The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Friday made progress in arms talks. Soviet Pres. Gorbachev said a compromise on Lithuania was possible. East and West Germany signed a treaty of economic union. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Judy Woodruff is in Washington tonight. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: After the News Summary we start with a look at the troubled state of race relations in New York [FOCUS - RACE RELATIONS]. We have a Kwame Holman backgrounder and talk with New York Mayor David Dinkins as well as three close observers of the urban scene. Then Gergen & Shields analyze the week's political events [FOCUS - GERGEN & SHIELDS] and we close tonight with words from Roger Rosenblatt [ESSAY - DEATH OF AN ENTERTAINER] on Jim Henson and Sammy Davis, Jr. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: The U.S. and the Soviet Union today moved closer towards striking a deal on reducing the long range nuclear weapons. U.S. officials said headway was made on limiting Cruise Missiles, a major obstacle in earlier talks. Today's progress was reported after a marathon bargaining session of nearly five hours between Sec. of State James Baker and Soviet Pres. Gorbachev in Moscow. The Soviet Leader was asked if an agreement can be ready for his upcoming summit with Pres. Bush.

PRES. GORBACHEV: [Speaking through Interpreter] We are doing our best to make sure that we agree. We have to do this together. I think we are moving closer.

MR. MacNeil: Gorbachev was then asked if he would survive his own political problems.

PRES. GORBACHEV: [Speaking through Interpreter] My answer is that they should follow closely what is happening in the Soviet Union and they should objectively reflect what is happening in this country and they should not panic more than the Soviets do.

MR. MacNeil: Pres. Gorbachev also spoke about the Lithuanian independence situation today. He said a resolution to the standoff was possible but any compromise would have to conform to the Soviet constitution. Yesterday Gorbachev met with Lithuania's Prime Minister Prunskiene. This evening she told a news conference that Gorbachev had threatened even tougher economic sanctions during their meeting. Earlier today the prime minister met Sec. Baker who said he hoped her talks with Gorbachev would eventually lead to full negotiations. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: The two Germanys took a major step toward becoming one today. Their finance ministers signed an agreement to merge their economies on July 2nd. On that day, East Germany will adopt West Germany's currency and its free market economic system. West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said the signing was the moment in which free and united Germany is born.

MR. MacNeil: In South Korea, violent protests marked the 10th anniversary of a bloody government crackdown in the City of Kwan Ju. Tens of thousands attended a memorial service for the 200 people who were killed. Later a hundred thousand people rallied peacefully. But as the rally broke up, it turned violent. Students fought riot police and burned an effigy of President Roh Tay Woo. Trucks fired tear gas into the crowd. There was another drug- related bombing in Colombia. A car bomb exploded last night outside a shopping mall in the coastal resort of Cartahena. Thirty-eight people were wounded and several stores were damaged. It was the latest in a series of bombings blamed on drug traffickers.

MS. WOODRUFF: Back in this country there were new worries today as flood waters spread into the central states. Two days of heavy rain left families homeless in Missouri. In St. Louis, the Mississippi River is expected to crest this weekend at four feet above flood stage. In Illinois and Indiana, rain has washed out farmland and forced at least 50 people from their homes. Meanwhile, residents of Texas prepared for their second week of flooding with water covering roads and houses in the Lake Livingston area just Northeast of Houston.

MR. MacNeil: The Energy Department confirmed today that it will release health records for some 200,000 workers at the government's nuclear weapons production plants. The data collected since 1965 documents the effects of sustained exposure to low level radiation. The release of the information follows a suit by the a group studying the radiation effects of the Three Mile Island accident. Also today in California, the state Supreme Court ruled that companies cannot ban women from jobs which could threaten a fetus. Women at a battery manufacturing plant had sued to overturn a company rule which kept women of child bearing age from jobs where they could be exposed to low levels of lead. The workers maintained that the rule was unfair to those who didn't plan to have children. A case challenging the same policy is still pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

MS. WOODRUFF: The actress Jill Ireland died today after a six year battle with breast cancer. She had spoken and written extensively about her illness, encouraging other cancer patients to feel self-respect and optimism. Ireland was married to actor Charles Bronson. She was 54. That's it for tonight's News Summary. Just ahead on the Newshour, racial tensions in America's big cities, Gergen & Shields, and Roger Rosenblatt on Jim Henson and Sammy Davis, Jr. FOCUS - RACE RELATIONS

MR. MacNeil: We look first tonight at racial tensions in New York City. Last night a jury found a 19 year old white man guilty of murdering a black teen-ager last summer in the Brooklyn neighborhood known as Bensonhurst. A second jury is about to return a verdict against another white youth involved in that same incident and four others await trial. The Bensonhurst murder trials have heightened racial tensions in the city and attracted national attention. We'll discuss these tensions with the city's mayor, David Dinkins, and others, but first Kwame Holman has this backgrounder.

MR. HOLMAN: New York is a city that cultivates a tough, rude image, but in recent years, things have turned ugly with race as the focal point. A spate of deadly conflicts began to gather steam in 1984, when New York blacks were angered by the killing of an elderly black woman by police, that on the heels of the police killing of an unarmed, black graffiti artist a year earlier. Then in 1986 came Howard Beach. A black man was chased out of that all white neighborhood by a gang of whites and killed by a speeding car. Feelings in the black and white communities were enflamed in April of last year by the rape and brutal beating of a white woman jogger in Central Park allegedly by a roving group of black and Hispanic youths, and last August, came Bensonhurst. Four black males came to the predominantly white Brooklyn neighborhood to look at a used car. They were attacked by a mob of some 40 whites who said they mistook them for blacks coming to see a female teen-ager in the neighborhood. Three of the blacks were beaten with baseball bats, a fourth, 16 year old Yusuf Hawkins, was shot to death. Five whites were arrested and charged. The Bensonhurst killing finally crystallized raw racial emotions of blacks and whites in New York. There were marches in the neighborhood and charges that virtually everyone tried to manipulate those emotions. That charge was leveled in particular at Rev. Al Sharpton, the lightning rod of nearly all the recent racial skirmishes in New York. It was Sharpton who organized several marches into Bensonhurst which he later admitted were designed to provoke whites.

