A RACIAL TALK-IN:

...Presumably this was because it was felt the problems of the two communities were often different, and because language and other difficulties might hinder genuine participation...

...For example: it had been part of the plan to hold small group discussions on the main themes-employment, housing and educa-tion-with separate groups for the West Indians and Afro members on the one hand, and for the Asians on the other...

...But it would be a mistake to interpret the new mood as one of concerted anti-white "black nationalism...

...The very occasion for this talk-in was significant of the change in attitudes...

...What would they want such a forum to discuss...

...For since it had been or-ganized for black people by people identified with the official race-relations industry, the first thing to be done was to purge the meeting of this paradox...

...What good if any did they think it would do...

...But underneath all this, what could be seen as emerg-ing into the daylight was a new feeling among black people themselves of the need to band together, at the local, neighborhood level, to help themselves...

...On the second issue, the need to do something to prevent young blacks from turning to violent crime out of desperation, homelessness and a sense of rejection by white society was constantly re-iterated...

...Rather the opposite...

...Hence the Guardian headline...

...sponsored Community Relations Commission in London, on race in the U.K...

...So not surprisingly the people who had the roughest ride at the talk-in were the figures from the political establishment in the race-relations industry, like the chairman, Lord Pitt, a promi-nent and much respected West Indian doctor with a long and honorable record in the field, whose speech at the outset put some members' teeth on edge precisely because its rhetoric was that of the public platform, not of the street or the workshop where the real action is...

...But the Community Relations Officers up and down the country-that is, the local of-ficials who work in our towns and cities on commmunity issues, and who are in touch with the grass-roots feel-ings of black people themselves (but are themselves sponsored and paid for by public money)-immediately saw the danger of such a forum...

...Commonweal readers may then be able to consider how far the British ex-perience mirrors, at a few years' remove, the U.S...

...Local black legal advice centers, black youth centers, black hostels for homeless youths, black clubs, churches, shops are emerging...

...The Community Relations Officers therefore asked for (he forum itself to be put into cold storage, while a talk-in among the black people themselves was organ-ized to raise just those very questions...

...This talk-in was to be an occasion for black people to discuss among themselves what they wanted, with the minimum of "white" or official "race-relations industry" there to in-hibit or distract them from their task...

...They are in a sense bypassing the official race-relations industry and its "good offices," and seeking their own solutions through their own efforts...

...BRIAN WICKER (Brian Wicker is Commonweal's regular correspondent in Great Britain...

...As it stood, the head-line was seriously misleading...

...The change was perhaps marked by a headline that recently appeared in the Guardian newspaper: "Blacks reject the way of integration...

...Before even the chronic problems of dis-crimination in housing and employment, for example, there emerged a profound sense of wrong and injustice over two current issues: (a) the present anti-discrimia-tion laws and their working, and (b) the plight of un-employed black youngsters in the big cities...

...And what did they think should be done about them...

...They had been brought together to have their say about the agenda for the forums: but what they said in effect, was, that you can have your forum if you like, but we probably won't be there-we'll be getting on with the real work, here in our own locality where all the problems begin and end...

...But the results of this talk-in were not quite what the organizers had bargained for...

...Indeed, perhaps for the first time, the Asians began to call themselves "black" and the West Indians stopped calling the Asians "curry men...

...Members of these groups there-fore, began to speak, to and with and for each other, across the color and culture barriers that the organizers had taken for granted...

...Yet it was also, in a sense, true...

...What did they think were the really crucial issues...

...For what is happen-ing is that black people are coming together, in small pragmatic ways, to sort out their own problems in their own fashion without taking too much notice of what anybody else says...

...Namely that it might easily take place without the people most concerned- the black men and women and children "in the street" -ever being truly consulted about it...

...It results not from ignorance of what the official political machinery can do, and is doing, but from an intelligent and canny understanding of what it can't and probably never will do...

...But one of the first things the meeting decided to do was to hold all such group dis-cussions on an integrated basis, with Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and others working in the same groups with the West Indians...

...A high-level forum had been planned, by the UN Social Affairs Division in Geneva, with the cooperation of the government...

...On the first of these issues, it was felt that not only was the 1971 Immigration Act a legal monstrosity, but much suspicion was justified even about the present government's in-tentions in amending it...

...Such questions were in danger of not being raised...

...But this time I want to devote my space to what seems to be a new, or at any rate, a hitherto little-noticed change in the quality of those relations...

...today...

...The article beneath this headline concerned a "talk-in" for the black communities which had just taken place in London...

...Many of the assumptions on which the talk-in had been planned were therefore systematically overturned...

...Secondly, certain issues which had not been regarded as paramount by the organizers (though, of course, pro-vision had been made for their discussion) began to come into the foreground of the talk-in as the weekend proceeded...

...The forum was to be funded by the Gulbenkian Foundation, and would ob-viously have had all the marks of a top-level conference attended by all the VIPs in Britain connected with the race-relations problem...

...But perhaps the most obvious signs of political sophistication in the meeting was the refusal of those attending to say anything definite, one way or the other, about the very forum for which the talk-in was supposed to be a preparatory consultative stage...

...But this pragmatism, this recourse to the idea of self-help, is not as politically naive as it might seem...

...On the contrary it is politically rather so-phisticated...