Liberal Is a Good Word

...Though the formulas of the '30s and '40s are no longer sufficient, their underlying values are still indispensable...

...Radicals, practitioners of the New Politics, and others who enjoy deriding "the old liberals" had a field day in Miami...

...The liberal's job is to bring the discussion back to that focus...

...It means the kind of sustained national commitment that can accommodate disappointments and allow for alternative approaches until the right mix is found (what works in Bedford-Stuyvesant may not be right for Chicago or Cleveland...

...It means persisting until substantial and steadily increasing numbers of people can freely choose where they want to live and work...

...It is true that there has been a revival of ethnic pride, perhaps partly in response to black and brown self-assertion...

...Since many of the people caught in this bind are of Central or East European background and work in factories or at manual trades, their protest is sometimes referred to as the "ethnic" or "blue-collar" problem...

...To this end, the government should offer generous incentives to school boards that experiment with different approaches, emphasizing the needs of those students who have been disadvantaged the longest...

...Then came the urban explosions of the mid-'60s, the bitterest and most powerful demonstration that the liberal formulas were no longer adequate to the times...

...Indeed, there is no reason the grievances of both the poor and blue-collar groups can not be attacked at the same time and with equal vigor, even as we continue to recognize that the most massive, urgent and hurtful social injustice remains the condition of the poor minorities in the inner cities...

...Several research polls have indicated that the majority of Americans continue to believe in the traditional liberal values: equal opportunity, a fair share of the power and influence that decides public policy, individual freedom, and a pluralist country in which each ethnic or racial group enriches the whole society...

...And on occasion middle-class blacks, no less than the people of Forest Hills, have objected to an influx of low-income families into their neighborhood...

...Many of these questions reflect real interests and aspirations that cannot be gainsaid...

...Yet those who had helped to shape these institutions and watched them function effectively for millions of citizens in earlier decades, as well as those who wanted them to continue to work for themselves and their families, were not about to give up their faith in them or their determination to preserve them...

...But the arguments have become so ideological that they have deflected attention away from the quality of education, which should be our major concern...

...By the late '50s, the strains on our urban institutions were Robert B. Goldmann is the Program Officer jor the Division of National Affairs at the Ford Foundation...

...Of neither group can it glibly be said that they are racist, and the majority of both still favor policies designed to achieve social justice...

...This means mounting a broad array of programs in the ghettos-education, job training, economic development, etc.-on a scale that will reach everyone who wants to participate...

...When public transportation breaks down, they do not have the alternative of driving or taking a taxi to work...

...If we scratch deep enough, we find that many citizens who oppose busing youngsters to a neighborhood on the other side of town support having an integrated school in their own community...

...After all, the priority issue is not whether our schools are controlled by one or 10 or 30 boards, or whether kids are bused or walk to them, but whether or not they teach youngsters to read and write, stimulate their intellectual curiosity, and help them to work effectively with other people...

...as we moved into the '60s, they resulted in breakdowns...

...The present discord among people who "ought to be on the same side" has its source in the fundamental maldistribution of the cost of social change...

...liberal leaders of the '40s, '50s and even '60s are arguing with black militants, white radicals, and segments of the Establishment...

...Since there is some evidence that culturally deprived children profit from going to school with those from higher income families having a broader background, for example, this avenue toward improving the quality of education needs to be more thoroughly explored...

...It does not mean weakening the public commitment to liberalize the development of moderate and low-income housing outside the central cities...

...There is no reason to expect blacks to opt uniformly for either fully integrated neighborhoods or all-black communities, just as many Jewish, Italian and Irish migrants to the suburbs frequently chose to come together again, while others made it a point to deem-phasize ethnic or religious background and develop a more heterogeneous group of friends and associations...

...apparent...

...And when their neighborhood becomes overcrowded or crime begins to rise, they find it harder to move elsewhere than do more affluent citizens...

...Of course, busing is frequently necessary to gain the benefits of such heterogeneous grouping...

...Education and equal opportunity promise to be major issues in this fall's Presidential campaigns...

...The public schools, the health services, the welfare system, and soon the colleges-traditionally the key to a better future for the children of immigrants in the cities-began to buckle under the load of unforeseen and unprecedented demands upon their resources...

...The task for liberals in the immediate future is to draw on these shared values in renovating the institutions and instruments, reshaping the policies and processes, and readying the resources that can help us confront our social and economic problems...

