President Clinton hopes that last week's town meeting to discuss race relations will jump start similar conversations among America's youth. But for one multiracial group in their early 20s who tuned into the Akron, Ohio event at the San Francisco office of YO! Youth Outlook, it was clear from the outset that the script had been written well in advance-- that the government isn't interested in what they have to say except as a backdrop.

SAN FRANCISCO -- "Akron, Ohio?" asked Stanley Joseph, a Haitian-American student at San Francisco State University. "Why'd they pick Akron?"

Two thousand miles away from President Clinton's Town Meeting to discuss race relations in America, a multiracial group of young Asians, Hispanics, blacks, whites, gays -- myself included -- were watching the proceedings over C-SPAN. If Clinton had really wanted to elicit opinions about multi-ethnic relations, we concluded, he should have come out to San Francisco, the most racially mixed city on the mainland.

In Akron, he got to hog the microphone.

At the Town Meeting, Clinton announced his "affirmative education" policy -- basically a plan to develop twenty schools in low income neighborhoods around the nation. Then the CEO of Goodyear diagrammed the new economic niche which "minorities" would occupy as corporate vanguards to untouched markets around the world.

Downsizing the Town Hall rhetoric (a term Goodyear should understand easily) the message came through loud and clear: We minorities can go to an improved school and learn to be solid American citizens courtesy of the White House. Then, if we're lucky, we'll be sponsored by Goodyear and participate in the global economy.

Reactions ran from outright skepticism to conspiracy theory.

"He's going through these motions to try to placate the minorities in America now that affirmative action has broken down, welfare has ended, and they're building penitentiaries instead of schools," observed Ri'Chard Magee, an up and comer in the San Francisco hip hop scene. "He's asking people to sell out our cultures."

"The plan shows a total ignorance of the immigrant experience," observed Nishat Kurwa, an Indian American radio producer. "We come to get the things America has to offer -- education, money, indoor plumbing... opportunities that weren't available in the countries we left behind. Most immigrants don't want to go back to where we came from, no matter what the role."

So what would we have proposed had Clinton wanted to hear from us?

"It's good that he's trying to address these issues," said Jeannine Etter, a writer from Oakland, "but how can you address 400 years of racism with one year of dialogue? Unless he's talking about reparations, I'm not listening."

Rick Aguirre, founder of a San Francisco-based magazine for gay and lesbian youth, wants any discussion about minorities working for corporations in foreign lands to also include the racist nature of, "sweat shops in Asia, maquiladoras in Mexico, the environmental racism of oil companies. When that guy from Goodyear was talking about diversity being good for business, he was essentially saying, 'You minorities can help us dominate new lands, the one's you came from."'

"The problem," agreed David Gaither, an African American journalist from Oakland, "is that these top down strategies ignore what's happening on a grassroots level in America -- the Million Man March, the Million Woman March, the Native American protest in Plymouth on Thanksgiving. By controlling the terms of the debate from the top down, they're ignoring what these people are doing."

"If you're building a pyramid, you have to start from the bottom," said Ri'Chard Magee.

Indeed, whereas panelists discussed what opportunities minorities would be given in the new global era, we wanted to talk about what we could do for ourselves. No one was interested in becoming an ethnic representative for corporate interests -- a bridge between America and what some erroneously label our homelands. America is our homeland. If there's any place where we're going to realize the equality and freedom we feel is lacking, it has to be here at home.

As for Akron serving as a model for conversations on race, the event had a long way to get to zero with our group. "For a conversation on race, there was almost no cultural diversity on the panel," offered Lyn Duff, a white radio producer from San Francisco. "Where were the extremes -- the youth activists, the racists, the revolutionaries alongside the 'nice, normal' students?" wondered Nishat Kurwa.

"The conversation was supposed to sound like people around a coffee table," said Stanley Joseph, "but I've seen better discussions around Nic News (a teen television station)."