or to the FBI.
We need to do more to bring the problem of hate crimes and the plight of
victims into sharper focus so that we can direct more attention to prevention and
to apprehending those who perpetrate this kind of violence.
I also join the President today in urging Congress to work together to ensure that the vital Violence Against Women Act is
reauthorized this year. This law has made a tremendous difference in the lives of countless women. I hope that a bipartisan majority in Congress will do the right thing, reauthorize the Violence Against
Women Act, and make a real contribution to the fight against domestic violence, stalking and sexual assault.
PRESIDENT CLINTON:
URGING PROMPT PASSAGE OF HATE CRIMES LEGISLATION September 13, 2000
Today, at the White House,
President Clinton called on the House of Representatives to follow the Senate's lead in passing federal hate crimes
legislation. The President announced the release of a study
that demonstrates that hate crimes are greatly under-reported, and issued adirective to the Department of Justice to work with state and local law enforcement on strategies to improve hate crimes
reporting. The President was joined by Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder; Cherialynn Byrdsong, whose husband Ricky was gunned down in a hate-motivated shooting spree; and Laramie Police Officer
David O'Malley, who helped to investigate theMatthew Shepard case.
Urging Passage of Expanded Federal Hate Crimes Law. The President urged the House of Representatives to vote in favor of
the hate crimes legislation which the Senate passed in June. This legislation would enhance the federal government's ability to prosecute violent crimes motivated by race, color, religion, or national
origin, and would authorize federal prosecution of crimes motivated by sexual orientation, gender, or disability. Recognizing that state and local law enforcement still have primary
responsibility for investigating and prosecuting hate crimes, this legislation would provide them with much-needed assistance, such as grants and help with investigations and prosecutions to ensure
that perpetrators of hate crimes are brought to justice.
Announcing a Study on Hate Crimes Reporting. Today, the President announced a new report, "Improving the Quality and Accuracy of
Bias Crime Statistics Nationally: An Assessment of the First Ten Years of Bias Crime Data Collection," which was funded by the Department of Justice. The report concludes that hate crimes are
under-reported for several reasons, including victims' failure to report them to the police, lack of training, and problems with forwarding hate-crime data to the FBI. Some of the report's findings
include: 83% of the over 10,000 city, county, and state law enforcement agencies that participate in the FBI's Hate Crime Data Collection Program reported that no hate crimes had occurred in their
jurisdiction in the previous year; Of the agencies reporting zero hate crimes to the FBI, 31% indicated that their department had investigated and reported one or more hate crimes, demonstrating
a disconnect between what officers believe and what is reported to the FBI. Based on this data, the report estimates that between 5,000 and 6,000 additional agencies may have encountered hate
crimes that were not reported to the national program; and 85% of law enforcement officers responding to a survey believed that hate-motivated crimes are more serious than similar crimes that
are not motivated by bias.
Issuing a Directive to Improve Hate Crimes Reporting. In response to the
report, President Clinton directed the Department of Justice to work with
state and
local law enforcement agencies and relevant organizations to develop a plan within 120 days to improve hate crimes reporting. The Department of Justice is meeting with representatives of state and
local law enforcement organizations later this month, and will consider strategies to improve hate crimes reporting, including the following:
Pilot programs in areas where law enforcement
agencies reported zero incidents of hate crimes; Determining the role that juvenile offenders play in the number of hate crimes committed each year; Training sessions by federal law
enforcement on identifying and reporting hate crimes; and activities by the U.S. Attorney Hate Crimes Working Groups to work with community groups and local law enforcement to improve hate crimes
reporting in their areas.
For more information please visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/women
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