Races: The Other 97%

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is by political and psychological means. Indeed, despite the Supreme Court's reapportionment rulings, the U.S. Congress is still a predominantly rural body, unlikely to be too sympathetic to the needs of the central cities. In the House, 225 of the 435 members hail from towns of 50,000 or less; in the Senate, the ratio is 56 to 44.

"I Believe." As Young sees it, the process of rooting out discrimination will take both political action and an intensive educational effort, directed as much at whites as at Negroes. "The lower middle class in America thinks that status means exclusiveness," he says, "that those white, antiseptic, bland ghettos called suburbs are the place to go. We need a generation of people who have the commitment and creativity to try integration—to explore the creative possibilities of diversity." Young professes optimism. "But I don't think it rests in the hands of the Negro," he argues. "He has already said in a thousand ways that he believes in America. Now the time has come for America to say, 'I believe in you.' "

Pounds & Pages. There were signs that the larger white society was groping for the words. In Los Angeles, Democratic Mayor Sam Yorty, who has never been a conspicuous champion of the Negro cause, declared: "We must find ways of guaranteeing any man who wants to work a job—whatever it costs." In Detroit, Vice President Humphrey reasoned: "Whatever it will take to get the job done, we must be willing to pay the price." In a Senate hearing room, North Carolina's Senator Sam Ervin held up a stack of civil rights bills that ran to 1,212 pages and weighed 15 Ibs. 6 oz., and testily asked the Attorney General: "I'd just like to know how many more pages we're going to have." Replied Ramsey Clark: "As many pounds and pages as we need to ensure the rights of all Americans."

Despite the sudden flurry of interest in the Negro's plight, the spate of committees ordered to probe the ghettos' blight, and the rash of ratiocination in the press, Young warns that "time is running out." Not only for the Negro moderates, who are having more and more trouble persuading the slum dwellers not to turn to violence, but for the rest of society.

"There is a credibility gap beginning to emerge," says Young, "and there are forces saying that the cause is hopeless, that American white people are so selfish that they will remain silent in this crisis, or that the American white people are congenitally immoral and so bankrupt that it is futile even to try to bring about change. I don't believe this, but not because I think that a large number of Americans are going to get more moral. They are simply going to get more intelligent."

The tragedy today is that it should take warfare in the cities to awaken white Americans to the Negro's dire and manifold needs. It will, of course, be an infinitely greater tragedy for the future if they fail to do so.