Miscellaneous Clippings (Folder)
Press
March 14, 1980 - October 19, 1980

40 pages
Cite this item
-
Division of Legal Information and Community Service, Clippings. Miscellaneous Clippings (Folder), 1980. c501dc07-729b-ef11-8a69-6045bddc2d97. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/d8c2723f-07e9-47d6-96ed-0e082501d9c9/miscellaneous-clippings-folder. Accessed July 16, 2025.
Copied!
U . S . D E I U R B A N DI lO U S IN G AND OCTOBER 5.1980 THE BUCK PLIGHT RAGE OR CUSS? A Debate Between Kenneth B. Clarii and Gershnun M ore than a decade has passed since the nation estabhshed new laws aimed at correcting the civil wrongs that held most of black Amer ica in thrall. Yet de spite these legal gains, and a significant change in pubhc attitudes that made it easier for blacks to enter society’s main stream, a disheartening number of black men, women and children re main in the closed world of poverty and despair. This condition, untd recently, has most often been ex plained as the direct result of white prejudice. However, new voices — including some black ones — now argue that the old ex planation is simphstic. Their view is that the problem of black pov erty today is better understood in terms of class factors and eco nomic trends than only in terms of racial discrimination. It is a hotly contested argument that many blacks view as part of a larger trend in American society to re- ^eat^from new initiatives to heal the open wound of the nation’s ghettos. Carl Gershman, author and for mer civil-rights activist, who is white, has written an article that analyzes the problem of racial in equality in the hght of these new ideas. The Times Magazine has in vited Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, the prominent black psychologist and authority on black culture, to ad dress the same issue. Each man’s work was shown to the other for comment and rebuttal. The debate begins on the following pages. unable to find jobs, merely in order to support a candidate for office on the basis of race. I think we have to find a more constructive solution than that.” There may be some who be lieve that it is unrealistic even to attempt to solve the prob lem o f the underclass. One sus pects here an insidious conver gence between left and right, the one maintaining that the society is too racist to solve the problem, the other that the un derclass is too mired in its own pathology to uplift itself, even . if properly assisted. Certainly nothing said here is meant to suggest that there is a magic answer to the problem of the underclass. But to date, the problem has not been seri ously discussed, much less ac knowledged to be the core question for which an answer must be found. Instead, all at tention has been focused on the divisive and diversionary issue of racial entitlements, while the Government has pro vided for the subsistence of the underclass with antipoverty allowances that have become increasingly expensive yet are inevitably branded as “ inade quate.” One cannot escape the con clusion that the crisis within the black movement is related to the failure of this whole ap proach, which has benefited those least in need and has perpetuated the dependency o f the underclass. If the current black leadership has lost cred ibility in the eyes of many Americans, this is certainly in part the consequence of its failure to address the real issue — the condition of the un derclass — in a way that clari fies our understanding of the problem and promotes a com mon effort to solve it. Whether society would re spond to a different approach — one that looked toward the elimination of the ghetto and the achievement by the black underclass of genuine self-reli ance — cannot now be known. In any event, it should not be necessary to arouse the con science of the nation on this issue as the old civil-rights leadership did in the fight against Jim Crow. It should be enough merely to appeal to the self-interest of the country. The existence of a permanent underclass in all of the major American cities is not, after all, just a black issue. It is an issue that affects the future of America as a viable urban i 'ivilization. ■ . the country has not changed to an extent that racism is no longer the central problem. Whatever the explanation, ra cial politics of the kind that dominated the Richmond con ference has gone unchallenged within the black leadership. One result is that much of the black movement has been drawn inexorably into the uni verse of third-world radical ism, a trend that has rein forced the ideology of racial victimization. In the short run, this trend affects mainly the moderate black leaders, who have been increasingly pressed to take stands — on an issue like supporting the Palestine Liberation Organi zation, for example — that alienate political allies and isolate the black movement from the American main stream. In the long run, how ever, it affects the whole soci ety, since a black leadership given over to such racial poli tics enormously complicates any effort to deal with the problem o f the black under class — a problem that re mains, as it was in 1965, the most formidable and explosive social issue the society faces. It is hard to see, for exam ple, how the underclass can be brought into the economic mainstream outside the framework o f a strategy that looks ultimately toward the dissolution of the ghetto. Yet this is precisely what the Rich mond conference opposed tmd what has been stricken from the civil-rights agenda since the pivotal controversy over the Moynihan report. The degree to which retain ing the ghetto has come to be viewed as an actual advantage for blacks was well illustrated several years ago at a hearing on urban policy conducted by the House Committee on Bank ing, Currency and Housing. In response to a proposal by Paul R. Porter, an urban specialist, that poor blacks wishing to relocate to areas of industrial growth and job opportunities be assisted in doing so by Gov ernment training and other support. Representative Par- ren J. Mitchell (Democrat of Maryland) asked: “ Will not the relocation of blacks — moving them out of cities — destroy the political base that we blacks have begun to de velop in this country?” Porter replied, “ I think it might, but I don’t know of any way we can tell people that they ought to stay in a city where they are Continued fr^m Page 99 and whose access to the nor mal channels o f economic mobility and opportunity is blocked.” But today, when far- reaching structural changes in the economy have helped make the ghetto an even more confining, desolate and patho logical wasteland, the black leaders gathered at Richmond opposed “ policies which en courage spatial deconcentra tion.” Instead, they called for more "d irect funding of black community-based organiza tions” for the purpose of “ revi talizing existing black com munities.” This preference for keeping the ghetto was not an inciden tal aspect of the “ black agen da” adopted at Richmond but an integral part of the whole strategy for “ independence.” One is naturally tempted to draw the parallel between the orientation toward "self-reli ance” promoted at the Rich mond conference and the traditional tendency of the “ black bourgeoisie,” as ana lyzed so brilliantly many years ago by the great black sociologist E. Franklin Fra zier, to prefer a segregated situation within which it could “ monopolize the Negro mar ket” and “ enjoy a sheltered and relatively secure position in relation to the lower eco nomic classes.” But the new black-leadership class repre sented at Richmond is in many important respects an entirely i*ew phenomenon. For one thing, it speaks — Or at least claims to speak — for a considerably enlarged black professional class. Moreover, it is not a conservative, in ward-looking group that re treats behind racial myths, as Frazier described the earlier black middle class. Rather, ith is a politically dynamic lead-/ ership group, with a global! “ third-world” perspective,! that uses racial myths ideolog-i ically in the pursuit of real and \ important Interests. In this re -; spect, the myth that all blacks are equally the victims of rac ism serves a dual purpose, jus tifying the claims of the most successful blacks to racial en titlements and, by allowing such claims to be made in the name of all blacks, concealing the specific class interest that i is served. —-— ^ To be sure, not all black leaders either consciously or unconsciously use racial myths in this way. Some may emphasize race because they believe it to be the only way to call attention to black prob lems, and they may also fear that, without this emphasis, black organizations would lose their raison d’etre. And some, of course, may simply feel that The issues raised by Wilson have far-reaching political im plications because the “ my thology” he has sought to ex pose is ascendant today within' the black leadership. The ex tent to which racial politics has distorted the perspective of the black leadership was made abundantly clear at the Richmond conference last February. Thus, according to Jesse Jackson, the starting point of any analysis of the black situa tion had to be the recognition that “ race is the most perva sive fact in the Afro-American experience.” Richard Hatcher took the view that racism ac counted for the worsening condition of blacks. In spite of all the efforts made over the years “ to lift the American nightmare,” he said, “ insensi tive” politicians “ continue to this ̂ a y to mistreat us, mis represent us and to insult us.” And now, he added, the coun try is “ falling victim to a ruse of anti-Russian hysteria in tended to make us forget about” domestic injustices. As a result, Hatcher concluded, “ We are poorer, sicker and hungrier than we were just 10 years ago.” Cardiss Collins of the Congressional Black Cau cus added that, because none of the Presidential candidates, in her view, had demonstrated any real concern about black problems, there was “ no point in arguing who the slave mas ter is going to be. ” The only solution for blacks, then, was to look to themselves and to seek “ self-reliance” as a unified and independent en tity within American society. This independence strategy, as the “ black agenda” adopted at the conference made clear, places great em phasis on demands for special Government assistance to black businesses and pro grams — demands that both Jackson and Hatcher justified as “ reparations” owed blacks for past and present injus tices. It also stresses the need for blacks to become, as one speaker put it, “ intermedi aries” in relations between the United States and the third world, a role, he said, that would strengthen the black “ negotiation position” in this country and also create new opportunities for black busi nesses in the field of foreign trade. While this strategy is based on the concept o f racial soli darity — both within the American black population and between it and the third world — the distinguishing feature of this approach is its overwhelming orientation to ward the interests of one com ponent of the black population, the middle class, to the exclu sion of any meaningful empha sis on the problems of the black underclass. There were some token references at the conference to the need for full employment, and a resolution was passed that encouraged community leaders “ to find ways of organ izing the grass-roots, problem- ridden blacks by focusing on specific, concrete issues to which they can relate.” But to the extent that the black lead ers, themselves, addressed these issues at Richmond, they did so in every case by denying the real problem facing the un derclass and recasting the question in terms consistent with their own racial perspec tive and class interests. Thus, while violent crime is one of the most destructive symptoms of ghetto pathology, victimizing chiefly the black poor, the Richmond confer ence focused on the issue of “ criminal justice” and its denial to blacks in general. The first priority, according to the resolution adopted at the conference, was the necessity for blacks “ to be employed at every level of the criminal-jus tice system, particularly at the policy-making level” — a proposal more likely to en hance employment opportuni ties for black professionals than to reduce ghetto crime. The resolution also decried the death penalty, police brutal ity, new prison construction and the “ unequal application of the law at all levels.” But nowhere was any serious at tention paid to the problem of violent crime in the ghetto. The question of the black fe male-headed family was also virtually ignored. It was al luded to only once, in the course of a resolution on the Equal Rights Amendment. And here again, the “ prob lem” was not the alarming dis integration of the family struc ture of the black poor, but the absence of “ quality develop mental child care” for “ the significant number of black women who head families in the United States.” Nor was the ghetto itself thought to constitute a prob lem. Fifteen years ago, Ken neth Clark wrote about what happens to people “ who are confined to depressed areas (Continued on Page 102) of^race” and others “ for whom hardly anything would change if, by some magical stroke, racism disappeared from America. . . . And yet hardly anyone is willing to say it.” It ’s hard enough. Raspberry added, “ to rehabilitate those people who have been crippled by the long-term effects of rac ism . . . and it is made no easier by our refusal to ac knowledge the problem for what it is.” In fact, mtmy black intellec tuals and political leaders have actively discouraged ef forts to raise the issue of the underclass in these terms. A significant case in point is the controversy that has sur rounded the 1978 book “ The Declining Significance of Race,” in which the black soci ologist William Julius Wilson argues that the worsening condition of the underclass, not racism, is the problem that requires urgent attention. Wil son, who heads the sociology department at the University of Chicago, said recently that he “ had not anticipated the depth of the political-emo tional response” the book has elicited. He readily concedes that his arguments are “ hardly revolutionary” but just expand on the position adumbrated by Bayard Rustin in the mid-1960’s. Clearly, however, many blacks find this position just as objection able today as they did l5 years ago. Wilson’s basic thesis is that in the modem industrial peri od, unlike the earlier periods of slavery and industrializa tion, class plays a more signif icant role than race in deter mining a black’s position in society. He does not deny that racial antagonisms persist in “ social, political and com munity” areas. He merely contends that blacks with the requisite skills can now ad vance economically emd have done so, while the underclass — a product of the disadvan tages accumulated over gen erations and of modem eco nomic developments — can not. The net effect, he says, is a growing class division among blacks. Under these circumstances, Wilson argues, an emphasis on race obscures significant dif ferences of experience and suffering among blacks. Even more importantly, it also leads to faulty analysis and to poli cies that don’t address “ the specific needs and concerns of those who are the most disad vantaged.” In the epilogue of the forth coming paperback edition of his book, Wilson shows, for ex ample, that the recent decline in the composite black-white income ratio from 61 percent in 1969 to 59 percent in 1978 — figures stressed by black lead ers and intellectuals in argu ments for more affirmative- action programs — is mislead ing in that it obscures the sharply divergent trends “ within” the black population. Thus, he notes that the black- white ratio of median fam ily income in male-headed homes increased over the same period from 72 percent in 1969 to 80 percent in 1978, while “ the exploding number of black female-headed fami lies,” with median incomes about one-third those of black male-headed families, brought down the overall income ratio. The emphasis on affirmative action, he adds, has the effect of widening this class division among blacks since it benefits primarily the middle class while not addressing the spe cific needs of the underclass. Wilson’s thesis was dis cussed at a symposium con vened last year by the Univer sity of Pennsylvania’s Afro- American Studies Program. Lerone Bennett Jr., the senior editor at Ebony magazine, ob served that “ it verges on the sacrilegious to spend so much time discussing the declining significance of race . . . in the face of the systematic destruc tion of a whole generation of black people.” Kenneth Clark, whom Wilson called “ the scholar who first made me conscious of these issues,” nonetheless differed strongly with Wilson’s main argument, calling it “ a dangerous delu sion” that “ drains energy and diverts attention from the stark fact that racial injus tices perpetrated against all blacks — middle-class and un derclass blacks — remain the unfinished business of Ameri can democracy. ’ ’ Wilson has countered such criticisms by applying his class analysis of race to the “ race politics” of the black in telligentsia. At the University of Pennsylvania symposium, he observed that “ the group that would have the most to gain by a shift in emphasis from race to economic disloca tion, the black lower class, is not the group that is really de fining the issues.” Rather, he added, “ the issues are being;, defined by the articulate black'; intelligentsia— the very group j that has benefited the most in ' recent years from antidis crimination programs” and which therefore has “ a vested interest in keeping race as the single most important issue in developing policies to promote black progress.” Taking note of “ the increasing class hos tilities in the black communi ty,” he remarked that if “ the little man” ever gains his voice, he might well use it “ to beat d o ^ the mythology de veloped by the black intelli gentsia: Blacks, regardless of their station in life, have a uni form experience in a racist society.” been rooted in profound and enduring institutional changes in employment practices, Gov ernment policies, education, labor and other areas, there is no reason to believe that it will not continue. But it has bene fited, at best, two-thirds of the black population, divided al most equally between middle- class and working-class blacks. The bottom third has not only failed to participate in the progress of the last 15 years, but its social and eco nomic position has deterio rated to an alarming extent. During the 1970’s, for exam ple, the unemployment rate for 16- to 19-year-old blacks rose by more than half — from 24 percent to over 37 percent today. The percentage of all black males over 16 who dropped out of the labor force entirely — who neither worked nor sought work and thus did not even appear in the unem ployment statistics — also in creased by more than half, from 20 percent in the mid- 1960’s to nearly 40 percent today. And though the problem of female-headed black fami lies has scarcely been men tioned since the acrimonious controversy over the Moyni- han report, it has grown stead ily worse — from 23.2 percent of all black families in 1962 to 28 percent in 1969,37 percent in 1976 and 40.5 percent in 1979. What has been happening is clear; The black underclass of the ghetto has been expanding at precisely the same time as the black middle class has also been expanding and moving ahead. Moreover, this schism shows every sign of growing still wider in the future. The structural barriers to employ ment for the imderclass are greater now than they were 15 years ago, for during this period thousands of manufac turing plants seeking space for expansion have relocated out of the central cities, leaving potential black workers in the ghetto more cut o ff than before from the economic main stream. And the ghetto’s “ tan gle of pathology” is now more deadly. Another layer of dam age has thus been added to the legacy of history and circum stance, one that is particularly crushing to the spirit in that it foilowed upon a moment when there seemed to be hope. Though the problem of the underclass has grown more in tractable and has, in fact, been brought more sharply into focus by the "deepening schism” in the black popula tion, there is no greater readi ness now than there was 15 years ago to acknowledge its true character. In an article discussing the underclass, Wil liam J. Raspberry, a black col umnist for The Washington Post, wrote that “ everybody knows” that “ there are some blacks for whom it is enough to remove the artificial barriers TU X ED O SHIRT. Crisp p leated front shirt tailored to w e a r with a suit as well as yo ur favorite jeans. Cotton & polyester in white. By G eoffrey Beene for Cheso. Sizes 4-i4. BL*23, 528 Postpoid. COW BOY BELT. There'S a hint of sw a g g e r o n the belt b y Ruza. Too le d leather with a g o ld tone d western buckle a n d tip. Antique brow n, antique natural, forest green, w ine o r red. Sizes S,M. BE-4 . 