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Pace Six
» ■■ ■ —
As We Were,
Bv ROBBRT E. SEGAL
TP* bout M e n iiiai Lm t e
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Friday, |ii|<hb1wi 1, INI
(A Seven Arts Feature)
Out at Brandeis University,
Dr. John P. Spiegel and his as
sociates in the Lemberg Center
for the Study of Violence put an
early release date on a study of
racial attitudes in six northern
cities not long ago.
■' Their motive was excellent:
they saw riots exploding in
many sections bf the United
States; and they reasoned that
even the meager insights gleaned
from Roper interviews with
500 Negroes and 500 white peo
ple might help keep the lid on
additional rumbles.
The Lemberg Center, as we
understand it, was started with
a $1,000,000 grant by Samuel
Lemberg, a New York realtor. It
is indicated further that the sur
vey of attitudes was made pos
sible by a $170,000 Ford Founda
tion grant. That such research is
desperately needed is beyond
debate. Yet if only some of our
generous people would take the
trouble to spend time in the Ne
gro ghettos and talk at length
with frustrated residents, per
haps they would be more in
clined to set aside some money
for putting up job training cen
ters, day care units, decent swim
ming pools, basketball courts,
and snack bars. Negroes are
crying out for such facilities.
Scientific studies may well con
clude that other needs should be
met first. But the point remains
that those most directly con
cerned should some day be given
what they think they need most.
Again, the Lemberg Center
study consisted of interviews
with nobody under 18. But when
the debris of the summer riots is
cleared away, it may well turn
out that many of those pressing
hardest for this violent kind of
communication were very young
people. Who listens to them?
Who can still learn to listen to
them?
The Brandeis study was based
on interviews in three cities
free of riots and three cities
plagued by riots. Shortly before
the data was made public, one of
the non-riot cities—Boston—
shifted to the other side of the
ledger.
But nobody should have been
astonished. Martin Luther King
declared many months ago that
he classified at least 10 Ameri
can cities as “powder keg” com
munities. He asserted that the
nation had done nothing to im
prove conditions in these areas.
This was an overstatement, of
course; but it’s far too late for
understatements. It is all too
obvious that it takes years for
the benefits of civil rights legis
lation to reach the young fellows
who hang out on the decaying
slum corners; and it will take
still-unappropriated billions in
anti-poverty money to make a
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significant difference in the lives
of many now tempted to start or
participate in riots.
Our Congress, furious with the
pyrotechnics of the peripatetic
Stokely Carmichael, is polishing
a law making it a federal crime
to cross state lines to encourage
rioting. The findings of Senators
James O. Eastland and Strom
Thurmond, who have been alter
nating as presiding chairmen of
the Senate Internal Security
Subcommittee holding public
hearings on what they call sub
versive influences behind rioting
in Negro urban areas, fit right
in with the desires of Congress
men who believe that if you
muzzle Carmichael you have the
riots under control.
As the Brandeis study shows
and will continue to show, the
problem is far more complicated
than that. The Brandeis inter
views make it clear that all you
really need for starting a riot is
an event inflammatory enough
to make the tinder of heaped-up
grievances catch fire. “The high
er the grievance level, the slight
er the event required to trigger
the riot.”
The study stresses much that
many concerned people should
know but somehow don’t: Pure
and simple racism does not add
up to the problem at hand;
ignorance among whites regard
ing the actual conditions in Ne
gro ghettos is astounding; lack of
communication is distressing.
And if only our mayors and
other city officials would spend
more time in areas where riots
may break out, the gains would
be noteworthy.
A further finding of the study
is that suburbanites may be
wrong if they think riots will
forever be confined to Negro
ghettos. Riots are bound to be-
c o m e better organized. And
while whites interviewed put
high on the list of factors they
felt were responsible for riots
“outsiders coming into a city and
stirring up trouble,” most of the
Negroes rejected this hunch.
The double purpose of the
Brandeis study was (1) to de
velop a set of predictors to serve
as an “early warning system”:
and (2) to determine what sorts
of community interactions and
processes decrease strain and
avert violence.' V . , /■ ;
Nobody should quarrel with
those objectives. But alas, no
body seems to understand that
the acceleration of the trend to
ward? violence as a means- of
communicating despair is sharp
er than the slide rules of the
social scientists can possibly
record.
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