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.

In his much-touted speech about race relations in America, President Clinton alluded to the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution which calls for "a more perfect union." It's a good beginning -- but only if we acknowledge that we have failed to meet the promise of the next phrase in the Preamble, "to establish justice."

The president devoted a single paragraph to the subject -- a paragraph more instructive for what it did not say than for what it did. He spoke of "shocking differences in perceptions of the fairness of our criminal justice system," citing "the real experiences that too many minorities have had with law enforcement officers."

After Rodney King few would dispute this. But the distance between what is and "Equal Justice Under Law" neither begins nor ends with the police.

Surely the racial makeup of our prison population, those sentenced to death, those put to death for taking a white life as opposed to a black life, contribute as much to "shocking differences in perception" of fairness as police practices.

The president ignored these statistics in his speech because he has real power to change this situation -- but has made a calculated political decision not to do so. Sometimes lofty words mask cynical deeds.

Take drug cases, for example. To receive a maximum sentence for cocaine possession under current federal law, one must possess 100 times as much powdered cocaine as crack cocaine, a disparity that falls squarely on the backs of those who live in poor minority communities where crack cocaine is more prevalent. The U.S. Sentencing Commission, supported by the Congressional Black Caucus, called for a change that would reduce this disparity, but the president's Justice Department rejected the recommendation.

The death penalty facing Timothy McVeigh provides an even more dramatic illustration of the disconnect between the President's words and deeds.

McVeigh joins a very select group of prisoners -- 13 in all -- condemned to death in federal rather than state courts. Only one, before McVeigh, was a white man. Since the federal death penalty statute became law in 1988, the Justice Department -- first under Bush and now under Clinton -- has followed the pattern: 80 percent of the indictments involve non-white defendants.

Waves of self-congratulation followed the McVeigh trial and sentence -- "the system works" -- but this case is no more typical of death penalty cases in the United States than the acquittal of O.J. Simpson case reflects the reality of jury trials of black defendants.

The president asserted we have "torn down the barriers in our laws" but did not say -- perhaps because he bears some responsibility for it -- that we have also begun to tear down protections provided by due process of law. In 1996, Congress passed and the President signed the "Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act" which radically redefines due process with one goal in mind -- execute more prisoners.

This new law, and recent Supreme Court rulings limiting death row appeals, greatly reduce the time those convicted under state law have to claim constitutional violations. Other new rules effectively close federal courthouse doors to condemned prisoners whose lawyers were not knowledgeable enough to raise their claims in lower courts -- something which is far from unusual, as most of the more than 3000 prisoners under sentence of death in the country had to rely on poorly paid, unprepared, and inexperienced attorneys.

For example, at the murder trial of a 19-year-old man in Virginia recently, the defense attorney -- who had never before tried a death penalty case -- told jurors, "I want to attempt to persuade you with all the skills that I can muster as an attorney to come back with a sentence of life. But even as I stand here looking at each and every one of you, I realize I can't do that. It is beyond my skills." Jurors sentenced the young man to death.

In interviews after the trial, one juror told of bringing a Bible into the jury room to "help" in deliberations, explaining that once the defendant was found guilty "I knew the penalty had to be death. The Bible says if you shed a man's blood, then your blood shall be shed." Another admitted he lied when asked if any of his relatives had been a crime victim -- his mother in law was raped and murdered, and her murderer executed shortly before.

These admissions amount to violations of the defendant's rights. But none of them can be raised in federal court, since his lawyer did not raise them in state court.

A competent counsel assigned to make federal appeals in this case arranged for a medical examination that revealed malformation of the brain and a tumor "of significance to his mental state at the time of the offense."

Jurors did not hear of this. Nor did they hear of the sustained violence the defendant was subjected to by his father, of his mother's attempt to drown him as an infant, his own attempted suicide just before the crime, or the fact that he was grossly impaired by alcohol and cocaine at the time.

The federal court, citing the new law, dismissed all this without a hearing.

"To redeem the promise of America," the president said, "is the unfinished work of our times." Amen. But, as he also said, "If we do nothing more than talk, it won't be enough."