In a "major" speech President Clinton spoke in ringing terms about his Administration's commitment to remove the stain of racism from our country -- suggesting both the possibility of apologizing for past wrongs and an active effort to improve the situation today. Two commentators, from different perspectives, find reason to doubt the depth of the president's convictions. Kevin Weston observes that the president is joining a movement that has already moved past his formulations. Michael Kroll points to inequalities in the criminal justice system that Clinton could change if he chose to do so. Weston is an associate editor of YO! (Youth Outlook), and an editor at the New Bay View, a weekly black newspaper in San Francisco. Michael Kroll is an associate editor for PNS specializing in criminal justice issues.

"Join me in a great national effort to perfect the promise of America," said President Clinton said in his speech on racism last Saturday.

But the fact is, the President is actually joining us -- the new majority in America, people of color. We are on the front lines of the effort to perfect the promise of America for ourselves.

Discussion of race and race relations goes on every day between regular people at the work place, in school, on the buses and subways. And as we grow into the new American reality -- where those now known as a minority become a majority -- the discussion is moved and shaped at a grassroots level. What the federal government says, what any politician says, is a non-factor.

Politics has traditionally been used to divide people, to pit one group against another. How, then, can we trust politicians to facilitate a healing dialogue on race relations?

Indeed, by barnstorming across the country and holding town hall meetings on the topic, the president is doing what politicians and self-appointed leaders of "the people" are so good at -- jumping in front of the crowd that is already moving in a positive direction and saying "Follow me!" Yeah. Right over a cliff.

America has been in a sort of racial frenzy since the L.A. Rebellion. In California in particular, the atmosphere has intensified with the trial of O.J., the passing of one initiative barring affirmative action in education and state contracting, and another hostile to immigrants.

In California, there is a demographic sledgehammer smashing the country's fascination with the white/black paradigm -- soon, the white majority will be a minority, and the majority will be brown, yellow, red, and black. It would be self-destructive to turn the making of this new California over to the white minority -- and the politicians of whatever race that they have hired -- a minority that has decided "three strikes and you're out" is a good idea, that brown immigrants are bad, that building jails instead of schools is a way to prepare for the future.

Young people in California have a sense of the concept of "People of Color." We have an opportunity to shape a future reality for ourselves that will take place without -- in spite of -- politics. We realize that the "more perfect union" envisioned by the founding fathers included slavery and the theft of native peoples' property. How can this country have an honest dialogue on race, facilitated by the President, when it has never come to grips with its awful racial history.

Clinton is right to acknowledge America's past atrocities against humanity. But we need more than acknowledgment. We need official apologies. We need measures taken to repair the damage done.

The federal government is not prepared to do this. Senate majority leader Trent Lott of Mississippi (a state whose ground is fertilized with the blood of thousands of African people worked to death) said he did not think an apology for slavery would happen. No apology for the crimes of kidnapping, rape, and murder that our ancestors endured. No apology from this son of the South.

And Clinton wants to talk about it.

The new America should be allowed to have its own dialogue without the help of politicians. If we leave it up to them, we will only end up more confused.