The Cities: Forecast for Summer

IT is the season for that glum annual speculation: Will the nation's cities erupt in racial violence? As temperatures climb and hundreds of thousands of youths find themselves jobless in the ghetto streets, this year the tinder is drier than it has been since the fiery spring of 1968. While the urban ghettos have seemed quiet for a long time, it was plain all along that there was discouragement, if not despair, beneath the surface, and that violent anger could again erupt if conditions failed to improve.

Recession has cut deeply into the number of available summer jobs. With their tax bases disappearing into the white suburbs, many of the cities are curtailing welfare payments and recreation services. Says Sol Linowitz, chairman of the National Urban Coalition: "When that 90DEG weather comes and people can't sleep and they can't be fed and they feel there's no hope anywhere, this is a tinderbox."

The black unemployment rate nationally is 10%--v. 5.6% for whites--and in many cities it is far worse, especially among teenagers. About 1,800,000 of the young poor will be seeking work this summer. Unemployment among poor youths in Los Angeles is more than 30%. In that city alone, about 125,000 14-to 18-year-olds will be idle on the streets.

Business, which raised the economic expectations of young blacks during the late 1960s by offering extra employment, can provide little help. Asked to hire minority youths, a California electronics executive answered: "How can I hire kids when I'm laying off fathers?" In Chicago, the mayor's office estimates that 60% of the young job seekers will fail to find employment.

Welfare budgets are being trimmed, with ominous effect. Shortly after the New York State welfare budget was cut, the Brownsville ghetto of Brooklyn exploded in two days of rioting. California's Governor Ronald Reagan has proposed reducing welfare and medical benefits--cuts which may affect up to 2,000,000 people.

Closing the Pools. On top of such deprivations, cities staving off bankruptcy are closing playgrounds and other recreation facilities. In New York, the 25 large city swimming pools provided for 2,200,000 youngsters will probably be closed evenings for lack of funds to pay for their supervision.

The key to whether or not the frustrations will boil into violence undoubtedly lies with the young blacks. Says Boston's A. Reginald Eaves, head of the mayor's human rights office: "When the black kids find they can't get a piece of the pie, they're going to get a piece of the action. That means trouble." As Americans learned during the riots of the 1960s, however, ghetto violence explodes by a wholly unpredictable chemistry. The arrest of a cab driver was enough to trigger the 1967 riot in Newark. In New York last week, four policemen were gunned down--two of them fatally shot in the back, the other two critically wounded by submachine-gun fire into their patrol car. It is assumed that the shootings were racially motivated.

Rat-Tat-Tat. After the experiences of Newark, Detroit and other cities, blacks are painfully aware that riots can be disastrously counterproductive. Some time ago, Chicago's Rev. Jesse Jackson observed sardonically: "Blacks can't win a shooting war when they are talking about bang-bang and the whites are talking about rat-tat-tat-tat-tat and boom-boom-boom." One of the most powerful arguments that black leaders quite properly use to discourage rioting is that violence would only bring about a renewed right-wing backlash, cancel much of the move toward moderation that was evident in last November's elections, and divert attention from the call for social reform to the demand for law-and-order.

In many larger cities police community-relations programs and more sophisticated riot-control methods have helped ease trouble. Police have learned to avoid provocative confrontations; now they slip into the ghetto quietly instead of barging in with sirens wailing. If trouble does come, the cops tend to use tear gas instead of bullets.

Yet the frustration of the ghettos is as deep or deeper now than it was at the height of the riot season several years ago. Some explosions seem almost certain. Perhaps they will not be on the scale of Watts or Newark, but they may well be the nastiest since 1968.

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