Dear Editor

...DEAR EDITOR RACE RELATIONS Tn the lead article of the August 14 issue ("What We Failed To Learn') Fred Pow-ledge takes sociologists to task for their failure to get to the roots of our racial problems ' Behavioral scientists who are eager to accept grants from the military, the mental health institutes and private industry, have done terribly little in the way of studying riots or the pathologies that underlie them 1 Anv doubters need only turn the page to sociologist Amitai Etziom's article (''What We Need to Teach") Etzioni has not only failed to learn anything from the summer s riots but he has succeeded in disregarding the little that his colleagues have learned about race relations in a century of so of enthusiastic theorizing and hali-hearted investigation The primary premise on which sociology has been built is that social consciousness preceeds from social fact, from the interrelations of individuals groups, classes and whole societies In a naive, almost Enlightenment view ot human rationality, Etzioni would reverse the precedure, deriving fact from consciousness After scanning the papers making careful observations of their own, and calmly discussing the matter with their wives, white conservatives concluded that black equals bad Then they act on this opinion by exercising their constitutional prerogative to vote in anti-welfare legislators and write nasty letters to pro-welfare ones All that has to be done to change these misguided opinions, according to Etzioni, is to bring ' into the conservatives' homes" correct information "The fact that most welfare recipients are children, mothers and persons unable to work Unfortunately, race relations m this country are not so easily solved Far from forming rational opinions based on partial or even wrong information white conservatives trade in irrational prejudice based on complex economic and sexual fears Thev act on these prejudices not only by voting and letter-writing, but also by bombing Negro churches, stoning Negro children and refusing Negroes jobs Without an examination of these deep-seated causes of prejudice, the best and most \vell-meanmg re-education program (carried out by foundations which are strangely free of the prevailing prejudices) is like applying a band-aid to a gaping wound New Yoik City Melvin Lasswell VIETNAM PROPOSAL There is a great temptation in the Vietnam controversy to urge one-srded complete withdrawal, or total war I would like to suggest an alternative Suppose we offer a weekly "Truce Sabbath " Any day can be selected—Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, Sunday the Christian day of rest, or just an ordinary day of the week On that day of each week we would take the peace initiative and cease all bombing and land fighting in self-defense If the 'Truce Sabbath ' is broken anywhere by the North Vietnamese through aggressive action, massive troop build-ups or movements, the pause for that week stops One week it may last only an houi, the next week 10 hours Propaganda leaflets could then be dropped during the following week indicating that we have once again tried for peace but in a certain village or sector of the front the truce was broken at whatever time and by whatever action During the time of the truce special efforts could be made toward contact and negotiations The North Vietnamese could claim that we stopped first and thereby save face We could stop fighting with less danger of covert or overt enemy action than would be the case in a one-sided cessation Some problems would of course still exist Protection of reconnaissance planes and other details would have to be worked out It is worth working on such details if we can find another opportunity for a peaceful solution of the Vietnamese conflict Columbus, Ohio Stanley R Borenstein LIBERAL CODE The implications of a remark by Isa Kapp in her review of Washington, D C are fascinating What canon in the Liberal Code has determined that Jews must be portrayed in fiction as pleasant by all but writers whose "liberal credentials are clear,,,> Do we then assume that in the Liberal Code there is a general nihil ohstat m portrayals of unpleasant Protestants or Catholics, who after all do abound in our fiction from at least The Scarlet Lettei on, because they are normally unpleasant Point Lookout N Y Joseph T McIntyre...