\doc\web\98\06\locksp.txt
Subject: Fw: LOCKE SPEECH
Remarks by Governor Locke
Organization of Chinese Americans
15 July 1998




It's a great honor to be here to wish OCA a happy 25th birthday.  And 
it's a great pleasure to see so many friends and familiar faces, and to 
celebrate the success of people like Bill Lann Lee.  This is truly a 
night to count our blessings, and to marvel at how much progress we've 
made since the first Chinese immigrants arrived in this country.
				***************


Like many of you, I am proud to be the son of immigrants. The Locke clan 
first arrived in America when a distant cousin of mine immigrated to 
Olympia in 1874.  He was a merchant, and he very quickly became a leader 
of the small Chinese-American community that had taken root just a few 
blocks from the state capitol where I now live and work.  He acted as a 
bridge between the Chinese and white communities, and became friends with


the other downtown merchants, and with the sheriff, William Billings.
				**************
In 1886, an anti-immigrant, anti-Chinese mob threatened to burn down the 
Chinese settlement here.  This was just a few years after the passage of 
the Chinese Exclusion Act, and it was a time of anti-Chinese riots all up


and down the West Coast.  In both Seattle and Tacoma, the Chinese were 
forcibly expelled by angry, lawless mobs.  In Seattle, the Chinese were 
marched at gunpoint onto ships.  In Tacoma, some were also lynched.  
				***************
But something very different happened in Olympia, and it happened in 
large measure because of the cultural bridge that my cousin had built 
between the Chinese and white communities.  When the mob began to gather,


 Sheriff Billings deputized scores of Olympia's merchants and civic 
leaders.  And those citizen deputies stood between the angry mob and the 
Chinese neighborhood.  Faced by the sheriff and the leading citizens of 
Olympia, the mob gradually dispersed.  Not a single shot was fired, nor a


single Chinese house burned.
				******************
For the Locke family, that incident helped establish a deep faith in the 
essential goodness of mainstream American values:


* the values that reject extremism and division, and embrace fairness and


moral progress;
* the values of building bridges, and working together across the lines 
of race and nationality to keep the constitutional promise of equality; 
and
* the values of hard work, hope, and opportunity.
				***************
That faith has not always been easy to sustain. The Chinese Exclusion Act


was not repealed until 1943 - at the same time that Executive Order 9066 
had put our Japanese-American friends behind barbed wire in internment 
camps.
				****************
During the 50s, when I was in grade school, I vividly remember a teacher 
who believed it was her duty to literally beat the native culture out of 
her immigrant students.  Each morning, she would ask us what we had for 
breakfast.  If we had eaten something she thought was un-American - like 
rice and fish, for instance - she would whack our hands with a ruler.   
To her, being an American meant rejecting the culture of our parents and 
grandparents.  And the real tragedy was that we believed her, and took 
her advice to heart. 
				**************
I am deeply grateful to my parents for their forgiveness of all the ways 
in which I tried to reject them, and to deny my own cultural roots.  I 
know I caused them a lot of pain and grief during my growing-up years.
				****************
But so much has changed since then.  Now, as the proud father of a 
16-month-old daughter, I am also deeply grateful to OCA, and to the civil


rights movement that has made it possible for Emily's generation to grow 
up confident and proud of our Chinese-American heritage.  
				***************
Today, no teacher would dream of doing what our teacher did to us. Today,


we expect our public schools to teach respect for cultural diversity, and


an understanding that America is a land of immigrants from every corner 
of the earth.   We expect our children to learn that America's national 
purpose is to prove to the world that we can all live in harmony.  And we


expect our teachers to instill in all children a commitment to be 
citizens who help our nation live up to the promises of  our
constitution.
				****************
We know that in spite of the progress we've made, our country still falls


short of that noble national purpose.  And we know that we are living 
right now in a period of backlash against the progress we have worked so 
hard to achieve.  The relentless and successful attacks on affirmative 
action, the continuing fight over English-only laws, and the horrible, 
savage murder of an African-American man in Texas make it clear that far 
too many people still feel threatened by the very idea of full equality.
				***************
We see this backlash most clearly in the tidal wave of opposition to 
affirmative action.  Most of that opposition is based on misinformation. 


 And it starts with a deeply distorted definition of what affirmative 
action is.
				****************
Affirmative action is not about quotas.  It's really much simpler than 
that.  It's about who you know.  Millions of people get jobs based on who


they know.  And there's nothing wrong with that.  If you need a mechanic,


the smart thing to do is ask your friends where they take their cars, and


where they've gotten good service.  If you run a company, and you need an


attorney -- or a marketing director, or a personnel manager -- it also 
makes sense to ask your friends if they know anyone who fits your needs. 


