Former President Bill Clinton, introduced by Penn President Amy Gutmann as an "extraordinary leader devoted to healing inequalities," gave the opening address for the Kerner Plus 40 Symposium to a packed Irvine Auditorium yesterday morning.
Engineering freshman Aditya Kaji, like many others, waited in line for hours to get a pass for the speech, but he thought it was well worth the wait. "President Clinton was extremely critical of the Bush administration," he said.
The event was sponsored by Penn's Center for Africana Studies and Annenberg School for Communication.
Clinton began by saying that substantial progress has been made to move closer to a united America since the Kerner Commission produced its original government report 40 years ago. The document stated that the nation was heading toward two societies, one white and one black - separate and unequal.
However, Clinton was quick to point out that he "would not spend more than five minutes celebrating the success" as there is still a long way to go before equal opportunities are available to all minorities.
Taking a political stance, Clinton stated that before President George Bush was elected, the Republicans could "ride on rhetoric," but after his victory Americans have had to live with the consequences of electing a right wing party. He said that "in the last decade inequality returned with a vengeance" due to government policies.
According to Clinton, during the Bush administration health care and education costs rose. Additionally, only five million new jobs were created as compared to the 22.9 million jobs created in the 1990s while Clinton was president. For this difference, he blamed government policies such as tax cuts for people in higher tax brackets.
As a remedy to America's current problems, Clinton suggested the implementation of community re-investment, doubling childcare facilities and giving more housing vouchers in order to lift the economic and social status of "thousands of our brothers and sisters smothering in a cage of poverty in our cities." He also recommended introducing training programs for incarcerated criminals to help them ease back into society.
Following these remarks, Sociology chairman and director of the Center for Africana Studies Tukufu Zuberi and Africana Studies visiting scholar DeWayne Wickham prompted conversation with Clinton about the racial issues inherent in prisons.
Further political overtones in the former President's speech included his statement that the next President should consider the Civil Rights division and Justice department working together in order to protect the interest of racial minorities, an idea he said was suggested by his wife and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.
