IN HIS FINAL WEEK, CLINTON ISSUES PROPOSALS ON RACE

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 -- Laying down a marker for the incoming administration
and the new Congress in his own final days in office, President Clinton
today called for enactment of a sweeping set of proposals aimed at racial
reconciliation and lessening disparities between whites and minorities.

In a report to Congress, he urged adoption of several policies long
championed by liberal civil rights organizations.

But neither the Republican-led Congress nor President-elect George W. Bush
has shown much inclination to move in the direction Mr. Clinton recommended.

Mr. Clinton's recommendations included these:

- - Outlawing racial profiling by law enforcement agencies.

- - Immediately shrinking the disparity in sentencing between crack and
powder cocaine offenses.

- - Enactment of laws providing for greater access to DNA testing for
criminals and for competent legal counsel for defendants in capital cases.

- - The appointment of a nonpartisan presidential commission on electoral
changes that will recommend to Congress ways to increase voter
participation and prevent voter suppression and intimidation.

"People of color have more opportunity than ever before," Mr. Clinton wrote
in an Op-Ed article today in The New York Times. "Still, we see evidence of
inequality in the long list of disparities in employment and wealth,
education, criminal justice and health that still so often break down along
the color line."

The 11th-hour recommendations placed leaders of liberal civil rights groups
in an awkward position.

Many cheered Mr. Clinton for pressing for enactment of laws and policies
they had fought for for years.

"That's a pretty good laundry list," said Hugh B. Price, president of the
National Urban League. "I would have no quarrel with anything on it. The
mystery is whether there will be any movement on it."

Some progressive civil rights figures derisively noted that Mr. Clinton
never publicly embraced many of the recommendations while in office, never
mentioned such bold ideas as outlawing racial profiling in any State of the
Union address and never pressed Congress for passage of many of these
proposals.

"Why didn't he do more on these things during his own administration?"
asked Laura W. Murphy, director of the Washington office of the American
Civil Liberties Union.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson said: "These gaps existed in 1992. He had eight
years to work on them, but they required some heavy lifting."

In private, some civil rights leaders were even more scathing. After
listening to Mr. Clinton's last-minute recommendations, one civil rights
leader said: "I'm glad you called. I needed some comic relief."

Throughout his presidency, Mr. Clinton has had a tortured relationship with
traditional civil rights groups, in part because of his ambivalence toward
issues they have promoted. While the president's philosophical leanings
were often in sync with these civil rights advocates, his administration,
fearful of alienating white, middle-class voters, often kept these leaders
and their issues at arm's length.

For example, in early 1996, the White House rejected a proposal by the
Census Bureau to adjust population counts that were used, among other
things, to distribute federal money. Though the change would have benefited
minority communities that tended to be undercounted by the census, the
White House blocked it.

Knowing that the change would result in less money for suburban areas,
Harold M. Ickes, the White House deputy chief of staff, worried that the
adjustment might cost the votes of "white guys in Pennsylvania."

During his two terms, Mr. Clinton often raised several of the issues he
advocated in his report. In a radio address in March 1999, he said he was
"deeply disturbed" by law enforcement agencies that engaged in racial
profiling. But he never called for its abolition and did not ban its use
among federal law enforcement agencies like the United States Customs Service.

The huge differences in federal penalties for the possession or
distribution of crack and powder cocaine is another issue that has, at
times, produced tensions between Mr. Clinton and liberal civil rights
organizations.

During the crack epidemic in the 1980's, Congress passed a bill that
punishes a first-time offender with five years in prison for the possession
of 5 grams of crack. To receive an equivalent sentence, a first-time
offender would have to be caught with 500 grams of powder cocaine.

Civil rights groups complained that the disparities resulted in
African-Americans receiving much longer sentences because crack was much
more popular in poor minority neighborhoods. They also noted scientific
studies had determined that crack was no more addictive than powder cocaine.

In 1995, Mr. Clinton opposed a recommendation by a commission examining
federal sentencing policies that would equalize federal penalties for crack
and powder cocaine distribution. Two years later he said he was wrong and
his administration proposed reducing the disparity in the amount of crack
and powder cocaine that would result in similar sentences. Under Mr.
Clinton's proposal, 50 grams of powder cocaine would now net an offender
the same sentence as 5 grams of crack.

Still, civil rights groups and black elected officials complained that Mr.
Clinton did not go far enough.

"Any sentencing scheme that treats crack use and trafficking more harshly
than powder use and trafficking is not addressing reality," Representative
Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, said at the time.

Mr. Clinton's push on a number of these issues as he leaves office appears
to be a last-ditch effort to pressure the incoming Bush administration on
some racially tinged issues. They also appear to reflect Mr. Clinton's
desire to leave a legacy in the area of race relations.

Some of the recommendations, like diminishing the disparity on crack and
powder cocaine punishments, were made to Mr. Clinton in September 1998 by
his advisory board on race and ethnic issues. When the board, headed by the
historian John Hope Franklin, made its suggestions, Mr. Clinton promised to
incorporate them in a report to the nation on race relations.

But until this week, Mr. Clinton never made good on the promise to produce
the report.