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Bush honours King
16/01/2001 10:12 - (SA)
Houston - Reaching out to blacks who voted overwhelmingly against him, President-elect George W Bush on Monday vowed to improve public schools as a way to realise Martin Luther King Jnr's dream of racial equality.
Speaking on the holiday marking the slain civil rights leader's birth, Bush recalled King's struggle to win equal rights for blacks and said "as president my job will be to listen not only to the successful but also to the suffering".
Bush delivered the message in a speech at Kelso Elementary School, a predominately black public school set in a rundown Houston neighbourhood of small one-story homes, many of them with peeling paint and bars over their windows.
"The dream of equality is empty without excellent schools,
schools that stress reading and discipline and character and
decency," Bush told about 100 people at Kelso, whose students
are roughly two thirds black and one third Hispanic.
"America does not always live up to our ideals. Many Americans still face prejudice. The hopes of too many children are frustrated by deep poverty and unequal schools," he said.
"Our work is not finished." "We're ready to bring a spirit of reform and results to public schools all across the country," Bush said, standing beside his African American nominee for education secretary, Houston schools superintendent Roderick Paige.
Lingering Bitterness
Five days before he was to take the oath of office, Bush
was working to overcome lingering bitterness among Democrats
about his contested victory over Vice President Al Gore.
Some in the audience were sceptical Bush would succeed in
courting blacks - fewer than one in 10 voted for him.
"It's an attempt. I think it's going to take more than this
one visit," said Calvin Milton, 50, a fourth grade teacher who
voted for Gore but was pleased Bush visited Kelso.
Bush made education reform a cornerstone of his campaign,
unveiling a $47.6 billion plan to increase classroom safety,
give states greater control over schools and teach all children
to read by the third grade.
His education proposals have stirred up Democrats, particularly his plan to give $1 500 vouchers to the parents of students in public schools that fail to measure up to
standards, allowing them to send their children elsewhere.
Aside from highlighting his education proposals, Bush did
not cite any other policies to help minorities.
In his final week at the White House, President Bill Clinton on Sunday released a 26-page blueprint for completing the nation's "unfinished business" of mending race relations.
While some black leaders welcomed the ideas, which include banning racial profiling and shrinking the disparity in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine offences, they regretted Clinton made the proposals so late in his term.
Inaugural Protests
After his visit to Houston, the president-elect returned to
his 1 600-acre ranch near Crawford. He was not scheduled to
make any public appearances on Tuesday.
Bush flies to Washington on Wednesday, making a brief stop
in his boyhood home of Midland, Texas before arriving in the
nation's capital for the string of parties and events that
precede his inauguration at noon on Saturday.
Civil rights groups angry over alleged irregularities in
Florida's vote plan to stage Inauguration Day protests in
Washington, as do opponents of the death penalty and Bush's
anti-abortion stand.
Despite Bush's campaign pledge to be a "uniter, not a
divider" there are signs he will have trouble on Capitol Hill,
where Republican and Democratic senators are already fighting
over two of his Cabinet nominations: John Ashcroft as attorney
general and Gale Norton to be interior secretary. Senate confirmation hearings for Ashcroft open on Tuesday
with a key question being whether the former US Senator from
Missouri would enforce the many federal laws and regulations he
has openly denounced. During six years in the Senate, Ashcroft frequently opposed measures - from ones in support of abortion rights to affirmative action to gun control - that he would be
responsible for upholding as the nation's top lawman. Bush, who announced his key Cabinet nominations in record time, appears to be making progress on some of the secondary, but crucial, positions in the government. A Republican source said he was expected to name former State Department and White House budget official Kenneth Dam as deputy treasury secretary. The source also said Bush was leaning toward tapping Paul
Wolfowitz, an adviser to Bush and a former Pentagon and State
Department official, as deputy defence secretary, and veteran
US diplomat Edward Djerejian as deputy secretary of state. Republican sources said former Republican presidential
candidate Elizabeth Dole was on a short list of choices to
serve as Bush's US ambassador to the United Nations but said
it was unclear whether she would accept the job if offered.
- Reuters
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