" (quoted in: Husseini)
The final major flaw is that Clinton addresses the black ministers with a severe racial hubris -- he never makes any mention of the racial differences that might call into question his naive (at best) brotherly demeanor. He careful avoids bringing attention to the fact that he is not, as he says, "one of" these honest black ministers -- he does not actually share in their pain or their calling. The fact that he preaches to them on their moral duty instead of involving them in dialog and addressing them honestly as equals who might have as much to teach him as vice versa on the issue of race relations is rather disturbing.
Reactions to the speech were mixed. It was widely hailed as a breakthrough, and considered to be extremely eloquent. One New York Times reported said of it, "[Clinton] spoke from within himself, responding in emotional terms to the appalling reality of violence in this country today. The response he got shows that one thing Americans want a President to do is to speak out about wrongs... No one person can solve our problems of social decay but this President has made us face them." (in: American Review) Perhaps ironically, for an unabashedly liberal-centrist president, the conservative parties apparently had very little to say about this speech, though of course they generally opposed his crime and medical bills which were exalted here. The general white media seemed glad to honor it as racial bridge-building, an assessment based, one assumes, on the cozy fashion in which Clinton addressed the ministers as brothers.
Black activist groups and true liberals, on the other hand, had some rather harsh opinions of the speech. Their readings, like that of this listener, instantly saw the speech as a very direct attack on the progress of civil rights (as seen in his claim that King would decry black people's supposed misuse of their freedoms).
As Scott Marshall of the Race and Ethnicity site says:
Perhaps the most unashamedly racist speech by a president, or any public official, was Clinton's "off-the-cuff, straight-from-the-heart" speech in which he lamented the "great crisis of the spirit that is gripping America today." Using codewords and themes such as "personal responsibility," "family stability" and "family pathologies," he reverted to the old themes of blaming the victims, revealing a president deeply infected with racism. This address will go down in history as infamous, reviving the oldest and worst racist stereotypes, bigotry and ignorance."
Clinton reports that this speech was done entirely off-the-cuff. As he says in his book My Life, " I put away my notes and, [I was] speaking to friends from my heart in the language of our shared heritage..." (excerpt in: Blueprint Magazine) it is difficult to say precisely what heritage Clinton shared with these minority religious leaders. It is even more difficult to be sure about the actual heritage of this speech. According to Clinton's autobiography, the speech was delivered on-the-fly, as it were. In other places, however, he openly and promiscuously gave credit for the writing of that speech to one of his prominently non-white (Latina) speechwriters, Carolyn Curiel.
Curiel herself, on the other hand, collaborates his early statement by saying that "gave him talking points, not text, and Clinton launched off of them..." (Bogue) One can, of course, consider any number of reasons why the president might want to credit a speech which many considered to be racist to a non-white woman writer.
Carolyn Curiel is also credited as being the author of his 1995 speech on affirmative action, in which the phrase "mend it, don't end it"...
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