New U.S. Race Crisis

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30820, 4 August 1965, Page 17

New U.S. Race Crisis

GV. Z.P.A. -Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK, August 3. America is approaching a new crisis in race relations, a confidential report published by “Newsweek” magazine yesterday said.

“Newsweek” said the report, by the Department of Labour, was used by President Johnson as the basis of a speech at Howard University last June when he announced plans for a White House conference on race relations. It “has set off a quiet revolution in the basic White House approach to the continuing American dilemma of race,” the magazine said. “It starts by noting the cruel irony that all the civil rights legislation written in the last decade has raised hopes it cannot possibly fulfil,” “Newsweek” said.

The magazine said the report stated: “The harsh fact is that as a group, at the present time, in terms of ability to win out in the competitions of American life. (Negroes) ... are not equal to most of those groups with which they will be competing.” Splintering Family The 78-page report, “Newsweek” said, “traces that disability to its social roots: the splintering Negro family.” The report said nearly a fourth of city-dwelling Negro women who had ever been married were now divorced, separated or deserted. The white rate was 7.9 per cent. Nearly a fourth of all Negro babies born today were illegitimate, the report said. “The disintegration of families is both a cause and a result of some of the gravest problems of the ghetto poor: staggering unemployment rates, stunted IQ’s, poor school performance and swollen crime and narcotics statistics,” the report stated. It added: “A population explosion in the ghettos has aggravated all these problems —and threatens to make them still worse. “Based on the high rates of illegitimacy, the birth-rate for Negroes is 40 per cent higher than for whites. “This means that Negroes, a steady one-tenth of the United States population in the 1950’5, will make up oneeight by 1973.”