513.25 Postpaid. SEND $1 FOR TH E NEW HOLIDAY 1980 FBS CATALOG AND APPLY IT T O YOUR FIRST ORDER. CREDIT CARD HOLDERS MAY N O W ORDER ROUND THE CLOCK. (800) 228-5454. (In Nebraska, 800-642-8777). N O COD'S. NY State residents, a d d yo ur tax. Major credit cards are accepted. O r enclose check or m o ne y o rder. Do not send cash. FBS, TM-10,650 Main Street. N e w Rochelle, NY 10801. {914)636-8600. ROBERT KIRK, Ltd. San Francisco's British Goods Store Since 1939 L igh tw eigh t A ll-Purpose P oplin Jack e t $30 For over thirty ̂ years, this hand some all-weather, all-purpose jacket has been a fevourite for golf, travel, leisure - all outdoor wear. Unu.sually durable and practical, o f a high count cotton and Dacron poplin. Lightweight plaid lining. Machine washable, with comfortable raglan shoul ders and action yoke back. Tan or navy. Sizes 36 to 50 Reg. and 40-50 Lt)ng. Sizes 48 to 50 regu lar and long, $36 . □ Plcaae send catalofiue. Jacket (21025G); Size________ Colour(s)_____________________ Qty.______ g □ Check □ MasterCard □ American E.xpress □ VISA Bank Card # _______________________________________ Expires---------------- Mail Orders, Add $2 Ship, and Hdlg; Calif. D elivery Add Sales Tax N am e____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________Zip _ No. 150, Post St., San Francisco, Calif.. 91108 EAST 28th ST. 404 Pirk Ave. So. (cor 28th St} 532-4697 Mon-Thurs 10-8PM EAST 54th St . 1014 Socond Ave. (bet 53rd 4 54th Sts) 751-1720 Mon-Fri lO-SPht. sat 10-6P EAST 79th ST. 1530 Second Ave. (bet 79!h 4 80lh Stsj 535-1242 Mon-Fri 10-9PM Sat 10-6F WEST 57th ST. 1770 Broadway (bet S6(h 4 57lh Sts) m M 559 Mon-Fri 10-9PM. ^ 10-6PM HA R TSD ALE 183 So. Central Ave. (914) 428-7727 Mon-Fri 10-9PM, Sat lO-onn from m ique disabilities and ' requiring special attention. The underclass became.^^ in stead, a symbol o f^ lack suf fering and white cruelty, a liv ing reminder o f past and present injustices and of the continuing debt that American society owed to all blacks, re gardless o f the position they had achieved in life. Thus, while the problems o f the un derclass could not be honestly discussed, its condition was made the basis of an ideology of racial victimization that was applied to the entire “ black experience” in Amer ica. But even ets this ideology was developing and gaining a greater hold on many black leaders, it was becoming in creasingly defective both as a description of the actual condi tion of the black population in America and as tm explana tion of the present causes of racial inequality. Even before this perspective took root, in fact, the black population was not monolithic — this, of course, being the very reason why President John^n and others had raised the issue in the first place. Moreover, since 1965 there has been a deepening class schism among blacks, a trend identified a decade ago in a speech at Tuskegee Institute by the black economist Andrew F. Brimmer, then a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Between 1965 and 1977, the number of blacks attending college more than quadrupled — from 274,000 to 1.1 million. As their numbers rose, so, too, did their aspirations, as seen in the growing numbers of blacks studying for careers in business, engineering, chemis try, computer science and other highly professionalized fields. Because of these educa tional advances and the de cline in job-market discrimi nation, the number o f blacks in professional tmd managerial jobs nearly doubled during the 1970’s, to 1.9 million, and the income o f young college-edu cated blacks rose to about the same level as that o f their white counterparts. (Black males earned slightly less than white males, and black females earned slightly more than white females.) The earnings ratios for all blacks employed full-time have not been as high, but even here the gains have been impressive: Black males earned 77 percent as much as white males in 1975, up from 63 percent in 1955, while, over the same period, the income of black females rose from 57 percent to 98.6 percent in rela tion to the earnings o f white fe males. While the current recession has eroded some of the gains made by middle- and working- class blacks, the progress re flected in these figures has been real and not, as some have maintained, meager and illusory. And becavise it has 14 W^ys B etter T han A \^ e e lb a rro w Easier And M ore Enjoyable To Use. Mail us the coupon below to receive all the exciting news about our fam ous Verm ont-W are carts, our speciai free prem ium offer, our tw o styles, five m odels and special build-it-yourself kit. Learn w hy m ore than 50 ,0 0 0 satisfied cus tom ers all over the w orld say they don’t know how they ever go t along without it. V E R M O N T -m R E I Dept. 13104), Hinesburg, Vermont 05461 I Write for our FR E E catalog today. I N a m e . I - .. I C it y . -S ta te ____Z ip - THE GOOD LI AT ELBOW BE The special pleasures of Bei And there’s no more specia daily temperature ranges in clear. A t the heart of the island Beach Hotel is the perfect p an early morning jog along with a swim in our huge clii arrange for motorbikes so y charming as it is peaceful. O ur guests enjoy superb, And evening entertainmen Room. Ask your travel agent ab Elbow Beach. For your owi please write Robert E Wan New York, N.Y. 10017. ELBOW BEACH SEE YOUR TRAVEL AGE (212) 6S7-5750. EVERYWHERE EL » 9 WELLINC GENERAL MOT< New As Clark’s study made pain fully clear, the ghetto poor were trapped in a “ self-perpet- tiating pathology” whose symptoms were “ low aspira tion, poor education, fam ily in stability, illegitimacy, unem ployment, crime, drug addic tion and alcoholism, frequent illness and early death.” This “ disease” was the result of centuries o f accumulated in justices, starting with slavery and continuing with segrega tion and poverty. But it had now taken on a life o f its own, so that the elimination o f dis crimination, in and o f itself, would not bring about its cure. Moreover, according to Rus- tin, the disease was spreading as a result o f structural changes in the economy — for example, the elimination of unskilled and semiskilled jobs by automation — that were ex cluding, growing numbers of black youth from the modem labor market. There clearly could be no solution to the problem in the absence o f a massive, systematic effort by the Federal Government (along the lines of the 10-year “ Freedom Budget” proposed by Rustin’s mentor, A. Philip Randolph) to rescue the un derclass, looking ultimately to its gradual transformation into a stable working-class population and the abolition of the ghetto itself. This view became the basis for President Johnson’s fa mous civil-rights address delivered at Howard Univer sity on June 4, 1965. The ad dress, which Moynihan helped draft, summarized the essen tial arguments of the “ Negro Fam ily” report by way o f de fining “ the next and more pro found stage o f the battle for civil rights.” Declaring that “ freedom is not enough,” the President dwelt at length upon “ the scars of centuries,” the “ ancient brutality, past injus tice and present prejudice” that had buried much o f the black population “ under a blanket o f history and circum stance.” For these reasons, the President explained, there were “ deep, corrosive, obsti nate differences” between black and white poverty, the most important — because its influence radiated “ to every part o f life” — being “ the breakdown o f the Negro family structure. ’ ’ The President announced he would convene a special White House conference in the fall. But before the conference was held, the Watts riot occurred and the White House released the internal Government re port on “ The Negro Family ” — “ specifically to assert” zis Moynihan later wrote, “ that something was known about the otherwise inexplicable events in California. ” The report, which called at tention to the growing inci dence of female-headed black families dependent on welfare, aroused a storm of indigna tion. Actually, it only rein forced what President John son had said in his speech — that legal equity was insuffi cient in that the damage his tory and present circumstance had caused in the life of the Negro American had to be re paired if there was to be genu ine racial equality. For Moyni han himself, the report was a brief for the Government’s adoption of a jobs strategy that would seek to strengthen the role o f the father as the fam ily provider. Such a strat egy, he also felt, would have to be supplemented by a plan for child allowances as a way of offsetting the subversive ef fect on fam ily stability o f a wage system not geared to family size and need. But in the bitter post-Watts atmosphere, Moynihan was accused o f blaming the black poor for their own plight tmd offering an excuse for Govern ment inaction. These were really secondary issues, how ever, because the underlying objection to the report — which was reflected in its crit ics’ argument that the female headed fam ily was actually a healthy adaptation to harsh conditions — was its conten tion that history had inflicted debilitating wounds on the black American. What was being denied, in other words, was the idea, implicit in the Moynihan argument, that there was something patholog ical in the social fabric o f the ghetto underclass. This denial, which was in sisted upon ever more strongly as racial tensions and black- nationalist tendencies grew in the late 1960’s, expressed itself in a political attitude that dig nified the violence and degfa- '̂ dation in the culture o f thq; ghetto underclass. The atti tude took its most explicit form in the emergence of the Black Panthers, who extolled the revolutionary character of the “ lumpen proletariat” (a term knowingly misappropri ated from Marx, for whom the underclass was not revolution ary but “ a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds” ), and whose politics of nihilism and street violence were countenanced and en couraged by fashionable lib eral opinion. I t also found sub tler expression in the growing acceptance o f the idea that the sole (rt>stacle to black advance was white racism. The “ dis ease” that had to be cured — the problem, in short — was not the ghetto with its growing underclass, but the racist and repressive character of Amer ica itself — a view that was given an international dimen sion in the ideology of third- world radicalism that was then rapidly becoming popu lar. At the same time, no effort was made to conceal the mis ery of the ghetto. On the con trary, this condition was bran dished as conclusive proof of America’s sickness and as the basis o f demands for immedi ate Government relief. And, since it was also denied that there was anything inherently pathological in this condition, it followed that the misery was solely a function of the maldis tribution of power, money and jobs, and that relief would come simply from their redis tribution. Thus, the idea of abolishing the ghetto gave way to demands for “ commimity control” over its institutions. Welfare came increasingly to be seen not as a debilitating condition from which one should try to escape, but as a right that had to be more ad equately fulfilled. And empha sis was placed not on attacking the structurai causes of unem ployment, such as the discrep ancy between the skills and motivation required for pro ductive employment and the lack of these among youth trapped in the ghetto, but on demanding racial quotas — an approach that actually by passed the underclass since there were ample numbers of middle-class black youths bet ter prepared to fill the avail able openings. The sad irony in all o f this is that what appeared to be a form o f racial militancy was, in reality, a policy of racial ac commodation. Though de mands for redistribution were frequently couched _ in such radical-sounding terihs as “ black power,’’ '“ reparations” and “ self-determination,” nothing was being proposed that would, or was intended to, lead to the dissolution of the ghetto underclass. On the con trary, the new approach both rationalized and subsidized the underclass’s continued ex istence. It appealed to many whites by offering them a con venient excuse to evade the whole problem while, at the same time, allowing them to show proper “ concern” for the disadvantaged by submitting to “ black demands.” And it also appealed to a new class of black political leaders and Federally funded antipoverty workers who became, in ef fect, the power brokers be tween the Government and the black poor. These workers had a stake in preserving the un derclass as a political base from which they could threaten — and extract con cessions from — white society. The nature of the relation ship between the underclass and its self-appointed political spokesmen was obscured by the invocation of a “ black per spective” according to which both shared a common inter est based solely on race. This perspective, by assuming the existence of a monolithic black community set o ff against an alien and hostile white society, ruled out tmy serious consider ation o f the underclass as a distinct social group suffering ^ p c a k G e r m a n like a Diplomat! What sort of people need to learn a foreign language as quicKly and effectively as possible? Foreign service personnel, that’s who. Now you can make a start on learning to speak German with the same materials used by the U.S. Department of State— the Foreign Service Institute’s Programmed Introduction to German and Basic Course, Continued. The FSI spent thousands of dollars and many years developing these materials tor use by members of America’s diplomatic corps. Today people in all walks of life who need to learn to speak a foreign language are turning to this outstanding audio cassette program. The Foreign Service Institute’s German Course is by far the most effective way to learn German at your convenience and at your own pace. It consists of a series of tape cassettes and ac companying textbook. You simply follow the spoken and written instructions, listening and learning. By the end of the course you’ll find yourself learning and speaking entirely in German! A native German speaker, clearly recorded on the cassettes, pro vides an excellent model to help you develop your skills. This course turns your cassette player into a "teaching machine." With its unique "programmed” learning method, you set your own pace testing yourself, correcting errors, reinforcing accurate responses. The FBI’s Programmed German Course comes in two volumes; You may order one or both courses: □ Volume I. Programmed Introduction to German, 9 cassettes, 12 hours and 647-page text, $115. □ Volume II. Basic Course, Continued (More Advanced) 8 cas settes, S'/r hours and 333-page text, $ ^ . (New York State residents add appropriate sales tax.) Your cassettes are shipped to you In handsome library binders. TO ORDER, JU S T C U P TH IS AO and mail with your name and ad dress, and a check or m om y order. Or charge to your credit card (American Express, VISA, Master Charge, Diners Club) by enclos ing card number, expiration date, and your signature. The Foreign Service Institute’s German course is uncondition ally guartMlsed. Try It for three weeks. If you’re not convinced it’s the most convenient and most painless way to learti German, return it and we’ll refund every penny you paid! Order today! auDia-raRum ^ Audio-Forum, Dept. 760 ,145 East 49th St., New York, N.Y. 10017 ^ DEHNITELY GLENOIT This little skunk never was a skunk. It was born in Glenoit's mills and brought to life by CENTRAL PARK ZOO (a division of CWC Industries). The ’‘Zoorina" skunk-like blouson parka, - with zippered front, drawstring hood and bottom. Sizes 6 to 18, about $160 at R. H. Macy, N.Y.; J. L. Hudson, Detroit; Marshall Field, Chicago or for the name of a store near you, write Glenoit Mills, Inc., I l l West 40th Street, New York, N.Y. 10018 COMCTO VOURS€NS€S RT HRITi'S 8 HOTCIS OF DISTINC1TON Beou Rivoge CQStelhQitl Ibo Beoch Ibo Lele fTlontono fTlont-Joli Prince Splendid S€€ the most beautiful and contrasting country in the Caribbean. From the bluest sea to 6,500 foot peaks. From the trendy gingerbread architecture of Port-au-Prince to the ancient capitol of Cap-Haitien and the Citadel of Flenri Christophe. TRST€ the spirit of Flaiti in its cuisine, often described as the best in the Caribbean. Choose from French, Flaitian Creole and American special ties. H€Rft the sounds of Flaiti, the never distant voodoo drums, the singing of rare birds, the exotic background music of daily life. SM€LL the perfumed air of Haiti created by thousands of natural tropical gardens laden with the scents of wild flowers, lime and vetiver. TOUCH the native carvings, crafts and paint ings to understand the textures that compose the Haitian, his history and his country. COM€ TO TH€ 8 HRITIRN HOTCLS OF DISTINCTION There you can experience everything Haiti has to offer with graceful, unobtrusive service in an at mosphere of colonial charm and air conditioned comfort. Each member hotel is individually man aged by the proprietor and reflects its own particu lar appeal and charm. For literature and reservations see your travel agent. Via American Airlines A m e ric a n blacks and assume that “ the task is finished.” But it is hard to believe that most Ameri cans are unaware of the exist ence of large black ghettos, such as Liberty City in Miami, which are plagued by high unemployment, crime, drug abuse and other social ills. And if