A Lawyer's Brief

The Nixon Administration confronts no more nettlesome domestic issue than that of opening the suburbs to minority groups and the poor. Caught between demands from civil rights groups for a strong antidiscrimination policy and sometimes violent resistance from suburbanites, top Administration advisers debated the legal, political and social points at stake for more than eight months. The result last week was an 8,000-word policy statement that spelled out once again the President's conservative philosophy: the Executive Branch should move no further nor faster in the area of civil rights than the courts compel. Thus while Nixon vowed to enforce vigorously legislation and Supreme Court rulings already on the books, he chose to interpret those laws narrowly. He carved out careful distinctions between racial and economic discrimination and shifted the initiative for fair-housing regulation from the Federal Government to local communities.

In many respects, the housing statement was much like a position paper issued last year on the schools: a lawyer's brief that emphasized what the Executive Branch would not do rather than what it would do to break down segregated housing patterns. On the one hand, Nixon asserted that "we will not seek to impose economic integration upon an existing local jurisdiction. This Administration will not attempt to impose federally assisted housing upon any community." On the other hand, his statement also promised: "Racial discrimination in housing is illegal and will not be tolerated. We will not countenance any use of economic measures as a subterfuge for racial discrimination." But the reality of housing patterns is not as clear cut as Nixon's fine distinctions would indicate; separating economic from racial considerations is often impossible, and the dual policy announced last week is likely to encourage white resistance to open housing.

Synthesis. The two separate aims paper over a protracted debate between Attorney General John Mitchell and Housing and Urban Development Secretary George Romney. Romney urged an activist Administration role, calling for the development of uniform procedures to assure the construction of low-income housing in the suburbs and urging federal intervention in a zoning suit against Black Jack, Mo. (TIME, April 26). Mitchell, on the other hand, argued that the courts did not require such vigorous programs from federal agencies. His summation of HUD's responsibilities: "All HUD is is a lending agency."

The two viewpoints were finally reconciled by offering, in effect, separate definitions for economic and racial discrimination. Economic considerations are not necessarily racially motivated, Nixon and Mitchell insisted, and the Federal Government should not coerce communities into building low-cost housing: "We will encourage communities to seek and accept well-conceived, well-designed, well-managed housing developments--always within the community's capacity to assimilate the families who will live in them." In Black Jack and other communities, however, suburbanites have used much the same language to keep low-income--and mainly black--families out, insisting that existing public service systems could not absorb the new demands for schools and for police and fire protection.

Whatever the suburbs' rationale for exclusiveness, it seems to be working: the percentage of blacks in suburban areas rose only three-tenths of 1% during the last decade, at a time when more than half of the new jobs created were beyond the central-city cores. What is needed for both cities and suburbs is a balanced approach toward jobs and housing that complements rather than undermines the economic health of the entire metropolitan area.

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