Clinton Race Panel Stirs Passions for First Time--on the Sidewalk

WASHINGTON —  For the first two hours, Wednesday’s meeting of the President’s Advisory Board on Race progressed much as its previous sessions had--a polite and harmonious discussion by a hand-picked panel talking about how diversity has enriched their lives.

Then a fellow named Robert Hoy grabbed a microphone and suddenly, for the first time since President Clinton launched his national conversation on race relations six months ago, the dialogue turned raw. “There’s no one up there that’s talking about the white people!” Hoy shouted. “We don’t want to be a minority in our own country!”

Within moments, a police officer escorted Hoy out of the building because he was disrupting the event. But it did not end there. Following him out the door were dozens of audience members and reporters, and what ensued on the sidewalk outside Fairfax County’s Annandale High School was the sort of vigorous back-and-forth about race that critics say has been missing from Clinton’s initiative.

Hoy, a photographer from Vienna, Va., with ties to David Duke, complained that whites are losing “our homeland” because they are quickly being outnumbered by other racial groups. “We’re going to be a minority soon!” he said in trying to explain his concern to a group of black men. “I’m already a minority,” countered Raymond A. Winbush, an African American who directs the Race Relations Institute at Fisk University in Nashville.

Even as the discussion unfolded, other white bystanders jumped in to make clear that Hoy did not reflect their views or their community. “I’m a white person at Annandale High School!” shouted Eileen Kugler, a former PTA president. “Please do not make this the forum. . . . This is not representative!”

If nothing else, the unscripted scene at Annandale High laid bare the sorts of passions Clinton figured might be unloosed when he asked Americans in June to explore race relations.

Clinton directed his race advisors to take a field trip to Fairfax, seeing it as a microcosm for the nation because of its dramatic demographic changes in recent years. Students in Fairfax schools speak 100 native languages and hail from 180 foreign countries, making for an eclectic mix in a once predominantly white, middle-class county.