they are unaware of the problem, or not sufficiently concerned about it, one must then ask why the current black leadership cannot arouse the nation’s attention. It has much more access to power than the old civil-rights leadership, which was able to dramatize a problem — legalized segrega tion in the South — that was at least as remote from the con sciousness of most Americans. Why, then, does its voice not resonate in the country with the same force? To understand what has gone wrong, it is necessary to go back a full 15 years to a mo ment when the black move ment faced certain crucial choices regarding its future perspective and program. In early 1965, just as the civil- rights movement was winning its greatest victories in Con gress, several important anal yses appeared that challenged the prevailing optimism with respect to eliminating racial inequality. The basic point of all these analyses — Kenneth B. Clark’s study, “ Dark Ghetto” ; Bayard Rustin’s ar ticle, “ From Protest to Poli tics,” and Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s Labor Depart ment report, “ The Negro Family” — was that in spite of the gains of the civil-rights movement, the life of the black poor in the urban ghettos was getting worse, not better, and that much more than just the removal of legal barriers to equal opportunity was needed to save these people. This point of view had far-reaching implications that were never absorbed by the black leader ship, a critical failure that may well explain its inability to arouse the nation’s attention to the urgent problem of the ghetto poor. All three analyses agreed that the central problem that now had to be addressed was the existence of a growing black underclass in the urban ghetto. As the Moynihan re port pointed out, it was partic ularly important to focus at tention on this group since “ the emergence and increas ing visibility of a Negro middle class may beguile the nation into supposing that the cir cumstances of the remainder of the Negro community are equally prosperous, whereas just the opposite is true at present, and is likely to con tinue so.” To onl«r by MC or ViM caff Ton Fi«« 800.45̂ 777 I Please send I ____ ERA Pendants @S24,96_ I ____ ERA Pins @S19.95„ I AddPoslageandHandlingSi^Seactt— I Total Anwnl— I NY residents add appropriate sales I Please allow 4 weeks for deliver] An Airtight Case for America's flnest wood and coal stoves. Now you can have more fleitibiliiy Oian you ever thought possibie in on;' t-J.j'.c. Burn wood or coal, and enjoy an open fireplace or an airtight heater. Our handcrafted, all cast iron consmiciion. plus advanced thermal engineering and design, combines superior heating effi ciency with maximum ease of operation. The cttmpicte story is in our Energy- Saver Information Kit. Suj^tned by color literature and detailed specifications on the DEFIANT. VIGILANT & RESOLUTE, it covers everything you should know about heating with wood and coal. plus important information on installation and mainte nance. Send for your kit today. Read it carefully. Then make an infewmed decision. VElUiasTCASTTNGS □ Please send me your Energy-Saver Information Kit. Enclosed is $1 to cover f i-x*. first class postage and handling. I heal by: D Oil OGas □ Electricity D Wood O Coal Name_______________________ Vermont Castings, Inc. 7Q}2 Prince Street. Randoli^. Vtrrooat 05060 Telephone: position changed, not that o f tb^e “ former allies of blacks’ ’ <who t>te accused by Dr. C le * ot having replaced Sou tb^ segregationists as the dhief opponents o f racial equality. In practical terms. Dr. Clark’s view is defeatist and politically counterproductive. He speaks of building “ new, more secure alliances.’ ’ But where are allies to be found if he is correct in assuming that even contemporary liberals “are at best ambivalent” in their commitment to racial equality? Dr. Clark com mends Gunnar Myrdal’s analysis o f the “ dynamic con flict” between the American ideal of equal treatment for all and the injustice of racial dis- 1 crimination, but he misses its 1 basic point. For Myrdal, this I conflict was not an immutable I feature of American life, but a I genuine dilemma — one that I the civil-rights movement * used to advantage by identify ing civil rights, in Myrdal’s I words, “ with moral principles 1 held dear by the white Ameri- Icans.” Since Dr. Clark does [not believe these principles I are sincerely held by the white 1 majority, he doesn’t think any thing is to be lost by violating [them. Thus, he doesn’t ac- I knowledge that policies o f ra cial preference have stimu lated a “ white backlash,” which he characterizes as just a continuation o f traditional racism “ camouflaged by a more sophisticated Northern urban guise.” This doesn’t prevent him, however, from using the antagonisms thus en gendered as evidence o f the pervasiveness o f racism. As a strategy for black advance, it leaves something to be de sired. In contrast. Professor Wil son’s position offers hope, though surely without illusion. His thinking is not “ diversion ary,” as Dr. Clark charges, but rivets attention on the cen tral issue, which is the worsen ing condition of the black un derclass. Professor Wilson is “ optimistic” only in the sense that he acknowledges that American society has changed for the better tuid is thus capa ble of further change. Dr. Clark, by taking refuge in the simplistic view that the prob lem of the underclass would be solved if whites only would think and behave differently, and by pressing for policies that are both divisive and ir relevant to the underclass, only helps to perpetuate the problem and to reinforce the hopelessness of blacks and whites alike. ■ % E N T A R A M A the plastic-domed ventilating skylight L E T T H E S UN SHINE IN...Skylights offer a striking and inexpensive way to improve your day time living. Pleasant, efficient overhead day lighting will transform dull rooms into bright, cheerful, much more livable space. Each Ventarama brings definite solar winter heat-gain with natural air-conditioning. Complete package, double domed units fit any roof, any roofing, and any climate. Please write for free literature. ^ 'S M T A R A M A S K Y I . IO H T C O R R O R A T IO N 75 Channel Drive, Port Washington, N.Y. 11050 (516) 883-5000 (S) Co pyright 1978, Vent«ranna Skylight Co rporation The Qit of living. Loews Drake. PorkAve. or56ThSr. New York 10022, (212)421-0900. Coll your rrpvelogenr or Lf\l, Inc. roll-free in your c Baker Furniture Collector’s Edition rosewood veneers with tulip- wood inlay. You are invited to see all the Baker Furniture collections in our showrooms through your4 interior designer, furniture S I k “ jf^ ^ ^ u b b s 979 Third Avenue Distinguished manufacturer and distributor o f fine furniture with showrooms in Atlanta, Chicago. Cleveland, Dallas, Grand Rapids. High Point. Houston. Los Angeles. Miami, New York. Philadelphia. San Francisco. Troy and London. The New York Times Magazine/October 5,1980 9 1 Representative of the Louis X IV period, intricate solid brass castings are mounted on rare GERSHMAN RESPONDS Continued from Page 33 the pervasiveness of racism is demonstrated by opposition to policies of racial preference in employment and education. Nowhere, however, does he es tablish that this opposition is equivalent to racism. His rea soning appears to be that America is so “ contaminated by racism” that blacks cannot receive fair treatment without Government-imposed policies of racial preference. But he of fers nothing to dispute the evi dence — contained, for exam ple, in an important study by the Rand Institute — that young blacks entering the labor force with skills com parable to those of whites re ceive equal earnings. More over, instead of responding to the arguments of Dr. Thomas Sowell, who feels that racial preference actually harms blacks by stigmatizing their achievement and discouraging the acquisition of the skills needed to compete on equal terms with whites, he just dis misses Dr. Sowell as a black who has retreated from the “ struggle for racial integra tion.” Dr. Sowell’s views, however, may explain why a majority of blacks, according to the con sistent finding of opinion polls, favor a meritocratic standard as against preferential treat ment. Evidently it is Dr. Clark’s opinion that these blacks, like the black execu tives who believe they have achieved their position by merit, have succumbed to “ premature and wishful” thinking. It is surely an arguable proposition that remedying past injustices requires racial preference, but it does not fol low that opposition to racial preference is equivalent tc racism. Dr. Clark halls the Brown decision for removing Governmental support for ra cial distinctions. It woulri therefore seem incumbent upon him to acknowledge that the issue now in dispute is whether such distinctions should be reintroduced by law, albeit for a different purpose.' He may now prefer a color conscious policy to one that is colorblind. I f so, then it is his Dr .Kenneth B. Clark’s basic assumption is that, in spite of "the aura of racial progress’ ’ in recent years, all blacks re main the victims of “ systemic and pervasive American rac ism.” But his analysis does not support this sweeping proposi tion, and his approach will only reinforce the very pat terns of racial isolation and in equality that he decries. An essential point of Dr. Clark’s argument is that the condition of the black under class is attributable entirely to racism, by which he means the conscious refusal of whites to accept blacks as equal human beings and their willful, sys tematic effort to deny blacks equal opportunity. But since it is also Dr. Clark’s contention that this same racism is di rected with equal force at all blacks, even those who “ ap pear” to have escaped exclu sion, it is not clear how he ac counts for the special plight of the underclass or how he ex plains the growing class schism among blacks that, in his own words, “ brings with it a new and imminent risk of serious intraracial turbu lence.” By way of explanation, he writes that “ past American racism was democratic in that it tended to reject and exclude all blacks without regard to in telligence, education, talents or personal character.” The obvious implication is that contemporary “ racism” is less “ democratic” in that it tends to exclude — and include — according to these same nonracial criteria. Apparently without realizing it. Dr. Clark here affirms “ the wishful and premature optimism” of Prof. William Julius Wilson, who also maintains that such “ class” factors, as he calls them, explain the deepening black schism. Another essential point of Dr. Clark’s argument is that (Continued on Page 90) F o u ^ e m p l ^ ^ e n lounge on a street com er in Harlem. After 16years of riots, protests and Government programs, life in black ghettos has continued to deteriorate. A MATTER OF cuss By Cari Gershman Black leaders, says the author, are preoccupied with racial bias as the sole cause of ghetto Doverty—an approach :hat ignores growing class divisions witmn the black conununity. f all the grievances voiced by black lead ers in the wake of last May’s racial violence in Miami, the one re peated most fre quently was that the country no longer cares about the prob lems of blacks. That such a view should be expressed by black leaders shows how far we have come since the 1960’s, when issues pertaining to racial equality were at the top of the American politi cal agenda. Today, according to Benja- Carl Gershman is vice chairman o f So cial Democrats, U.S.A., and a resident scholar at Freedom House. He is a for m er research director at the A. Philip Randolph Institute. min Hooks, executive director of the National Association for the Advance ment of Colored People, “ the pendulum is swinging back. Black folks ain’t worth a damn in this country.” As Mayor Richard G. Hatcher, of Gary, Ind., put it, “ The black man has be come invisible again. ” The concern felt by black leaders that the country has grown indifferent to black needs comes after a decade in which blacks made significant political gains. This apparent contradiction was alluded to by Hatcher in his keynote ad dress to a national black-leadership conference that met last February in Richmond, Va. Recalling a previous national black conference in Gary in 1972, he noted that “ in just eight years we have more than tripled the number of blacks serving in the legislatures, the city halls, the courtrooms and on the school boards of America.” Yet, he went on, “ as our voice has grown A Harlem woman sits before the high-school graduation portraits o f her grand sons, one of whom now works in real estate, the other fo r the telephone compan^~ stronger, our nation’s commitment has grown weaker.” Neither Hatcher nor any of the other black leaders who attended the Rich mond conference — including Hooks; the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, executive di rector of Operation PUSH; former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young; Vernon E. Jordan Jr., presi dent of the National Urban League, and Cardiss Collins, chairman of the Con gressional Black Caucus — was able to account for this paradoxical situation. One argument advanced at Richmond attributed the difficulties encountered by black leaders to the growth of anti black sentiment in the country — as seen, for example, in the increased ac tivity of the Ku Klux Klan. But while it is true that the Klan now has about 10,000 members, a gain of 50 percent since 1975, this growth does not reflect the mood in the country in general or even in the South, where the Klan is pri marily based. All the polls, in fact, show that the American people are much more favorably disposed toward racial equality now than they were at the height of the civil-rights movement in the 1960’s. The apparent “ invisibility” of the black poor is aiso attributed to the growing mood of fiscal conservatism, as symbolized by the passage fn 1978 of Proposition 13 in California. But the view that the country is retrenching on its commitment to the black poor is not borne out by the facts. The Federal Government’s antipoverty expend! itures during the 1970’s doubled in real terms and how total $67.5 billion a year] a figure that does not include more than| $20 billion in antipoverty spending by] state and local governments. A third explanation, which was stressed repeatedly by the speakers at the Richmond conference, was that black leaders were not being listened to because of the country’s preoccupation with national defense in the wake of the Soviet invasion o f Afghanistan. But this argument is also unpersuasive, for there is no reason why a commitment by the United States to oppose foreign aggression must necessarily involve a retreat on efforts to eliminate domestic injustices. In fact, the period of the black revolution in America, which begtm with A. Philip Randolph’s March on Washington Movement in 1941 and culminated with the great March o, i Washington in 1963, coincided with America’s entrance onto the world scene as a great power, committed to the defeat of Nazi aggression and then to the containment of Communism. What, then, accounts for the feeling among black leaders that the country is “ abandoning the black cause,” as Pa tricia Roberts Harris, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, said fol lowing the Miami riot? Her own analy sis was that whites see the progress madebysome (Continued on Page 92) TKROUOFRACE By Kennetli B.CIari( White Americans, the author says,̂ are at best ambivdent in their commitment to racial equality. The sufferings of the black ghetto can be laid ectlyatthedoorof aciai oppression. I t no longer is fashionable for white or black public officials to discuss flagrant examples of ra cial inequalities openly. A mora torium has been declared when it comes to confronting concrete symptoms of American racism such as segregated schools and colleges, segregation in housing, pervasive job discrimination, racial bias in the administration of the system of law enforce ment and criminal justice. In stead, these manifestations of racism are masked by such labels as “ reverse discrimination,” “ quotas” or “ benign neglect,” And efforts to combat racism are being diverted by the myth that so- Kenneth B. Clark is Distinguished Pro fessor Emeritus of Psychology at the City University of New York and presi dent of a race-relations consulting firm. cial and economic injustices are a func tion of class, not race. Today, black civil-rights leaders, black public officials and some black academics — the members of the gradually expanding black middle class — are emphasizing broad urban and economic problems such as unem ployment, lack of job training for the unemployed, inflation and the fiscal in stability of our cities, as well as impor tant international issues. And it is true, of course, that economic and urban crises do directly affect the status of blacks. Blacks do suffer earlier, longer and more directly than whites from economic recessions and from the cut back in services that is a consequence of chronic urban crisis. But the major responsibility for these sufferings lies not with economic forces, but with American racism as it manifests itself in those specific racial problems that black and white leaders today refuse to confront. Racism, indeed, is a major barrier to any fundamental solution for whites as well as blacks. The fiscal stability of American cities will remain tenuous as long as deteriorating ghettos inhabited by undereducated, underemployed and unemployed blacks are permitted to proliferate. The national economy is likely to remain unstable as long as a tenth of the nation is held in a condition of economic underdevelopment, ex- ciuded from a productive role in the overall economy. As long as a dispro portionate number of blacks are rele gated to the stigmatized status of tax consumers on the welfare rolls and as long as a subtle exclusionary system limits the number of blacks permitted to compete for token middle-class jobs, the economic status of all Americans is threatened. These key determinants of economic and urban instability provide the fuel of urban ghetto eruptions. Why have realistic and reasonable at tempts to remedy even the most fla grant residues of racism — in education and housing, for example — encoun tered such implacable resistance? Why have the benefits of the civil-rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s been restricted to some few blacks and failed to improve the living conditions of un derclass blacks? Are there ways to build new, more secure civil-rights al liances against the pervasive post- Reconstructionist resistance to further racial advance? These difficult ques tions must be answered — and without wishful thinking or sophisticated forms of racism — if the promise of American democracy is not to become a mockery. Some observers contend that the present stagnation in the struggle for racial equality is not caused by the shift of emphasis among black and white leaders but is the inevitable result of the “ backlash” among whites occa sioned by the speed with which blacks have gained economic inclusion. They contend that “ white backlash” is a counterreaction to “ preferential