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The almost twenty years that followed Brown showed real progress toward a color-blind society. That progress, however, lost momentum in the 1970s as many civil rights leaders advanced well-intended, but poorly conceived, policies with the all-too-familiar consequence of dividing people along color lines. In that decade, the bright future of race relations began to dim as discriminatory techniques--mislabelled as"benign" or "affirmative"-reemerged to work their destruction on the hopes of a public anxious to find harmonious, goodwilled solutions to the problems of the past.Today, the struggle continues for a national heritage blind to skin color or ethnic background. The challenge for the present generation, as for its predecessors, is to reset our sights on the nondiscriminatory ideal that guided our forefathers down the path of greater civil equality. During the past eight years the Reagan Justice Department resolutely charted such a course, and by daring to challenge the liberal orthodoxy that invariably zigzags down the road of political favoritism, has assumed an important and central role in the ongoing national debate.

Let me start with the observation that I regard myself to be most privileged to be a public servant at a time when we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Constitution a magnificent document that has, in my view, no equal in history and every reason to be feted. It is by now no revelation that the Framers would be aghast at the size and reach of government today; but they would also be enormously proud of how much of their legacy has endured. The vitality of the original Constitution, and its various amendments, is reflected by its ability to withstand spirited debate over its content and meaning, a process that thankfully has been taking place with more and more enthusiasm in town meetings and forums all around the country, involving students, public officials,and citizens of every variety in evaluating how well our Constitution has served us over the past two centuries. I find it remarkable-and an enormous tribute to the Constitution-that in every instance about which I have read, these gatherings have been hard-pressed to think of ways in which to improve it in any meaningful manner. That is not to say that the original Constitution of 1787 was flawless. And in our celebration of the document, we must not overlook its flaws and our long and painful struggles to correct them.If there was any tendency to do so, it was no doubt corrected when Justice Thurgood Marshall spoke in Hawaii on the Constitution's Bicentennial celebration. Whatever degree of disagreement one might have with Justice Marshall's comments, he has invigorated the debate on the meaning and vitality of constitutional principles in a focused way that can only serve to underscore the importance of the document itself and why it is so deserving of this Bicentennial celebration.