...From a black point of view, the real issues are self-determination and political power...

...Frustrated by society's inadequate response to their needs, a more militant generation of minority leaders began speaking a new language: black power, community control, and, needless to say, control of their own organizations...

...If liberals are to overcome the disarray in their ranks, they must come to grips with the real problems of the people, uniting around those common values that have been their source of strength since the New Deal...

...those who had carried the liberal banner since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal tended to react with bitterness, often taking a more conservative stance than the occasion demanded...

...These demands meant that many liberal leaders and social service professionals who had held key positions in organizations dedicated to Negro progress found themselves either out of a job or relegated to a supportive role...

...Once black and other minority families account for a substantial share of the demand for middle-priced homes and apartments, the real estate market will have to adjust to the new reality...

...Yet these basic values need and deserve the kind of analysis that can lead to rebirth, for liberal-reformist thought remains the most promising source of solutions to the issues that tear at the country today...

...Two areas serve to illustrate the nature of the challenge: 1. Equal Opportunity: In metropolitan areas with large disadvantaged populations much of the discussion has polarized into ghetto enrichment versus dispersal or, as some have phrased it, community control versus open housing in the suburbs...

...When city schools deteriorate, these people do not have the option of sending their children to private schools...

...In some cases this will lead to residential integration, and in others to new black or Puerto Rican neighborhoods...

...But the real problem is a social and economic inequity that calls for corrective action in its own right -and not merely, as some have argued, to win support for policies aimed at helping blacks and other disadvantaged minorities...

...Simultaneously, the great migration from the South and Puerto Rico gathered momentum, radically altering the make-up of our metropolitan centers...

...but too often the argument becomes hung up on the question of residential segregation versus integration...

...As blacks and other minorities move ahead, the bill-In the form of rising taxes, declining services and shrinking opportunities_is being paid primarily by the lower-middle and middle income groups...

...Thinking Aloud LIBERAL IS A GOOD WORD BY ROBERT B. GOLDMANN The 1972 Democratic National Convention, like the credentials and platform battles preceding it, mirrored the current disarray of American liberals-and of the political philosophy that governed this nation's approach to its domestic problems for nearly three decades...

...To liberals, the basic value involved here should be freedom of opportunity-In terms of income, education, health, and all the other factors that equip people to lead satisfying lives in a free society...

...2. Education: Here, too, much of the debate has focused on such issues as decentralization versus centrally run systems, busing versus the neighborhood school, the rights of tenured personnel versus the need for change, etc...

...When tuition-free colleges become overcrowded and the quality of teaching suffers, or when scholarships are scarce, they fear a lifetime of work and aspiration for their children may go unfulfilled...

...What is more, the prevailing tax structure puts an inordinately heavy burden on this large sector of the population...

...There was indeed truth to the charge that many of our urban institutions had become irrelevant to a large number of the people they were supposed to serve...

...It was a liberal-reformist alliance that wrought the New Deal, and that after World War II was in the forefront of the civil rights movement...

...Designed for one population, they were ill-adapted for the much different group now clamoring at their doors...

...Others, less sure of the right prescription for every ill and less given to shrillness, are agonizing with themselves-trying to reconcile their deep commitment to certain goals, institutions and processes with problems that somehow won't yield to the proven methods of the past...

...Now, in the early '70s, we find black community leaders at odds with labor unions...

...Predictably, the real values at stake were lost amid the parliamentary infighting and emotional debate...

...So long as the laws against blockbusting are strictly enforced, the society should abide by the results...

...It does place the emphasis, however, on increasing the power of people to change their lives themselves...

...This conflict strained and in some cases broke up the old liberal-labor-civil rights alliance...

...Those postwar years of liberal-labor-black solidarity spawned major progress for America's Negroes, first in legislation and judicial decisions, and then in social and economic improvements...

...Inevitably, there were resentments...

...A new minority leadership, joined by some of our own sons and daughters, challenged the very institutional structure that was the proudest manifestation of the liberal approach to building a progressive society...

...Innovations like Head Start, the Community Action Program, remedial projects in the schools, etc., had not met the need, even though they bred new leadership and broke fresh ground that may yet prove fruitful...

...As in the party conventions, the danger is that the fundamental principles at stake will be obscured by the ideological jousting that already characterizes so much of our public debate...