treat ment” for blacks. They speak of “ re verse discrimination” and “ displace ment” of whites from “ their” jobs, “ their” schools and “ their” neighbor hoods. Such explanations are widely circulated by some former liberals who now proudly identify themselves as “ neo-conservatives” on racial issues as well as on economic and political issues. “ White backlash,” however, is not new. It is traditional American rac ism in a more sophisticated. Northern urban guise. Racism, old and new, is based on the assumption that there are limits on the opportunities and benefits of American democracy that blacks are permitted to share. As the center of the civil-rights move ment has shifted from the Southern states to Northern urban centers such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, this new intellectual leader ship has emerged as a major factor in blocking further racial progress and maintaining the racial status quo. Just as Southern public officials and politi cians stood in front of the schoolhouse door and cried “ never” to desegrega tion, arguing that they were simply being responsive to the racial anxieties of their white constituents, so, today. Northern advocates of the racial status The scene on a street com er in Har lem in front o f an abandoned building. quo, while eschewing the crude and flamboyant racial tactics of the South ern past, extol the virtues of ethnic isolation and the protection of white groups from black “ invasion.” They deny that they are racists; they may even point to their personal friendship and professional association with blacks, and their membership in and support for civil-rights organizations. Some who publish articles against af firmative-action programs in aca demic journals and popular magazines The New York Times Magazine/October 5, 1980 25 were former allies o f blacks on the ra cial battlegrounds of the South. Their credentials give credence to their present arguments against further ra cial progress on the ground that any at tempt to remedy past racism, such as programs to insure black representa tion in college classes, is itself a form of racism because it treats blacks as a special, separate group. Thus, in the name of an attack on racism, they would perpetuate racism. Because o f their own inability to counter this strategy o f Northern neo conservative intellectuals and standpat public officials, black civil-rights lead ers and political officials themselves have contributed, by omission, to re gression in the movement toward ra cial equality. Black middle-class lead ers, in confusion and disarray, have lost the initiative to define the issues and to counter the new semantics of racism. They have yet to present an ef fective rebuttal against such racial code words as “ busing,” “ quotas,” “ reverse discrimination,” “ meritocra cy,” "maintaining standards” — the shorthand terms Implying that reme dies for racial injustice w ill weaken the fiber o f the society as a whole and lead to a new racism. □ In the 1950’s and 60’s black civil- rights leaders were able, by appealing to the Federal courts, to counter the fla grant and crude defiance of Southern racism. In the historic Brown v. Board o f Education decision of 1954, described by the legal scholar Louis H. Poliak as “ the most important governmental act o f any kind since the Emancipation Proclamation,” the Supreme Court of the United States asserted that racial segregation in public schools violated the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment. It established the judicial basis for removing governmental sup port o f arbitrary racial distinctions. A bright beacon o f hope for all American minorities, the Brown decision raised the morale of blacks. It provided the full and sustained motivation for the nonviolent civil-disobedience move ment coordinated with brilliance and imagination by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Within the decade immedi ately following the Brown decision, the American civil-rights leadership sus tained the momentum in behalf of ra cial justice and obtained objectives un matched in American history. During that period, James Farmer, A. Philip Randolph, Dorothy I. Height, Dr. King, John Lewis, Whitney M. Young Jr., Roy Wilkins, Malcolm X and other black and white civil-rights activ ists demonstrated that, in spite of some differences, it was possible to combine resources, approaches and styles and to forge a leadership cadre. Civil-rights victories. Including the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, were the result. The leadership of the Supreme Court was reinforced by Congress and by positive executive ac tions of the Kennedy and Johnson Ad ministrations. American blacks had every reason to believe that, at long last, the promises of American democ racy would no longer be withheld on the basis of race and color. Yet, in spite of these very real gains, the goal of unqualified racial equality r ; The existence of an underclass is not just a black issue. It affects the hiture of America. ~ . VL. Three boys stand in a Brooklyn street severely damaged during the 1977 blackout. has remained tantalizingly elusive. As the more blatant forms of racial segre gation, rejection and cruelty decreased in the Southern states, the predicament of blacks confined to the Northern urban ghettos worsened. As segrega tion was eliminated in Southern and border states, residential segregation remained fixed and the number of seg regated schools increased in Northern cities. Even as more blacks were bene fiting from the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the masses of blacks remained caught in a futile underclass, victims of tragi cally inferior public education, exces sive unemployment and underemploy ment, and the stigma of welfare. To them, the “ benefits” of the 1964 Civil Rights Act seemed a hoax. Ironically, the aura of racial progress and the civil-rights legislative victories con tributed to an increasing sense of des peration and futility among these Northern urban-ghetto blacks. The spotlight on the progress of some blacks made it possible to see more clearly the economic predicament of the majority of blacks, who remained the main victims of ghetto crimes. Their youths were functional illiter ates, school dropouts, unemployed and unprepared to compete for a construc tive role in society. They had to live in deteriorated housing; their sanitation and health services remained inade quate. This festering pattern of human neglect and indifference exploded inevitably in the sporadic ghetto riots of the middle and late 1960’s and early 70’s. As the center of gravity of the civil-rights movement shifted from the Southern states to the Northern cities, hope gave way to battle fatigue among the black leaders. Traditional American optimism for a while sustained the wishful belief that the progress achieved was important and imperative. Just as many of the gains following the Emancipation Proclamation and during the Recon struction period were neutralized by racism, pragmatic politics and the fa tigue of the abolitionists, so the post- Brown civil-rights gains have been re tarded by similar realities of systemic and pervasive American racism. In an early indication that the era of civil- rights innocence was coming to a close, the National Association for the Ad vancement of Colored People was forced to abandon its inspirational slogan “ Free by ’63.” The most poignant symptom of in cipient racial disillusionment was the sudden rise of the black-separatist movement. Almost overnight, the bira- cial approach to the struggle for racial justice and desegregation was reversed by Stokely Carmichael, who, as the head of the Student Nonviolent Coordi nating Committee, insisted that “ black power” required the exclusion of whites. Racial militancy was now equated with racial separatism and a rejection of the goals of racial integra tion. The interracial rationale and strategy that had led to the Brown deci sion and other court victories were now rejected, not only by white suprema cists, but by black separatists as welt. In the wake of this emotional reversal and the rejection of the hard-fought-for goals of racial integration, many black students at interracial colleges de manded and obtained segregated cam pus facilities; black-separatist cults erupted throughout the northern and western regions of the nation, and their nonrational and flamboyant pro nouncements and demands were exten sively publicized by the media. The black-separatist movement, which reached its zenith in the late 1960’s and the early 70’s, was a carbon copy of white supremacy. In asking for a return to the nonthreatening sanctu ary o f racial isolation, it demonstrated not only the frtistration of young black leaders, but also their anguish emd deep-rooted fear that they were not yet prepared for the single-standard competition of a nonsegregat^ society — a fear subtly reinforced by many for mer white allies who joined in those black demands for racial isolation. Understandable as were these often unstated but transparent fears of young blacks, the black-separatist movement could not be sustained. The skeletal structure o f black separation remains on “ integrated” campuses, but the ma jority of the black masses never suc cumbed to this Lorelei o f black racism. They, more shrewdly than their young and more privileged leaders, under stood that racial isolation was the sourceof their anguish. Yet subtler forms of the separatist charade continue to appear. Some of the same blacks who, in 1954, had hailed the Supreme Court’s repeal of the myth of “ separate but equal,” now embraced the separatist doctrine as they sought to justify the continuation of traditionally black colleges — and in sisted that all-black schools were ac ceptable if they were under the control of blacks. Some black academics, such as Dr. Thomas Sowell, the economist, supported the neo-conservative racial position in articles questioning the desirability of the continued struggle for racial integration. These are more sophisticated forms of black retreat than the crude and flamboyant pos tures of the black separatists, but they are just as destructive to the momen tum of the civil-rights movement. The clarity of the objectives and goals of the racial struggle were clouded by other examples of diversion ary thinking among some black aca demics. Probably the best example of this can be found in the recent writings of William Julius Wil son, a highly respected Uni versity of Chicago sociologist. In 1978, Professor Wilson published his provocative and scholarly book, “ The Declin ing Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing Ameri can Institutions,” an example of the wishful and premature optimism of the successful black middle-class academic. I He concluded that class rather than race was the prime deter minant of social and economic inequities in America. Even though recent reports, particu larly the 1979 study released by the National Urban League, demonstrate that racism con tinues to limit the educational, economic and political mobil ity of blacks, many whites and some middle-class blacks have come to believe that dis crimination and segregation are no longer major problems limiting the life chances of blacks. And this theory is now being used by public officials as another justification for a contemporary policy and poli tics of ■ ‘benign neglect. ’ ’ The present inability of black political and civil-rights leaders to cope with the per sistent and deepening prob lems of American racism has many causes. Within the last decades there has been an abrupt loss of most of the major and charismatic black leaders. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated just as he was seeking more effective methods to deal with the bedeviling problems of North ern and urban racism. Whit ney M. Young Jr., of the Na tional Urban League, died sud denly as he was developing plans to make corporate lead ers more sensitive and respon sive to their pragmatic self-in terest in seeking the goals of racial justice. Roy Wilkins re tired after a long and produc tive tenure as leader of the N.A.A.C.P., and his successor, Benjamin Hooks, has not demonstrated a similar ca pacity. With the retirement of James Farmer, the Congress on Racial Equality soon be came a separatist cult virtu ally indistinguishable from the racists whom the organization had fought so courageously. Malcolm X was murdered as he was seeking a way to be come a rational and effective ally of other civil-rights lead ers. The erosion of the civil- rights leadership cannot be ex plained only by the death and retirement of the early black leaders. Ironically, the very success of the civil-rights movement has deprived it of many of its potential leaders. Some of the most effective civil-rights lawyers were ap pointed to the Federal courts. s . thus taking them away from the battlefront. Thurgood Marshall, Robert L. Carter, Spottswood W. Robinson 3d and Constance B. Motley can — and do — contribute to the quest for racial Justice as ex amples of personal achieve ment and as direct guardians of democracy within our judi cial system, but they can no longer do so as activists. More than 5,000 black o ffi cials have been elected within the last 10 years throughout the nation, demonstrating that the almost total racial exclu sion within the American polit ical system has ended. But this gain is finite; black elected of ficials either do not have the power or have not yet found the formula to improve the educational, economic and housing status, and the quality of life, of the black underclass. And they have, at least tempo rarily, been removed from the pool of potential civil-rights leaders. The same conclusion must be reached concerning those blacks who have made it into the middle class by means of jobs in corporate America. Many o f these new black managers and executives are assigned to such race-related, “ created” areas as “ com munity affairs” and “ special markets.” They are rarely found in line positions con cerned with developing or con trolling production, supervis ing the work of large numbers of whites or competing with their white “ peers” for signifi cant promotions. In these created jobs, blacks lack the kind of security that goes with line positions; they are kept on by the sufferance ofwhite gov ernmental and corporate deci sion makers. These black employees jeop ardize what little power they have if they seek to exercise it too aggressively in behalf of other blacks. It is generally understood by blacks in these positions, and by their white “ benefactors,” that the cause of personal racial justice can best be served if blacks demonstrate that they are “ objective,” “ balanced,” “ moderate” and not too pushy on racial issues. As a consult ant to private corporations on affirmative action, I have often observed that, with some noticeable exceptions, black affirmative-action officers of corporate and educational in stitutions are more likely to be cautious in the performance of their roles than many whites in similar positions. Many black directors on cor porate boards seem similarly unable or unwilling to become actively involved in promoting employment and staffing practices beyond racial toke nism. They find it difficult and awkward to jeopardize their personal gains and the affable acceptance of their white col leagues, and they appear to have little power to influence decisions relating to blacks of the white-controlled corpora tions or institutions with which they are identified. Some blacks have even stated pub licly the premature and wish ful belief that their status and positions in these corporations and institutions are uncon nected to the fact that they are black. Even the more insightful of these successful blacks have not yet found the formula for communicating to whites that the presence of experienced and thoughtful blacks in genu ine decision-making positions can bring a dimension and per spective that could improve the quality of the decision making operation itself. Un qualified racial justice within a corporation or an educa tional institution strengthens the structure and function of that institution and gives so lidity to the overall economy. Yet another negative side ef fect of racial progress has been a new and imminent risk of serious intraracial turbu lence that has further eroded the position o f the nation’s traditional black leadership. Underclass blacks who ob serve the apparent success of middle-class blacks can read ily compare it with the chronic failures of their own lives. Traditional resentment and hostility toward whites can ex tend to resentment and hos tility toward successful blacks. Past American racism was democratic in that it tended to reject and exclude all blacks without regard to in telligence, education, talents or personal character. The struggle for racial justice could be conducted with a minimum of intraracial class conflict. With the recent suc cess of the civil-rights move ment, however, some blacks appear not only to have es caped exclusion, but even to have been embraced by white society. A few black males are invited to join private clubs as a sign of institutional maturity — or as a means o f making the white members of these sud denly integrated clubs worthy of consideration for judicial or other public office. Some blacks are able to purchase homes or rent apartments in previously all-white neighor- hoods and suburbs. But the masses of the black under class remain entrapped in de teriorating ghettos. When they vent their frustrations and desperation in spasmodic eruptions, they are told by black middle-class leaders that this will only make mat ters worse. Such advice from the representatives of the black middle class to the ^'^||j^ng-to-lose” black under class can be expected to elicit -and intensify the latent group self-hatred common to op pressed groups. An example of this was the cool — if not hos tile — reaction Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson received when they sought to reason with blacks in Miami after the recent uprising in that city. Unless the racial oppression now perpetrated on the mil lions of members of the black underclass is remedied, the civil-rights gains now enjoyed by the black middle class will prove to be tragically Pyrrhic victories. Without a genuine commitment by American society to implement solid remedies, one must expect an increase in group and individ ual antisocial and self-destruc tive acts. Continued racial re jection and its manifestations could enable a skillful dema gogue to exploit the festering rage of the black masses thereby contributing further to the social and economic in stability of all Americans. The dynamics, threats and challenges of today’s struggle for unqualified racial justice may well require a new kind of black leadership. There are serious questions whether the charismatic individual leaders who played so important a role in recent decades are appro priate for the modem era. There are uncertainties as to whether the structure and function of the traditional civil-rights organizations can cope with the problems spawned by their past suc cesses. The types of strategy and action that the present re quires may demand