
DATE: Wednesday, June 18, 1997              TAG: 9706180008

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial

                                            LENGTH:  122 lines

RACE RELATIONS WORTH TALKING ABOUT

So what does an activist President do when ``the era of big government is over''?

If you're Bill Clinton, you turn to one of the things you do best - conversing - and one of the subjects for which you've had a lifetime passion - racial healing.

Clinton's call for a ``great and unprecedented conversation on race,'' and his appointment of a national commission to lead the effort, passes for an ``agenda'' in this age of image politics.

If Clinton is able to bridge the racial schisms that have too long been with us, or even move us further toward that goal, his place in history will be cemented. We wish him well.

Unfortunately, even well-wishers ask whether Clinton's approach is remotely adequate to the task. From the left, historian David Garrow dismisses the speech launching the initiative as ``self-congratulatory and self-reverential. It posed no challenges.''

From the right, House Speaker Newt Gingrich complains: ``A commission that asks a bunch of abstract, theoretical questions about race in America is just going to be another liberal failure.''

Over the next year, Clinton and his commission - led by the highly regarded John Hope Franklin - must answer important questions: How do we create true dialogue - conversation, if you will - rather than mere talk? At what point does even honest conversation become meaningless without action? How can we agree on what the actions should be?

The danger is that the initiative will stall where many think it has begun, in the realm of the fuzzy and unfocused.

On the other hand, Clinton correctly recognizes that racial healing will take more than a few leaders dictating national policy. After outlawing discrimination, further legislative efforts have produced marginal results. Permanent resolution requires turning hearts and minds.

That's a much slower process, played out in thousands of classrooms and backyards and realtors' offices - places where relationships are formed and personal decisions made. There, conversation may, in fact, be more important than policy.

Clinton's initiative is noteworthy for two reasons. First, he has taken a stand, arguing that affirmative action on college campuses cannot be abandoned. Already, he argues, the failure to consider race in college admissions in California has sent minority enrollments plummeting.

But he has also posed a challenge. Show me a better way to produce diversity, and ``I would embrace it.'' If the process Clinton suggests is to work, willingness to listen will be vital. He sets the right example at the start.

Second, Clinton has wisely broadened the issue beyond black and white. In a half century, he notes, there will be no majority race in America. Instead, we will be a nation of former Asians and Africans, Europeans and Latinos, increasingly entwined through intermarriage.

If we persist in seeing ourselves only as extensions of our heritage, the balkanization could make Eastern Europe look placid. And that, in the end, is what might work - the pure self-interest of forging a society that can survive.

It is one thing to discriminate against a minority group, another to live in a land in which there are nothing but competing minorities.

As meaningful contact among the races slowly grows and as demography shifts, there may be more reason than ever before to put animosity aside. At least that can be the hope.

Zeroing in on our racial future may or may not make for a great presidency. But, at the minimum, it's a subject worth talking about.

S o what does an activist president do when ``the era of big government is over''?