NIXON, THE NEGRO AND THE BUDGET

DURING the campaign it was obvious enough, and the standard joke of reporters covering Nixon crowds was: "Five dollars for the first Negro." In November it was even clearer; fewer than 15% of the nation's black voters cast their ballots for the Republican ticket. It is doubtful that the figure would be much higher today.

After three months in office, the Nixon Administration cannot claim much success in gaining the confidence of the nation's 23 million Negroes or that of other minorities with similar problems. "I really don't think Mr. Nixon is sensitive to the problems of black people and poor people," says Ralph Abernathy,Martin Luther King's successor as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. "Blacks regard him as a President who is concerned only with the welfare of the rich and" the affluent."Liberals in Congress, who generally have been chary in their criticism of Nixon so far, are now finding the Administration's inaction--and some of its action--on race and poverty an increasingly inviting target.

Lack of Coordination. In some respects the Government has been trying hard, and it is ironic that in an Administration that prides itself on efficiency and coordination one of the main roadblocks to better understanding with blacks is inefficiency and lack of coordination. No one has yet decided how the Administration should treat comprehensively the problem of the Negro. Sometimes, in fact, the Administration seems to be suffering from a mild case of schizophrenia.

The good side is clearly visible. Last week the Administration scraped together $200 million in special aid to help rebuild areas damaged by riots. Despite fears that John Mitchell, the seemingly conservative Attorney General, would go slow on civil rights, he has moved the Justice Department vigorously into new areas. Last February the department went to court to force Houston to push integration more effectively in the South's biggest school district; last month it filed suit in Chicago to stop real estate operators from selling property at higher rates to Negroes than to whites.

Last week it brought an action against Cannon Mills, a giant textile maker, that, if successful, will provide two important precedents against discrimination. The first would ensure that blacks have equal access to company-owned housing; the second would do away with separate seniority lists for whites and blacks, a basic factor in employment discrimination in the South.

The other side, unfortunately, is often more obvious and disheartening. John Volpe, the Secretary of Transportation, has told highway builders that they no longer have to meet federal antidiscrimination standards when bidding on contracts. There would be time to comply, he said, when hiring for new construction actually started. Further, he added gratuitously, the anti-discrimination requirements were not "carved in granite." The N.A.A.C.P. charged that Volpe had made "a spineless capitulation" to the road builders.

Learning by Experience. About the same time, Deputy Defense Secretary David Packard met with representatives of three major textile producers, all of which had failed to meet fair-employment requirements expected of Government contractors. After his talk, Packard announced that the companies had agreed not to discriminate. But the agreement had not been spelled out in writing--violating the normal custom--and neither the Department of Labor nor the Justice Department had been consulted as they should have been. Packard, a former businessman himself, was probably only trying to cut through red tape, but the suspicion again was that the Republican Administration was currying favor with its rich friends.

The N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund is now charging in federal court that the Government violated its own law, and Packard--a far more experienced bureaucrat after 90 days--is requiring written anti-bias agreements from companies holding defense contracts. Actually, the issue goes far beyond technicalities. Millions of workers are employed by companies doing some business with the Government. If Washington can outlaw discriminatory labor practices among its own suppliers, it will have gone a long way toward eliminating the problem nationwide.

Litany of Error. The forced resignation of Clifford Alexander Jr. as head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission continued the litany of error. Testifying before a Senate subcommittee last month, Alexander, a Negro, was brutally chivied by Everett Dirksen, the G.O.P. Senate leader, who charged that businessmen were being harassed by Alexander's agency. "Either this punitive harassment is going to stop or somebody is going to lose his job," thundered Dirksen. The very next day the White House announced that Alexander would be replaced as chairman (although he will serve out his fixed term as a commission member).

The timing may have been only coincidental--as a Democrat, Alexander would probably have gone anyway--but it could scarcely have looked worse. No one was much surprised when Alexander last week stepped down before he was officially fired. "The public conclusion," he said, "is inescapable. Vigorous efforts to enforce the laws on employment discrimination are not among the goals of this Administration.'" The treatment of Alexander, complained Roy Wilkins, executive director of the N.A.A.C.P., was evidence of "anti-Negro racial policy with a minimum amount of fuzziness."

There was, however, considerable fuzziness surrounding Nixon's poverty program, another matter of no small concern to the nation's blacks. Keenly concerned about inflation, the Administration has been striving for an even bigger budget surplus--and greater cuts in spending--than its predecessor had proposed. It appears to have made good its aim, and President Nixon last week announced that $4 billion more will be cut from the budget taking effect July 1 --about $1 billion from defense and about $3 billion from non-defense programs. The projected surplus will be $5.8 billion, compared with Lyndon Johnson's $3.4 billion. What areas will feel the cuts most will not be known until this week, but some social programs are bound to be hurt.

Funds for the Job Corps, a prime Nixon target in the 1968 campaign, have already been drastically cut. By July 1, said Secretary of Labor George Shultz last week, the number of openings in the corps will shrink by more than a third, from 35,000 to 22,000, and the number of centers will be reduced from 113 to 84. Claimed savings: $100 million. The Job Corps has had a mixed record of success and failure, but it seems recently to have learned from its early mistakes. The Administration maintains that equally good training can be provided for less money in other programs. It will now be on its mettle to make good the claim.

Federal Lever. Many of Nixon's 1968 supporters, particularly in the South, are more than happy with inaction on civil rights. The pressure, in fact, one top Cabinet aide notes, "is very stiff and real" not only to stay put but to move backward. "The Southern state chairmen," he says, "tell you very directly that their people supported Nixon because they'd been promised that we'd let up on things like the school desegregation guidelines. And now they expect us to do it." They are hardly happy with Mitchell's court suits or with the decision of Robert Finch, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, to continue using the withholding of federal funds as a lever to force integration in Southern schools. At the same time, they can only be gratified by the Administration's other face.

The larger question for Nixon is more than lawsuits or guidelines, important as they may be. It is, as it was for his Democratic predecessors, the issue of basic priorities, the lines upon which his Administration will be drawn. So far, the problem of the Negro appears at least third down his list, after Viet Nam and inflation. It may not stay there, however, and Nixon might heed some words in his own Inaugural. "To go forward at all," he said on Jan. 20, "is to go forward together. This means black, and white together, as one nation, not two." Nixon proved in November that a candidate could be elected without Negro votes. But it is doubtful that he can prove that a President can govern effectively without Negro confidence.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.