a new coalition of political, com munity, religious and aca demic leadership among blacks. The danger is tl^at a vehicle to bring about such a coalition is not currently avail able, and it needs to be devel oped and put into use before it is too late. To understand the complex inconsistencies of American race relations today, one must return to Gunnar MyrdaTs classic analysis of the “ Ameri can Dilemma.” Race relations since the 1950’s have verified his thesis of the dynamic con flict between the verbalized ideals and goals of democracy and the powerful pragmatic politics that support the per sistent forms of institutional racism in all aspects of Ameri can life — schools, colleges and universities, professions, churches. Government agen cies, corporations, labor unions and residential com munities. Within this tangled web of ideals contaminated by prejudicial practices, the his tory of the struggle for racial justice, while revealing gen eral even though spasmodic progress, has been consistent in its inconsistency. From the Emancipation Proclamation to the present, there has been a repetitive cycle o f hope, progress, frustration, turbu lence, violence and seeming regression. We now seem to be in the frustration phase. The goals of racial justice, which are consistent with American democratic ideals, must con stantly be sought within politi cal realities contaminated by racism. White Americans, from the early abolitionists to our contemporary liberals, are at best ambivalent about accepting black Americans as human beings entitled to the same respect, rights and op portunities granted to other Americans as a matter of fact. The challenge to the nation’s leadership, white and black, is to restrain a new wave of tur bulence and regression, and to create a new era o f hope and visible progress on the path to equal justice for all Ameri cans. ■ Kenneth B. d a r t Responds jarl Gershman’s analysis of iecontemporary status o f the black civil-rights movement is highiy sophisticated, balanced and constructive — and an il lustration of some of the com plexities of the struggle for ra-' clal justice confronting black and white Americans in the 1980’s. It would be all too easy, for example, for blacks to dis miss his article as another ex ample o f whites exercising their power to define contem porary civil-rights problems primarily in terms o f their own aspirations and interests. But blacks and whites must not retreat into a miasma of self-protective platitudes, su perficial slogans and escapist rationalizations; they must face and seek to resolve even the most disturbing interra cial disagreements. Progress cannot be achieved by denials. Thus, I agree with the em phasis Mr. Gershman places on the predicament o f the growing black underclass in the ghettos of large American cities. Federal, state and local governmental programs, the activities o f traditional civil- rights organizations, com munity projects and even the increase in the number of black elected officials have not made any observable dent on this critical problem. I also agree with his statement, in his analysis of the role of ra cial “ militants,” that “ what appeared to be a form of racial militancy was in reality a policy of racial accommoda tion.” It is now clear that the black power” and “ com munity control” movements, while having some temporary cathartic value, did not im prove by one iota the educa tional and economic status of ghetto-entrapped underclass blacks. Unfortunately, Mr. Gersh- man’s analysis did not discuss the pathos of this acceptance of segregation on the part of some blacks or the irony of this confusion among blacks in the wake o f the promises o f ra cial justice inherent in the his toric Brown decision. In spite of his other insights, he does not seem to understand that this verbal retreat to segrega tion on the part of some blacks is indicative of their frustra tions in the face of “ white backlash” — the euphemism for persistent white racism. He does not seem to under stand that these frustrations are far more significant in that regard them any anxieties on the part of blacks concerning their abilities to compete with whites on a single standard in truiy nonsegregated society. Mr. Gershman’s description of the positive role p la y ^ by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in American race relations when he was part of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations is correct. It was my belief at ( Continued on Page 109) Continued from Page 105 the time, a belief that many o f my respected black and white col leagues in the social sci ences did not share, that Mr. Moynihan was liberal and progressive on racial matters. It is curious, however, that Mr. Gersh- man’s otherwise insight ful analysis left out the equally important fact that, during the period when he was a part of the Nixon Administration, Mr. Moynihan reversed his position on racial mat ters. He became and re mains one of the most ar ticulate leaders o f the “ neo-conservative” posi tion. In contributing his slogan of “ benign neg lect,” he helped to set the stage for the present con fusing racial policy and the civil-rights doldrums. This serious omission raises questions concern ing Mr. Gershman’s ob jectivity. Mr. Gershman de scribes most favorably the thesis presented by Prof. William J. Wilson in “ The Declining Signifi cance of Race.” I find it difficult to understand how it is possible to com prehend the cycle of pa thology that characterizes the ghettos except in terms o f j"acial oppres- sioif. Race, not class, m tlsf be the answer — un less one assumes that the prisoners o f the ghettos are inherently inferior or are somehow responsible for their own predica ment. In this aspect of his interpretation, Mr. Gersh man fails to see that the racial dehumanization Americans permit is a symptom of the deep-seat ed, systemic and most dangerous social disease of racism. This fact, which threatens the eco nomic and moral founda tions of the entire society, cannot be dismissed by quoting Professor Wilson, by tallying the number of black elected officials and other statistics or by the most detailed dissection of the inconsistencies of the blacks who met in Richmond, Va., in their desperate search for some way through the tangle of the present manifesta tions of American racism. As I read Mr. Gersh man’s detailed descrip tion of the events and dis cussions at that meeting, I could not help thinking of another subtle manifesta tion o f American racism — namely, that it is not likely that any black so cial scientist or journalist would have had access to the details of similar dis cussions among a group of spokesmen for white eth nic groups. I also believe that we would have made a major step toward ra cial justice in America when a black social scien tist would be invited by The New York Times to write his analysis of the aspirations, conflicts and inconsistences of one or another group of white Americans. The frustrations, incon sistencies, contradica- tions and aspirations of the present group of black civil-rights leaders, black political and religious spokesmen and black aca demics are matched and, I believe, determined by the fears of racial change, by the well-publicized ex planations and equivoca tions o f white public offi cials and by the rationali zations of some white aca demics, In spite of the most sophisticated analy ses, the most balanced and seemingly objective discussions supported by the latest statistics, the facts of continued racial injustices and cruelties cannot be excused by stat ing the problem in such a way that the victims are blamed for failing to im prove their economic posi tion. It is not clear whether Mr. Gershman accepts the fact that the self-per petuating pathology of the ghetto is determined by the self-perpetuating cruelties of American rac ism. Yet he has made an important contribution to ward honest dialogue which is necessary in order to continue the struggle for unqualified racial justice. In spite of my questions and the areas of disagreement, I am in complete agree ment with his penetrating concluding insight; “ The existence of a permanent underclass in all of the major cities is not, after all, just a black issue. It is an issue that affects the future of America as a v i able civilization.” It would be tragic if America were to permit its past and future contri butions to a democratic civilization to be sacri ficed on the altar of rac ism. ■ Youth Unrest All Over By Sandy Close SAN FRANCISCO — Periiaps the most chilling aspect ofThT ftotifig'ih Mfanii — as m upheavals tEat have i ^ e d Teheran, San Salvador, Mana gua, Capetown, and Kwangju, South Korea, recently — was that the first to kill and be k il l^ weretfie voune. -Was the Miami rioting just a momen- j tary fla^H ~re5eniaOiiDBfe^^ blacks, infji'pated at inaqwitahlp la w enforcement and endemic- unem- I ploymfent? OF was Miami^s-the first UfUted^Sfates episode in a ,je »-era of gr^aK £ Ia Ife ii-«h er-U n ited States citiesaswell? ! With huge populations of youths now confroming limited-OPoortunitiKi that are bSing^even further reduced hv wofldwl^rer^sinn,' widecpreaH ftig- ■cuiitBiRTsryoutK'lh bulging_sities-ef the tPtrd'ytg'ia nas become aconspicuous ers constitute nearly half of the popu lation and not 28 percent, as Census Bureau figures surest. Partly because of Americans’ legiti mate concern with the aging of their population and with the many problems facing the elderly, this expanding popu lation of minority urban youth has been largely ignored. Yet as in the_Uiird world, thew young p i^ le coulif'repre- sentthe moSTtaportant element .shap ing ther quality of life in urban America in this decade. Iran’s revolution began when half its population was under 17 years of age, ac cording to Michael Fisher, a Harvard anthropologist, and when Teheran was bursting with unemployed and dissident Tact of international life I Tn the United States, however, the be lief has taken hold that we will eventu ally eliminate the problem of our discon tented ^uth through the aging of our population and the steady decline in the number of our own young. Fred Crossland, who heads the Ford Foundation’s division of educatiem and public ^ licy, cites Census Bureau data to predict that America’s population of 18-year-olds, about 2 percent of the overall pop^ation in July 1979, will shrink at least 25 percent between now and 1994 to 1.3 percent of the popula- ti<m — a trend that, most experts say, would mean fewer demands on scarce resources, less competition for jobs, and, especially, fewer yxmng criminals on the streets. But a critical factor is missing in such projections; Through out the 1980’s, a recent Wall Street Journal news report estimated, nearly half of the expected population in crease in this country will come from soaring illegal immigration, mainly by young immigrants of child-bearing age. In fact, there is no way to sustain a modest rate of economic growth without substantial migration of labor, mainly from Hispanic and other Carib bean countries with very high birth rates, according to Clark Reynolds, a labor economist at Stanford Universi ty’s Food Research Institute. The re sult could be many more young people in our cities in coming years than we now expect. If, in fact, we are undercounting yoimg and poor blacks as well as under- estimatii^ the flow of immigrants, we are blinding ourselves to the possibility that our cities, rather than coming to resemble European garden cities with their genteel oldsters, will look more and more like third-world cities, whose youth populations are not only growing poorer and less-educated but also larger as a result of higher birth rates and m iction from even poorer countries, cities and villages. As a consequence, a growing propor- j tim of urban residentsin this ^ ntfv I ^ ~ b e foreien-bom. nonwhite and i voune. Already 44 percent of all people , ofSispanic descent in the United States are under 18. Nonwhites account for three out of four children in the public schools of eight major United States cities. New York City among them, and more than half the public-school enroll ment in 13 more cities. David R. Jones, special adviser to Mayor Edward 1. Koch of New York City, believes that an accurate census count for his city would show that minority New York young workers and students. Nicara gua’s revolution was essentially carried out by youth, a fact underscore by re ports that 90 percent of the casualties were under 19 years of age. In South Korea, according to Bruce Cumings, a specialist in Asia at the University of Washington, hundreds of thousands of istudents, shut out of universities by martial law and out of labor markets by global recession, provide ready bodies for an increasingly volatile (^positirai such as the m e that temporarily seized the city of Kwangju. In South Africa, where the majority of the black pc^la- tion, as in the rest of the continent, is under 15, black andmixed-race students have mounted the most widespread protests against the Government since the Soweto uprising in 1976. Nowhere in the United States has the polarization between elderly and young, white and minority members, reached so wide a gulf as in Florida, already the state with the nation’s highest percent age of elderly. By the year 2000, the Cen sus Bureau reported in 1979, Florida will have more pe^le over 65 than under 14; further, one-third of the blacks and resi dents of Hispanic background will be under 14 — a trend that ongoing immi gration from Latin America and the Caribbean will accelerate. This polarizaticm already manifests itself in the heightened hostility toward yotmg people in Florida. As Rasa Gust- aitis r^ r te d earlier this year in The Saturday Review, this hostility is particularly apparent in Florida’s dis proportionately small investment in public education. Although it is one of the country’s wealthiest states, Florida ranks 32d in expenditures on schools. The le^slature has refused to enact any restraints on housing discrimination against children; much of the new urban housing is designed exclusively for retirees. The state educational sys tem has adopted an unusually punitive attitude toward young trouble-makers, with corporal punishment standard practice in almost all public schools. Black youths feel the pressure of this punitive hand most acutely. More than half of Dade County’s black pc^ation of 200,000 is under 19. Although blacks form only 15 percent of the county’s total residmits, black youths account for the largest number of arrests, the highest percent of school eiqiulsions and the highest number of droj^ts. If the cutting edge of jriuths’ discon tent is to be found in third-world urban communities abroad and in the United States, it is by no means limited to them: Eruptions of white youths in Am sterdam and Zurich and London and Hamburg underscore the extent to which the frustrations of the new gener ation in the 1960*s apply to young people of all races and even classes. No white-youth revolts have erupted in the Uidted States as they have in Eu rope. But the rising indicators of the deeply felt sense of having now*’°rp - go — rising suicide f9le&; h l^ school dropouts, illegitimate pregnancies, amoi^ others — are clear. Many young people understand that for the first time, in American history, the new genera tion carmot hope to match the standard of living of its parents, let alone surpass that standard. Like their third-world counterparts, vdiite youths share combative assert tiveness, a refusal to be wished a w a y ^ whether it takes the form expressed bjf fascist National Front youths in Lorn don, street toughs in Hamburg, punk-l rockers in New York City. Increasing-\ ly, they must carve out their own tions — like the 20 million, largelw young, largely ncmwhite global mi grants who now wander across re-1 giMial and national frontiers looking! for new, urban-based ways to survive. Wherever officialdom thinks it can contain and control these new popula tions of urban youth with pre-emptive crackdowns, it will likely be met with protracted and bloody youth-led revolts — with more Teherans, Capetowns, Kwangjus, Managuas, and Miamis. Sandy Close is editor of the Pacific Ncjjp Service. b. Notwithstanding the Court's ruling, the State Attorney elicited testimony from Mrs. Proffitt that she had telephoned the police after her conversation with petitioner. [Tr. 253]. c. This evidence was presented by the State Attorney to establish indirectly the content of petitioner's excluded conversation with his wife — that is, to imply the inculpatory nature of the statements made — and was not relevant for any other reason. d. Petitioner could not properly cross-examine Patricia Proffitt as to her testimony without sacrificing his marital privilege, already acknowledged by the court, and his constitutional and common law right to privacy and personal integrity. Petitioner was forced either to forgo his right to cross-examine and suffer the damaging inferences the jury would draw from the fact of the telephone call, or examine Mrs. Proffitt and relinquish the protection of privacy which the court had afforded him. 28. The trial court's instructions to the jury on flight improperly imposed on petitioner the burden of proof to disprove guilt and commented on petitioner's failure to testify or present evidence in his behalf, in violation of petitioner's rights to Due Process of Law, the presumption of innocence, and the privilege against self incrimination guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. a. The trial court instructed the jury as follows; - 2 3 - THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1980 Tongues And Myths By Frank Anshen STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Ever since the United States Supreme Court, in* 1974, mandated special treatment in ’ public schools for children who do not '' speak English, public interest in, and debate on, national and state policy to ward languages other than English and toward their speakers has been?