And if you have a friend who's looking for a job, you would naturally let


them know about it if you heard of a job opening they might want.
				****************
If the majority in the boardrooms of corporate America is mostly white 
male, then the who-you-know network of job connections will only work for


mostly white males. That's why it makes sense to reach beyond the network


of friends and friends of friends.  That's why people who are hiring need


to act affirmatively to bring women and people of color into the 
mainstream network.
				****************
Affirmative action is simply the opposite of passive inaction.  
Affirmative action is about opening up and reaching out to include those 
who have been historically excluded.
				*****************
I believe in affirmative action because I'm a product of affirmative 
action.  Being a lawyer and a politician, it may be hard to believe, but 
I did not do very well on the verbal section of the SAT test.  On test 
scores alone, I probably would not have been admitted to Yale University.


 But Yale had an affirmative action program for minorities and public 
school students and students from the West Coast.  Yale took a hard look 
at me and gave me a chance.  I still had to pass the same exams as anyone


else.  And I can proudly say that I ended up doing well at Yale.
				****************
Because I am the beneficiary of affirmative action, I practice it.  Over 
one fourth of my senior cabinet members are people of color -- more than 
ever before in our state's history.  And I'm proud of their incredible 
accomplishments and energy.
				**************
Affirmative action means moving beyond passive inaction because passive 
inaction means that women and people of color will be frozen in place.  
And that is tantamount to stopping this country's historic march towards 
equality.
				*************

That's why it's so important that we continue to defend affirmative 
action, and to truthfully explain what affirmative action really is.  And


that's also why it's so important that we not take our progress for 
granted.  All that we have won, we must work hard to preserve, even when 
that requires rowing against the tide.  
				***************
We must never let the quest for full equality be the victim of 
complacency, fear, or apathy.  We must marshal the courage and the energy


to sustain our struggle in a new century, and for a new generation.
				****************
We need to turn every adversity into a new opportunity.  We need to use 
every insult and every injustice to illustrate and draw attention to our 
quest for full equality.  When we are tired and discouraged and hurt, we 
must turn to each other for comfort, to men like Bill Lann Lee for 
examples of courage under fire, and to our children for a renewed sense 
of purpose.
				***************
Our power is the power of community; of collective action.  But our power


is also - and even more fundamentally - the power of individual citizens 
in the world's greatest living democracy.  Each of us has the power to 
speak out; the power to lead; and the power to make change happen.
				***************
The practice of citizenship is like the practice of weightlifting:  the 
more we use our power, the stronger we become.  And if we stop using our 
power, it immediately begins to atrophy.  
				***************
That's why, even as we celebrate OCA's 25 years of stunning achievement, 
we cannot rest on our laurels.  Instead, we must redouble our efforts, 
and expand and intensify our involvement in democracy at every level of 
this nations' life.  We must teach all that we know to the young people 
who are here tonight, and to every child, in every community, from coast 
to coast.
				***************
We must nourish and develop a new generation of leaders, and teach them 
the civic values that have made our progress possible.  That is the real 
power of OCA:  the power to teach, by example, the most American of all 
lessons:  the practice of active citizenship and faithful  service to the


ideals of the American constitution.
				*****************
This is not a lesson that children really learn if they only read about 
it in the classroom.  And that's why OCA is so important to me.  I want 
my little Emily -- and every other young person in our community -- to 
grow up seeing their elders working to achieve the American dream of hope


and opportunity for people of every color, of every religion, and from 
every walk of life.
				****************
I want her to grow up among people who register others to vote; who write


letters to the editor; who participate in the political life of their 
communities and their country; and who make service to others seem as 
natural a part of life as breathing.
				*****************
To me, doing all this serves another purpose as well, and that is to 
honor the ancestors who worked so hard and sacrificed so much so that we 
would have the opportunity to be educated, free and prosperous.  Our 
obligation is to live up to the high standard they set for us; to build 
on their accomplishments; and to do for our children what our parents and


grandparents did for us.  That means focusing on the long term, on the 
common good, and on the loving stewardship of both our cultural heritage 
and our political freedom.  And it means continuing to support and 
participate in the Organization of Chinese Americans, so that 25 years 
from now, the next generation will have an even bigger banquet, with even


more to celebrate.


Thank you very much.














.