^' dominated by myths. Nowhere is this more true than in the debates in the New York City area on the role of ' Spanish in the schools. ' Myth No. 1: The United States has always been monolingual. In fact, in tolerance for non-English languages ' as national policy is rather recent. Louisiana entered the Union in 1812 with a French-speaking majority. Until the Civil War, Louisiana’s legis lative debates took place in French and English, laws were published in both with the French version often the official one, legal notices appeared in ■ both, and both were used in legal pro- • ceedings. Public and private educa tion also took place in both. In 1902, a Congressional committee reported on the courts of New Mexico, which became a state in 1912, this way: “ The Justices of the peace practi cally a ll. . . speak Spanish and the pro ceedings of their courts are conducted in Spanish.” As late as 1884, the legis lature enacted a law specifically au thorizing monolingual Spanish public schools, and later it required that Eng lish be a subject in all public schools. In the 19th century, Ohio and Penn sylvania supported with public monies schools in which German was the lan guage of instruction. There are exam- ■ pies from Wisconsin, Colorado, Hawaii : and other states, but the point is clear: Widespread governmental tolerance or support of bilingualism is neither new, nor un-American, nor divisive. In all of the states cited, English is now the overwhelmingly predominant language. This resulted not from gov ernmental fiat but from recognition by individuals that the rewards of speak ing English were greater than the the French language that even today problems of leaping it. ^threatens national unity. - Myth No. 2; Monolingualism is the How about'Canada? Quebec is gov- norm, bilingualism a deviation. With emed by a party dedicated to breakup surprisingly few exceptions, bilingual- ' of the Canadian federation. Surely region. How did this hostility arise? When Belgium became independent in 1830, French became the national lan guage. Parliamentary debate and the affairs of most local governments were conducted in French as was all post-primary education. Strangely, this enforced monolingualism did not strengthen national unity; Instead, among Flemish speakers it bred in creasing nationalism and hostility to ward French. In 1930, when the lan guages were made legally equal, the alternative to the bilingual policy was civil war and destruction of Belgium as a unitary state. It is legal bilingual ism that has saved Belgium, and legal monolingualism that has left a herit age of Flemish suspicion and hatred of forced monolingualism did little to promote feelings of unity In the British Isles, and today Ireland, unlike Que bec, is independent. Myth No. 4: Children need the basics, not bilingual education. In its decision, the Supreme Court : reasoned that children mnnot learn ij reading, writing, and ^arithmetic,. when taught in a language they do not ' understand. It is difficult to argue with this conclusion. Frank Anshen is assistant professor of linguistics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. . . > "'-'•1 'e-'.-' ism is common throughout the world. In the Soviet Union and China the role of minority languages is a constitu tional question The future of Breton in France, Basque and Catalan in Spain, and Welsh in Britain are matters of continued debate. Finland has two of ficial languages, Switzerland four, and India more than 20. Portugal, Iceland, the Korean Peninsula, and Cuba seem uncompromisingly monolingual, but it is not easy to add to that list. Myth No. 3: Belgium and Canada are examples of the disunity fostered by Government-sponsored bilingual ism. There is indeed enormous ho.s- tility in Belgium between French and Flemish speakers, to the extent that the French-language Louvain Univer sity, once situated in the Flemish- speaking area, was forced to- physi cally relocate to the French-speaking here we see the divisive effects of bilingualism supported by the Govern ment. Well, not quite. The rise in French nationalism in the last 20 years did not result from successful Govern ment-sponsored bilingualism but rather from the failures of that policy. French speakers, living in a country dominated economically and politi cally by English speakers, feared for the survival of French. The alternative to bilingualism in Canada would be legally enforced re placement of French by English. We have an example of such imposition. Ireland was part of the United King dom, a state, like Canada, with an English-speaking majority. Succes sive British Governments Imposed the English language on Ireland to the ex- tent that by 1920 less than 5 percent of the population spoke Irish. This en- Excerpts from Final Report o f Humanities Commission NEW YORK The following are excerpts from the the final report o f the Rockefeller Commission on the Humanities re- leased here last week. Nailed to the ship’ s mast in Moby ̂ Dick is a gold doubloon stamped with signs and symbols “ in luxuriant pro fusion.” The coin is Captain Ahab’ s promised reward to the crewman who sights the white whale, but in its em blems each man reads his own mean ing. As Ahab says, “ This round gold is but the image o f the rounder globe, which, like a magician’ s glass, to each and every man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self.” Like the bright doubloon, the hu manities mirror our own image and our image o f the world. Through the humanities we reflect on the funda mental question: what does it mean to be human? The humanities offer clues but never a complete answer. They reveal how people have tried to make moral, spiritual, and intellectual sense o f a world in which irrational ity, despair, loneliness, and death are as conspicuous as birth, friendship, hope, and reason. We learn how in dividuals or societies define the moral life and try to attain it, attempt to rec oncile freedom and the responsibil ities o f citizenship, and express them selves artistically. The humanities do not necessarily mean humaneness, nor do they always inspire the indi vidual with what Cicero called “ in centives to noble action.” But by awakening a sense o f what it might be like to be someone else or to live in another time or culture, they tell us about ourselves, stretch our imagi nation, and enrich our experience. They increase our distinctively hu man potential. The humanities presume particular methods of expression and inquiry— language, dialogue, reflection, imagi nation, and metaphor. In the human ities the aims o f these activities of mind are not geometric proof and quantitative measure, but rather in sight. perspective, critical under standing, discrimination, and creativ ity. These aims are not unique to the humanities, but are found in other fields, in images from the arts, and in new forms o f expression created by film, television, and computers. No matter how large their circle, howev er, the humanities remain dedicated to the disciplined development o f ver bal, perceptual, and imaginative skills needed to understand experience. For centuries the fields o f knowl edge most often viewed as humanistic have been languages and literatures, history, and philosophy. To these the Commission on the Humanities' of 1963-64 added the arts, “ the history and comparison o f religion and law,” and “ those aspects o f the social sci ences which have humanistic content and employ humanisitic methods,” Legislation authorizing the National Endowment for the Humanities now also includes linguistics, archaeology, and ethics. This Commission, too. sees languages and literatures, histo ry, and philosophy as the central hu manistic fields, and we accept these additions. But fields alone do not de fine the humanities: “ At their most vivid, the [human ities] are like the arts as well as the sciences. The humanities are that form o f knowledge in which the knower is revealed. All knowledge becomes humanistic when this effect takes place, when we are asked to contemplate not only a proposition but the proposer, when we hear the human voice behind what is being said.” (Charles Frankel, speech in Austin, Texas, December, 1978.) Whether defined by questions, methods, or fields, the humanities employ a particular medium and turn . o f mind. The medium is language. Discourse sets in motion and supports reflection and judgment. The human- . ities have close ties not only with speech but especially with writing and the thought processes writing makes possible. Study in the humanistic dis ciplines is not limited to texts—oral cultures have reflected deeply on hu man experience and have achieved great wisdom— but it cannot proceed without creating and using texts. In our time the humanities necessarily have to do not only with written word and print, but also with the electron ically processed word. While the me dium in the humanities is language, the turn o f mind is toward history, the record o f what has moved men and women before us to act, believe, and build as they did. Conscious o f our links with the past, we achieve a deeper understanding o f ourselves in the present and discover possibilities and limits that will shape our future. The essence o f the humanities is a spirit or an-attitude toward humanity. They show how the individual is autonomous and at the same time bound, in the ligatures o f language and history, to humankind across time and throughout the world. The humanities are an important measure o f the values and aspirations o f any society. Intensity and breadth in the perception o f life and power and rich ness in works o f the imagination be token a people alive as moral and aes thetic beings, citizens in the fullest sense. They base their education on sustaining principles o f personal en richment and civic responsibility. They are sensitive to beauty and aware o f their cultural heritage. They can approach questions o f value, no matter how complex, with intelli gence and goodwill. They can use their scientific and technical achieve ments responsibly because they see the connections among science, tech nology, and humanity. This report is intended for all who care about the quality o f our common life. Surveying America today, many would argue that the humanities are in crisis and would describe this crisis as symptomatic o f a general weaken ing o f our vision and resolve. Al- 'though this Commission does not take an apocalyptic view, we are deeply concerned about serious social defi ciencies o f perception and morale. Our society has increasingly assumed the infallibility o f specialists, the ne cessity o f regulating human activity, and the virtues o f material consump tion. These attitudes limit our poten tial to grow individually and to decide together what is for the common good. When does specialization suf focate creativity, denigrate the criti cal judgment o f non-specialists, or un dermine the idea o f leadership? When does regulation become regimenta tion? At what point does materialism weaken the will to conduct our lives according to spiritual and moral val ues? How we as a society answer such questions will guide our activi ties at home and abroad. We need the humanities to help answer them intel ligently and hopefully. This Commission believes that the humanities are a social good and that their well-being is in the national in terest. In this report we describe what is now being done to strengthen, the humanities, and we recommend fur ther means for invigorating them—a reconsideration o f their purposes in education and public life and a mo bilization of resources In their behalf. We proceed from the premise that the humanities are widely undervalued and often poorly understood. Much o f our system o f education shows signs o f deterioration, notably in the secondary schools. The reading and writing skills o f high school sen iors have declined since the early 1960’s; the rate o f illiteracy in this age group has been estimated at over 10 per cent and as high as 20 per cent. Public confidence in schooling as an institution has declined seriously since the 1960’s. Tax cuts, spending limitations, and narrow applications o f the “ back to basics” movement re sult in education built on principles o f management and quantitative measurement. This foundation alone cannot support the historic purposes o f elementary and secondary educa tion-discerning citizenship and per sonal growth—for which the human ities are essential. Many students in schools and col leges avoid broad intellectual devel opment in favor of acquiring imme diate job skills. A national survey comparing attitudes o f college fresh men in 1969 and 1979 reveals sharp declines in the importance they give to two educational objectives closely related to citizenship and individual enrichment— keeping up with politi cal affairs and developing a philos ophy o f life (“ The American Fresh man: National Norms for Fall 1979,” published early this year by the American Council on Education and the University o f California at Los Angeles). Teachers o f the humanities see the diminishing numbers o f stu dents in their courses as a mark o f society’ s indifference to their work. Declining enrollments provide admin istrators an excuse for trimming the humanities in schools and cutting de partmental budgets in colleges and universities. The structure o f higher education has cracks. In many institutions the undergraduate curriculum lacks con tinuity and coherence— in the human ities and in their relation to other fields. A majority of students need re medial English. Foreign language re quirements for admission and gradu ation have been reduced or aban doned. Large numbers o f graduate students and young Ph.D.'s in the hu manities cannot find academic jobs; their distressing plight frightens many o f the best undergraduates away from the humanities. The system o f schol arly research—litwaries, institutes, publishing, and sabbatTcals—is jeop ardized by inflation. b\ 'he even more rapid rise in the cost o f materials and maintenance, and by the decline in private funding for fellowships. From the late I950’s to the 1970’ s the ranks o f professional humanists and academic administrators grew at an unprecedented rate. Yet in recent \ , years many humanists and adminis- { trators have abdicated their most ba- sic social responsibility: to help shape Continued on Page 16, Column 3 . ;.v______ Kockefeller Text Continued from Pa^e 14 a philosophy o f education. Some have indiscriminately applied cost-ac counting methods to the curriculum without considering larger questions o f educational purpose or cultural heritage. Others have dodged de mands for accountability without de fending the value and indeed the rel evance o f the humanities. Still others hold to expectations and systems of reward inherited from years o f expan sion, professional mobility, and self- conhdence: graduate faculty, for ex ample, have been slow to advise stu dents about the job crisis and its implications for career and curricu lum. Learned societies have failed to recognize and respond to the needs o f schools, community colleges, and cultural institutions. Some educators dehne education narrowly according to the special needs of their institu tions or the particular interests o f the community. In brief, many humanists and administrators have adopted po sitions from which they cannot con tribute to general discussion o f the re lationship between education, cul ture, and life in the community. Efforts to define America’ s com mon culture have stirred fears among minorities that their contributions to cultural life are to be thrown back into the melting pot. The cultural debate allegedly between “ elitists” and “ populists" oversimplifies issues and weakens everyone's will to preserve our diverse heritage and find common values. Without widespread public commitment to cultural preservation, our museums, libraries, and other cul tural institutions will have to close. Without some agreement on stan dards o f judgment, we cannot sensi tively develop new cultural forms such as television and film in which the medium is often not language and the turn o f mind not historical. Our society has only fieeiing per ceptions o f humanism as a civic ideal. Although the humanist is above all a teacher and scholar, since ancient Athens humanists have been expect ed to contribute to the general sense o f civic responsibility. In the middle 1960’ s many humanists took up the cause o f civil rights, while toward the close o f that decade many joined col leagues from other fields in the move ment for peace in Vietnam. Not sur-' prisingly, humanists were no more able than anyone else to resolve the battles then raging in this country over our national policies at home and abroad. As the Watergate scandal un folded, millions wondered how sup posedly educated men in our govern ment could have such little apprecia tion o f the requirements o f civic virtue. These traumatic episodes In our recent history have done little to clarify how the humanities or indeed education can contribute to civic life through participation in and criticism o f the political process. The need to interrelate the human ities, social sciences, science, and technology has probably never been greater than today. They converge in areas such as biomedical research, the application o f microprocessing and computer technologies, the con duct of government, arms control, and the safe use of natural re sources— subjects requiring interdis ciplinary investigation because of their social and ethical implications. Whether because of frustration, mis understanding, or indifference, how ever, collaboration among humanists, scientists, and technicians is insuffi cient. In universities and in public life the impression persists that the hu manities and sciences form two sep arate cultures, neither intelligible to the other. This impression indicates a fundamental kind o f illiteracy. So long as it prevails, humanists will hesitate to use new technologies, in cluding television, to the advantage of learning. Scientists and technicians will not appreciate the relevance o f the humanities. As the physical and social conditions o f life change, few people will understand the real areas o f interaction or divergence among science, technology, and human val ues. External financial support for the humanities has increased in current dollars over the past fifteen years, thanks especially to the National En dowment for the Humanities ( n .i..»i .). Created by Congress in 1965 along with the National Endowment for the Arts, the n .e.h . has become a bene factor and representative of the hu manities in Washington. But inflation and popular movements to reduce taxes have depreciated public and pri vate support o f teachers, scholars, educational institutions, libraries, and museums. The n .e .h . itself is criti cized for being either too “ elitist" or too "populist” in its allocation of funds, or more generally for extend ing the arm o f the federal bureaucracy into public (and private) life. . . . The prospects for the humanities are better than some might think. Ed ucational opportunity in and beyond school is now available to more Americans o f all origins and ages than ever before. Access to higher educa tion has broadened in the past fifteen years as four-year institutions have expanded and two-year colleges pro liferated. Total undergraduate and graduate enrollments for credit in creased from about 4.8 million in 1963 to about 11.7 million in 1979; within these totals, enrollments in two-year colleges rose from about 900,000 in 1963 to 4.3 million in 1979. Noncredit enrollments in adult education have grown even more dramatically, as has public interest in the performing arts, museums, and cultural activities. The expansion and diversification of learning represent a major commit ment o f American democracy and have opened new possibilities for the humanities. The exploration o f these possibili ties will not progress if people blame the economy for every woe. No law of history proves that minds must close when belts are tightened. We believe the humanities iiecu leathi- mation as much as support. We see our report primarily as a contribution to rethinking the humanities, not as a shopping list. We hope that all who want to improve education and the quality o f life will share this view. . . . Culture and Citizenship The humanities are often placed in the middle o f a cultural debate that carries the shorhand description “ elit ism versus populism.” Indeed, read ers might view some arguments in this report as elitist or populist. We have not let these terms control our debate, however. We reject the elitist-popu list formula as a misleading label for some real, diverse, and often con fused issues in our culture. Some people think it elitist to point out that our culture arose in what is generally described as the Western tradition; populist to affirm that Na tive and Latin American, African, and Asian cultures also form our heri tage. Elitism is associated with high culture, which often refers to a finite list o f works, authors, and standards; populism with popular culture, which has an inexhaustible list. The rich are thought elitist because they can afford educational and cultural activities the poor cannot. Those who emphasize our common culture are sometimes called elitist, whereas those who ac centuate cultural pluralism are called populist. Maintaining traditional forms of cultural expression is often viewed as elitist, whereas admiring novelty and spontaneity is apparently a populist trait. It is allegedly elitist to advocate the preservation of cul tural resources, populist to urge broad public access to them. “ Elitism versus populism" distorts these issues. The Western tradition includes popular culture and non- Western elements. Our common cul ture is not limited to the Western tra dition nor restricted to the wealthy. An interpretive exhibit o f Cezanne’s paintings accessible to people across the country is neither elitist nor pop ulist. “ Elitism versus populism" reduces debate to ideological categories and polarizes opinions. To be sure, the is sues above express tension between cultural views that are sometimes ir reconcilable and often must compete for limited resources, as we discov- Members o f Rockefeller Panel on the H um anities NEW YORK The following are the members o f the Rockefeller Commission on the Humanities: Richard W. Lyman, president. Rockefel ler Foundation, and former president, Stanford University, chairman. William O. Baker, chairman. Bell Lab oratories. A ida Barrera, president. Southwest Cen ter for Educational Television. Robert Coles, professor o f psychiatry and medical humanities. Harvard Uni versity. Jill K. Conway, president. Smith Col lege. Robben W. Fleming, president. Corpo ration for Public Broadcasting. Charles Frankel, former president, Na tional Humanities Center (deceased May 10. 1979). Paul A. Freund, professor emeritus of law. Harvard University. William H. Gass, professor o f philos ophy, Washington University. A. Bartlett Giamatti, president, Yale University. Hanna H. Gray, president, University of Chicago. Warren J. Haas, president. Council on Library Resources. Sheldon Hackney, president, IXilane University; president-elect. University o f Pennsylvania. William R. Hewlett, chairman o f the executive committee, Hewlett-Packard Company. Jeremiah Kaplan, president, Macmillan Publishing Company. Nannerl O. Keohane, associate profes sor o f political science, Stanford Univer sity. Robert Kotlowitz, vice-president and director o f programming, wnet-tv . New York. Richard D. Lamm, governor. Colorado. Sherman E. Lee, director, Cleveland Mu seum of Art. Robert M. Lumiansky, president, American Council o f Learned Societies. Martin E. Marty, professor o f the his tory o f modern Christianity, University o f Chicago. Roch L. Mirabeau, dean of arts and sci ences, Miami-Dade Community College-North Campus. Charles A. Mosher, former Congress man, Ohio. Charles Muscatine, professor o f Eng lish, University o f California at Berke ley. Walter J. Ono, professor o f English, Saint Louis University. Harold Raynolds, Jr., commissioner of education. Maine. Henry Rosovsky. dean o f the faculty o f arts and sciences. Harvard University. John E. Sawyer, president, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. L ewis Thomas, president. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Darwin T. Turner, professor o f English and chairman o f Afro-American studies. University o f Iowa. Helen Vendler, professor of English, Brown University. Harry Woolh, director. Institute for Ad vanced Study. 'aeltberauons as a Com mission. Nevertheless, our discus sions convinced us that we are not dealing with mutually exclusive cul-' tural realm';. Frequently the tensions can, at least in principle, be resolved. More often than not, they can gen erate creative energy i f they are un derstood clearly and approached con structively. The controversy over bilingualism exemplifies such tension. Proponents support bilingual education as the right road to full citizenship, with competence in both English and the language o f origin. The President’ s Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies claims that denigrating the languages o f immi grants and linguistic minorities has partly caused the present ignorance of foreign languages (Strength Through Wisdom, Washington, D.C., 1979). Critics o f bilingual education, on the other hand, fear that it may create permanent foreign language enclaves in the United States, or that some children, caught halfway between two cultures, may miss opportunities or become “ alingual” — not competent in any language. Congress has recently authorized the Office o f Bilingual Ed ucation (Department o f Education) to conduct a national evaluation o f bi lingual education. This study must help end the needless politicization of the issue, which prevents an accept able resolution o f the two points of view. Just last year, such politiciza tion produced a noisy and rancorous struggle in the California State Leg islature that did nothing to shed light on the genuine problems of bilingual education, still less to contribute to their solution. American society, among the '•world’s most diverse in its cultural origins, should cherish that diversity as a source o f constantly renewed strength. But there is danger in diver sity when it is carried to extremes. No society can flourish if its citizens deny the possibility of a common cul ture that unites all despite differences in origin, education, and outlook. This Commission docs not seek’ to preserve a narrow set o f moral, so cial, and aesthetic values; nor do we believe that pluralism should lead to excessive cultural particularism, crude moral relativism, or the suspen sion o f critical judgment. We propose three principles oy which the human ities can help us all find common ground amid the competing interests and values in our national l ife . ' . First, our cultural tradition con tains works generally regarded as classics. This tradition holds a special regard for the past, yet is flexible and alive. Western culture has always been enlarged and enriched by non- Westem cultures, by new works of art and scholarship, by the contribu tions of people never before given their due. and by concerns arising from our historical situation. These help define and redefine the canon of classics by forcing us to look at tra dition in fresh ways. Second, there are standards within standards. Some popular novels are more subtle than others, some Greek or Navajo myths more profound than others, some black autobiographies more enlightening than others, some of Shakespeare's plays more effective dramatically than others. It is in no way undemocratic to recognize these distinctions, and only confusion and bigotry gain by denying them. All people have the capacity to reach for high standards of expression, inter pretation, and discrimination; these are not exclusive privileges o f one class or culture. Hiird, education has a socializing dimension, as individuals share ideas, relate panicular experiences to uni versal concerns, sharpen their moral faculties, and serve the community. The humanities, by emphasizing our common humanity, contribute espe cially to the social purpose o f learn ing—to education for civic participa tion. which has been a strong theme in American society since the days of Thomas Jefferson. iso cuncepuon oi me numaniues is complete if it omits humanism as a civic ideal.. In the European Renaissance many humanists connected learning with civic duty and decried what they took to be the pedantic, unworldly alti tudes o f medieval scholasticism. Since the Renaissance the connec tions between education and public life have multiplied. Democracy rests on the principle o f enlightened self- rule by the entire citizenry. So, in a sense, does our modern system o f cultural patronage. In the Renais sance the humanities depended on a few patrons; today support for and participation in the humanities are public forces and public responsibil ities on a large scale. Finally, though slowly, the meaning o f cosmopolitan ism has broadened, and with it the idea o f citizenship. We cannot afford to look parochially at other cultures as curiosities, “ like us” only insofar as their members have converted to Chnsuanuy or studiea at Oxlord or These important social changes d o ^ not point to a simple or single ideal o f civic virtue. Our republic stands on a belief that educated citizens will participate effectively in decisions concerning the whole community. Humanistic education helps prepare individuals for this civic activity. The humanities lead beyond “ functional” literacy and basic skills to critical judgment and discrimination, en abling citizens to view political issues from an informed perspective. Through familiarity with foreign cul tures—as well as with our own sub cultures— the humanities show that citizenship means belonging to some thing larger than neighborhood or na tion. Complementing the political side o f citizenship is the cultural. A liter ate public does not passively receive cultural works from academic guard ians, but actively engages in the in terpretation, creation, and re-creation ol inose works. t"ariicipauon .i> ̂republic o f letters is participation in community life as weU.- ̂Although the humanities pertain to citizenship, they also have an integ rity o f their own. They are not always relevant to urgent social or political issues. They are not simply a means to advanced literacy or cultivation. ^Nor are they a duty, a requirement, ^or a kind o f finishing-school con- cem—“ froth on the brew, embroidery ̂on the blanket. I f to grow in wis dom— not simply in cleverness, or dexterity, or learning—is practical, then the humanities, properly con ceived and conveyed, are decidedly practical. They help develop capac ities hard to define clearly and with out cliche: a sharpened critical judg ment, a keener appreciation o f expe rience. Study o f the humanities makes distinctive marks on the mind; through history, the ability to disen- Ungle and interpret complex human events; through literature and the aru», me lo ui6uiifcuiai» uic deeply felt, the well wrought, and the continually engrossing from the shal-"? low, the imitative, and the monot<^ nous; through philosophy, the sharp- ening of criteria for moral decision and warrantable belief. These capacities serve much more than the notion that, as a member o f a community or state, the individual has civic duties and virtues. There are other values besides civic ones, and they are often found in privacy, in timacy, and distance from civic life. The humanities sustain this second conception o f individuality, as deeply rooted as the other in our cultural in heritance, in three important ways. First, they emphasize the individuaTs critical vigilance over political activ ity. This is a form o f civic participa tion. but it demands judgment ac quired through detachment and cir cumspection. Second, teaching and scholarship in the humanities fre- Coniinued on Follo*i'ing Page O ' ^ T 'l i Minority Report: True Integration Is Elusive Despite Statistical Gains Continued From First Pm/e least moderately segregated," even though the number was down sharply from 76% in 1968. By another measure, the U.S Department of Education similarly reported that 607» of black children attended schools that were at least half black in 1978, although that was down from 70% of black children 10 years earlier. The department reported that the greatest progress tgward integrated schools in.that period came in the South, where the proportion of black children attending mostly black schools dropped to 597<> from In the Northeast, the figure rose to 7 1%. from 68%. during these years, reflecting "while flight" to the suburbs and the rigid ity of segregated urban housing patterns. In other areas, progress toward integra tion has been far more promising. These in clude higher education and numerous occu- ■ pations and professions. Today about one million blacks arc en rolled as college undergraduates, a fourfold jump from i960. Blacks account for about 117(. of undergraduates at American col leges, up from 7% in 1970 and 67o in 1960; their college-enrollment proportion almost equals their \1% share of the total U.S. pop ulation. Furthermore, only about one-third of black undergraduates attend predomi nantly black colleges, against about half in 1960. At the graduate and professional-school level, blacks constitute about 67o of enroll ments, up from 47o in 1970. As more blacks gain access to higher ed ucation. their representation in the profes sions and better-paying jobs generally has risen, although their proportional represen tation still lags behind that of whites. In the last two decades, nonwhite participation in professional and technical jobs has nearly doubled, to about 97c. and nonwhite repre sentation in the Labor Department's "managers and administrators" category also has doubled, to around 57c. Blacks make up 117c of plumbers and pipefitters, almost twice the proportion of the 1960s, and 87c of machinists and job fitters, four times as many as two decades past. Currently, there are 9,300 black physi cians and surgeons in the U.S., double the number of 1960, The population of black law yers stands at nearly 12,000, almost six times the number of 20 years ago. De Facto Segregation Remains But the reality behind these impressive figures is less heartening to those who de sire a colorblind society; where statistical integration exists, it is often accompanied by de facto segregation. On the nation's college campuses, for In stance, some fraternities and sororities re main as vestiges of the formal segregation of past days. More common is an edgy sort of voluntary racial separation that discour ages contact between black and white stu dents who would like to make friends. "Black students eat at the same tables in the cafeteria" and keep to themselves in other ways, says I^e Hockstader, a senior at Brown University in Providence, R.I., who is white and would like easier associa tion with blacks. Race relations at Brown are "a little bit tense," he says, adding, "There's never much interaction outside the classroom. " Sometimes the separation is a reaction to racism. Scott Barnett, a black 1980 graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, 111., says he sought black roommates after a white he roomed with "thought that because I w,as black. I would clean up the room all the time." A less subtle dormitory incident was a sign reading "death to niggers" that someone hung on a dorm room door, he says. If anything, racial separation is even more prevalent in the professions. In law. medicine and other fields, parallel black and mostly white professional organizations still exist, and partnerships of whites and blacks are rare. ■lohn L. Crump, executive director of the National Bar Association, an 8.000-member lilack lawyers' group whose .activities paral- lei those of the American Bar Association (which also has black members), says pri vate practice holds so little promise lor black lawyers that nearly 757,. of them work for government agencies. A recent National Law .lournal survey showed that just 12 of the ;i,70n partners of the 50 biggest U.S. law firms were black. Frank S. Royal of Richmond. Va„ presi dent-elect of the National Medical Associa tion, a f.OOfl-member black physicians’ group, says he knows of only two private medical practices in which blacks and whiles are partners. And he says that in some cities, access to hospitals and other medical facilities remains a problem for the black practitioner. "The American medical profession is just as segregated as American churches," he notes. (According to the National Council of Churches in New York, some 90'’, of Ameri- ciui blacks belong to black churches. An offi cial of the group says that this isn't surpris ing "when you consider that churches re flect the residential, social and cultural pat terns of the society as a whole. "I Change In Aftlliide showed that 54%, of whites wouldn't be upset if blacks moved into their neighlxrrhoods up from 32%. in 1963. Nearly half of the whites' polled two years ago said they had regular contact with a black co-worker, up from 327„ in 1963, and the proportion of whites who said they had a black friend rose to 407c from 20%.. 4 '̂ - Sizable majorities of both blacks and whites told the Harris pollsters that their re lationships with members of the other race were pleasant and easy, leading the Na tional Conference o) Christians and .lews, which commissioned the polls, to conclude that "familiarity has not bred contempt." And while integration has at least tempo rarily taken a back seat to other issues among the nation's black grorjps, there ex ists no desire to turn back the clock. Says Benjamin Hooks, executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the nation's largest civil- rights organiz.ation: " I ’m from the South, so there's no point of asking me if / want to go back to riding at the back of the bus." Black Executives Sa v Prejudice Still Impedes Their Path to the Top They Say They Are T oo Few And O ften Are Assigned Window-Dressing Posts Corporations:: It Takes Time By J o n a t h a n K a u f m a n ' Staff Reporter o f T hk Wa i.i. Sthkkt J<»uknai, The typical senior'corporate .executive, according to a recent study, is male, 54 years old. married and the father of Ihi' e children. He was bô n In the Midwest. wa.s educated at a public university'and e,iriis just over $100,000 a year. ̂ ' . And he is, almost surely, white. Of Ihe 1,700 senior executives ’.'surveyed by.' Korn/Ferry International, ’ an executive search firm, when it drew up that profile, only three were black. - • : Another study, a survey by the Chicago Urban League of 13,000 managers in the area who were ranked "department head" or higher, found that only 117 were black Fifteen .iiears after the phrase "affirnv ative actlQg," passdd Into the national vocab ulary, blacks remain all but absent from the execufive suite. The country’s 11% bl.u k population is only be^nning fo enter middle management in significant numbers and is represented at-higher levels chiefly by an occasional vice president;. That vice presi dent, moreover, is likely to hold not a finan cial or operating position but the title of pub- ijc-relations or personnel director-a highly visible post, but hardly, the-most promising route to the top. • , - ' " v.iafA.,:/ A Matter of Experience ■-'y" ’’ Corporations say the main reason them aren't more blacks at the top is time, and that the situation will, remedy itself, "lie- velopment of people is a process that takt-s time," says Walter Hoeppner, manager of personnel development for Standard Oil Cn. (Indiana). Most blacks didn't even enter the corporate ranks until the late 1960s, he says, and it takes anyone, black or white, 15 to 25 - years to rise to the top. * ’ The Korn/Ferry study of typical senior executives lends credence to this analysis. 11 found that the subjects interviewed had been with their .companies an.' average of 19 years. ' -. ■■ 'j ' But many blacks who have reached the executive level say there is more to it than that. They suggest that white corporate i v ccutives, comfortable dealing with ctlii'r whites and trusting their abilities, havott’l tried aggressively to bring blacks into their own elite cir.cle.-Says Phillip Davis, a-black vice president with -Norton' Simon Inc.: "Even in 1980, we would be naive to think that discrimination doesn’t exist.” . “ Spook by the Uoor” i-lark, lijMTUs, a black senior vii e ini'sl- d('iit at First National Bank of Clncaf;o, comments that “ back in the old days, people ' used to joke about 'the spook by the door'- : the one black employe that many companies : hired and put in a highly visible ixrsitinn to ' show they weren't prejudiced. If thiiitt.s have changed since then. I sme haven't seen It." Tlie failure of more blacks to reach the o corporate pinnacle faster is hardly the kind of explosive issue to spark riots or protests. Even the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency assigned to: investigate complaints of job discrimination, focuses its greatest efforts elsewheie,' "Entry-level cases are the easiest kinds for . us to prove, and they affect many more peo ple,” says Daniel Leach, vice chairman of the agency. ■ . ; c ■ The director of another agency, 'Weldon Rougeau of the Labor Department's Otlice,''' of Federal Contract Compliance, is con- ; ' vinced that “ discrimination' is'alive and well, albeit very subtle." Mr. Rougeau, who ’ is black, believes that "deep in their hearts, many whites still can’t accept the idea of equal opportunity. They , don't look at a black executive in the same., way . as they look at a white executive.”., . “ He Has to Be W h i t e ' Stuart Taylor, a black industrial psychol- •- ogist with Booz, Allen & Hamilton, suggests • that a white male executive will often feel ■ uncomfOrtUble dealing with a black peer,-, more stffeven than with a white female exec- utive. "A white executive is used to dealing with white women," Mr. Taylor says, "His ' wife is a woman. His mother is a woman.', Bui most white executives have, never dealt i with a black.” /'k ■ For a black to make it in the corporate ' world, Mr. Taylor contends,'-“he has to be ; white: He has to think like a white, have the same concerns as a white, go to the same church as a white." ' ,: ; A closely related matter is'what Bernard Anderson, a black' economist with the Rockefeller Foundation, calls the "corpuralc culture"-that combination' of social con tacts, corporate politicking and technical knowledge that makes for a successful exec-. utive. Many whites have long been exposed':' to this system through friends and parents, ' but blacks entering the corporate world.' from a different background may face a dif- ficult adjustment. Black executives, joined by such federal officials as Mr, Rougeau, argue that compa-* nies could overcome such obstacles if they truly wanted to. These critics point to man agement programs that put talented people on a "fast track" by giving them wide expe-'! rience in a shortened time. They say the same could be done to move promising blacks up in the corporate ranks faster. Far from putting blacks on the fast track, however, companies havg tended to move them into executive posts overseeing personnel or affirmative-action programs. A survey by the executive search firm of Hei- i’ drick & Struggles found that personnel and,. public-relations jobs make up a dispropor-;- Please Turn to Page l i ; Column 2 Rigiiisi^ 1 OH tier: Black Executives Say Bias ■ Jlows Their Rise to the Top <3>- Cimlimicd Fn ■ • First Paiie tionately high 257o of positions held by black executives. “ By and large, nimiiaiiies remain unwill ing to put blacks in sensitive positions where lliey haven't been tested, where they can af fect tne bottom line," says Edward Wil liams, a black vice president of Harris Trust & Savings Bank in Chicago. “ Better to put them in personnel or urban affairs, where the worst they can do is give out too many tickets to the baseball game," (Mr. Wil liams, however, does hold an operating posi tion.) •lames Nixon, for instance, is vice presi dent for affirmative action at International Telephone & Telegraph Corp,, although he has 15 years' experience as a nuclear engi neer. Mr. Nixon believes that "the people who hired me felt more comfortable putting me in a position they were familiar with blacks handling, like affirmative action, than with making me head of, say, nuclear engineering." (ITT's vice president for per sonnel, Ralph Pausig, says the company hired Mr. Nixon for the post because it wanted someone "whose technical back ground would help him do a better job in at- tiacting and promoting the kind of minori ties the company needed.") AiKlrew Brimmer, the bl.'ick economisi w'ho once was a member of the Federal He serve Board, suggi'sts another reason some companies assign blacks as they do. The path to top jobs, Mr. Brimmer says, nor mally leads through a "pyramid of experi ence" that takes about 20 years to climb. He believes that corporations tend to cluster black executives in personnel and PR posts because "those are the easiest positions to bring people in at a senior level. They don't have to pass through the experiejice pyra mid." , Many on Way Up ■ v To gauge black progress in corporations, Mr, Brimmer suggests looking one or two levels low'er in the "pyramid." There he finds the picture heartening. “There are an awful lot of black assistant vice presidents and black assistant treasurers,” he says. The number of blacks holding white-collar jobs of all levels has more than doubled since the 1960s. Mv. Anderson of the Rockefeller Founda tion believes there are enough blacks in middle-rank posts to ensure that several m.'ijor coriwratlons will have black chief ex ecutives or seni^execufives before the dec ade is out. “ Witfi increasing pressures on companies to compete, they won’t be able to afford to discriminate," he says. \ Still, blacks seem sure to remain under represented for years to come. One recent survey asked corporate personnel officers how long they thought it would be until the number of black executives reflected blacks’ 11% prtiportion of the general population; a majority thought it would take more than 20 years, and almost a quarter said it would lake at least 30. Companies wanting to hire black college graduates to “ grow their own" executives also complain of a shortage of black engi neering and M.B.A. graduates. Du Pont Co., which says it is aggressively seeking such graduates, calculates that only 2% of the 71,000 engineering students who graduated last year were black. One Du Pont executive says that during a recent recruiting trip to Howard University, his company was com peting with 500 other concerns for the 70 or 80 graduating black engineers. It might seem that the people in the best po.sition to improve blacks' corporate prog ress would be those black executives who have already reached top positions. Yet some of them concede that they are reluc tant to press the issue too hard. Roger Plummer, an assistant vice president for marketing with Illinois Bell Telephone Co., notes that ■ "if you spend an inordinate amount of time doing that sort of preaching, it can affect your credibility as a manager." Pushing a little Historically, blacks have made their greatest gains by applying external pressure on institutions, as in the civil-rights move ment of the 1960s and the affirmative-action suits of the 1970s. And some blacks believe such pressure is the only way to move'more, of their numbers to the top rank of corpora- ■‘The only way you change the character of :ia iiistitufjon Is by negotiating through strength," says Mr. Burrus, the black offi cial of First Chicago and a former Chicago city comptroller. " If a group of blacks comes down here and meets with the board of directors and says. 'You should have more black e.xecutives because it’s the right thing to do,' everybody will shake hands and nothing will get done. "But,” he goes on, "you better believe that if all our black deiwsitors came down liere and moved all their money to tlie bank across the street, we'd sit up pretty fast and say, ‘What exactly do you want?' " Adds Mr. Davis of Norton Simon: "The 1970s brouglit many blacks in through the doors of major corporations. The challenge of the 1980s is to push them higher.” T H E N E W YO RK T IM E S , FR ID AY, M ARC H 14, 1980 . . f ‘ S W * AT W ' ' V # W 'j?' Eiigoie Mihaesco Black Men Are Last By Robert W . Goldfetrb GREAT NECK, N.Y. — Corporate affirmative-action programs have been far more productive for white women than for black men. Black women — labeled “ twofers” by some personnel managers because they are counted twice on Government compii- ance reports, once as women suid once as minorities — are being employed and advanced less rapidly than white women but faster them black men. The National Urban League re cently reported that the nation’s work force grew by nearly 5.2 million em ployees between 1974 and 1977. Of these, 3.5 million entered private in dustry. Fifty-three percent of all new employees entering private industry were white women, 26 percent were white men, 5 percent were black women, 12 percent were of Hispanic background and 4 percent were Asian. At this same time, as many new black male employees left private industry as entered, so there was no net in crease in their number. Corporations, required by the Gov ernment to set specific goals for hiring •and promoting both minorities and women, appear to be implementing af firmative-action programs as though given a choice of advancing either women or minorities. Irritated at hav ing to attain any Government-imposed hiring goals, many managers are more comfortable advancing white women than black men. Many of these white male managers are contemptu ous of black men, whose advancement in business and the professions they ascribe to “ reverse discrimination.” They characterize black men as arro gant, impatient, unwilling to conform to business standards and lacking basic job skills. They say it is difficult to find black men qualified for mana gerial positions since only 6 percent of the graduates of four-year colleges are black and the proportion of black stu dents in graduate schools has been de clining. Women, on the odier hand, now constitute 43 percent of the worit force and receive nearly half the de grees being awarded by universities and colleges. White women have also been in the corporate world far longer than black men. White male managers devote more attention and effort to recruiting and training women and far less to advanr- mg black men. Wbra reminded that they are required by Federal and state law to hire and promote both minorities and women, many managers reply that Government compliance officials usu ally are satisfied by a modest show of good faith. Recruiting and advancing a modest number of white women, they confide, is ample demonstration of good faith. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the legislation and executive orders that followed required corporations to in crease sharply their hiring of ethnic mi norities. Companies hired growing numbers of black men as urban-affairs ; directors, minority recruiting specitd- ists, community-liaison coordinators and corporate social-responsibility di rectors. For nearly a decade these and similar positions provided employment for black college graduates. The 1974 re cession gave many companies reason to reduce die size of these programs, re garded as costly luxuries. Many black employees were dismissed or assigned to more conventional jobs in which Uieir performance was closely monitored. They rarely were given training, guid ance or the informal support requii^ in the new jobs. Black men often felt viewed as intruders in a white world. The informal alliances and flow of infor mation that prove so valuable to ambi tious white men and increasingly to white women were unavailable to them. In protest, some black managers com mitted career suicide by reacting in ways that hurt or ended their employ ment. They often did so by fulfilling the stereotypes whites ascribe to blacks: They arrived late to important meet ings, moved from assignment to assign ment without developing enduring skills and exploded in a fury of temper at what whites perceived to be minor slights. The few black managers who did succeed found themselves in the lonely position of being the only black at the job level they had attained. Loneli ness, a feeling of being endlessly judged not as a manager but as a black man, and having no confidence that they would be permitted to advance to their fullest potential all combined to damage their spirits and careers. Many white managers, impatient with black subor dinates, withdrew what little support they had been providing. The failure rate of black men accelerated. Searching for ways to attain affirma tive-action goals despite their mounting frustration, some white male execu tives intensified their recruiting and training of white women. The same men who until recently ignored or blunted the advancement of women began to see in them an opportunity to reach hiring goals without having to deal with black men. Burning with ambition, women seized this support. As a result black men feel squeezed out in this competi tion for a diminishing number of t^por- tunities for promotion, training and jobs. Robert W. Goldfarb, president of a consulting firm, works with compa nies to develop affirmative-action pro grams. M m o t u y VAr /̂ Integration Is Elusive'^^ Despite Recent Gains; Social Barriers Remain Progress Is More Statistical Than Real as Blacks Seek . Housing, Education, Jobs New Goal: ‘Here-Now ’ Issues By C h a r l e s W . St e v e n s Staff Reporter o f T i ik Wa u . STRKtrr Jou . When court-ordered desegregation came to Atlanta's public schools two decades ago, it was heralded as a great stride forward for integration: The system was 55% white and 45% black, and a thorough racial mix seemed possible. The years since have shown the foliy of this hope. Atlanta's whites moved to the suburbs or sent their children to private schools. Now the public-school system is 90% black. ■ Such has been the dominant course of ra cial integration in the U.S. Since the civil- rights movement began in eamesf 25 years ago, the legal framework that supported segregation has been removed, and blacks have made notable statistical advances in important fields. But progress toward the free and equal association of blacks and whites envisioned by idealists of the 1950s and '60s has been fitful, and much of what mixing has occurred has Involved a fairly thin layer of well-educated, well-off mem bers of both races. Moreover, prospects are dim that this sit uation will change substantially any time soon. Social bar- | iw riers to integration are proving far 'N / 1 M 1 7 1 1 M " '/ ! harder to crack than the formal le gal obstacles. Also, integration itself has faded as a pri mary goal of many blacks. "The issue isn't integration versus non-integration anymore-it’s here-now things like jobs, says Selwyn R. Cudjoe, professor of Afro American studies at Harvard University. “ There’s a growing realization that integra tion won’t put bacon on the table.” "For blacks, integration has been de layed too long, and it's coming too little, too late," says Ali A. Mazrui, professor of politi cal science and director of the Center for Af ro-American and African Studies at the Uni versity of Michigan. “ It was resisted (by whites! for so long that when whites began saying, 'Let’s have it,’ some blacks replied. ' 'Who says we want it anymore?’ ....... In no area of American life have segre ■ gated patterns hung on so tenaciously as in housing. Here and there one can find neigh borhoods or suburbs that have achieved some measure of stable racial balance, but they are exceptional. This is true not only in the aging central .• sections of the major cities of the East and " the Midwest, where black populations have become predominant, but elsewhere as well - indeed, the maintenance of segregation de spite the considerable population movement of the last 20 years has served to underscore ;its resilience. ^Moving to Black Suburbs > The U.S. Census Bureau reports that .from 1960 to 1979 the number of blacks liv- >ing in big-city suburbs grew by 72% to about ■ five million, compared with a 38% growth in „the white suburban population in that pe riod. But much of that movement was be tween mostly black city neighborhoods and suburbs that were already mostly black or :were rapidly becoming so. For instance, the Cleveland suburb of East Cleveland had nearly no black resi dents in i960. By 1970 it was 60% black, and by 1980 the figure had climbed to 82%. A -study by Pierre de Vise, professor of politi- cal science at the University of Illinois at 'Chicago, showed that all but a handful of the blacks living in the 200 or so suburbs that . .ringed Chicago were clustered jn just 15 of /.those communities. ” ' ' Racial discrimination ' in the ’ sale or rental of housing is banned by law in most of the U.S., but those laws are apparently widely circumvented by both real-estate agents and mortgage lenders. A study of mortgage-lending practices in New 'Vork and California, released in June by Harvard [n^nd Massachusetts Institute..of-T^bnology, '̂ ■found that black applicants were far more likely to be denied a mortgage than whites of similar income and had to pay higher in terest rates for the mortgages they did get. jank Policy? ■ “We don't know whether the discrimina tion is overall bank policy from the top or just done lower down,” says Helen F. Ladd, a co-author of the study. “My own sense is that there is a lot of prejudice at the level of loan officer.” In sum, “What we’ve seen is resegrega tion, or the extension of previous segrega tion,” says Edward L. Holmgren, executive difector of the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing, based in Wash ington. “Any progress that has occurred has been halting and slow.” Because public-school enrollments are closely tied to housing, it isn't surprising that integration hasn't proceeded quickly there either. This is true despite the striking down of separate-school laws in the South and the imposition of busing to achieve greater racial balance in some Northern cities. The extent of integration in the public schools is a matter of debate, much of which centers on the definition of what constitutes an “ integrated” school unit. The U.S. Civil Rights Commission developed a formula based on school enrollments as a percentage of a district’s racial population. It concluded that in 1977 46% of the nation’s black school- children still attended schools that were “ at Please Turn to Page 8J, Column I