REV. AL SHARPTON, March Organizer: This is by far the most hostile reception out of all seven marches we've had. We've never had people lay in the street to block us.

MR. HOLMAN: And always there was an eager New York press to keep focus on the strife. Outside of the courthouse where two of the white Bensonhurst youths were being tried there were threats of violence by blacks. In another section of Brooklyn, a new racial confrontation erupted. First generation black Caribbean immigrants staged a raucous boycott of two neighborhood markets owned by first generation Korean immigrants, then charged the market's owners with violence against black customers and racial intolerance. Last Friday, in the midst of the growing racial tension, the city's new mayor, David Dinkins, who campaigned on the promise he'd bring the city together, took the unusual step of asking for local TV time to appeal for calm.

MAYOR DAVID DINKINS, New York City: I've already seen far too much pain and far too much hate in my lifetime. This city is sick of violence and we're aching and we must heal the pain.

MR. HOLMAN: Fear of violence over the outcome of the Bensonhurst trials was allayed for the moment by last night's second degree murder conviction of Joseph Fama in the death of Yusuf Hawkins. Still, the prosecutor in the case warned that New York should not think it's racial problems are solved.

REPORTER: What is that message?

JAMES KOHLER, Assistant District Attorney: We hope that this is the last time we ever have to try one of these cases, but something tells me we'll be back here again, trying these cases until people learn how to get along with one another.

MR. MacNeil: Early this evening a second jury acquitted nineteen year old Keith Mondello of all murder charges but convicted him of several lesser charges. We're joined now by David Dinkins, elected last year in the aftermath of the Bensonhurst killing as New York's first black mayor. Mr. Mayor, thank you for joining us.

MAYOR DINKINS: Good evening.

MR. MacNeil: One wire service story said today if ever a city breathed a collective sigh of relief, it was New York this morning. Do you agree with that?

MAYOR DINKINS, New York City: I agree with that, I certainly did. It demonstrated that our system of juris prudence, the jury system, nothing works better in the world had worked properly. I just hope that people will feel the same way about the verdict that's come in tonight, whether they approve of it or not.

MR. MacNeil: There were predictions that if Joey Fama had been acquitted, some of the predictions were that there would be riots, there would be demonstrations, and you prepared for those last night. What is the situation this evening?

MAYOR DINKINS: That's a point I tried to make. There are those who feel that the defendant today, Mondello, is as guilty as was the one convicted yesterday, but we don't know what evidence was presented to them, we don't know what the jury considered or reflected on. I would take this opportunity to say that there's been what some feel is a conspiracy of silence by some in that neighborhood who might have information and failed to come forward with it, but we must accept this verdict.

MR. MacNeil: Because the mob that was allegedly and seemed to be allegedly involved in the killing was much larger than the number of people who have been accused in the killing.

MAYOR DINKINS: Correct. And so someone has further information. They just have not been forthcoming with it. But it is important also to recognize albeit that there were greater numbers, this is not everyone who lives in Bensonhurst, and so I try to refer to it as the incident that occurred in Bensonhurst, dastardly deed to be sure, so as not to seem to paint with a broad brush all those persons who live in Bensonhurst. This is a measure of our difficulty.

MR. MacNeil: As Kwame Holman reported, you made your extraordinary statement on television last Friday and then again on Sunday you held a press conference to refer to another racial incident. You have many critics asking why you waited so long until many people had, like Al Sharpton, for example, had raised the temperature a great deal.

MAYOR DINKINS: Well, first off, they make reference not to the trial in Bensonhurst, the matter in Bensonhurst. They make reference to the boycott of the Korean merchants. And we have been at work at that from Day One. My staff has been out there and Deputy Mayor Bill Lynch who knows the community and knows the people very very well, he had been there. The Haitian community I think looks at me with favor. I have been one of those who has been very vocal about the ill treatment of Haitian refugees. When they put 50,000 people in the street on the question of the blood testing, blood coming from Haitians, they applauded me, they did not denounce me, 50,000 of them. So what I've been doing is working with these people, trying to find a way to bring about an accord. It's important to understand that those persons on that picket line are not monolithic. They vary on agendas. There are some who have a legitimate grievance who feel that the merchant was at least rude, maybe as far as an assault, but whatever he did, it ought not be resolved in the fashion that some would wish. The boycott I has gone on I believe much too long. My language is that they should declare a victory and quit.

MR. MacNeil: Some like Bob Herbert, columnist with the Daily News, compares the situation in the city to the neglect of the city's infrastructure over the last decade or more, its bridges, its sewers, and so on, and say that race relations has been neglected in the same way. Do you agree with that?

MAYOR DINKINS: Well, I think that race relations are not nearly as good as they might be. It is among the reasons that I ran for office in the first place. I maintain that the tone gets set at city hall and I'm attempting to do that. I think we need to lower the temperature. People need to reason and talk to one another, not at one another, not past one another. We need to identify the real enemy, which is poverty and crime and drugs and AIDS and all the rest and not each other, so some of my critics, I don't speak of those who second guess me and feel I should have done this instead of that, that they're entitled to those views. Perhaps when they have the responsibility, they may see it differently, but I make reference to the critics, some from my own community, like Al Sharpton, who's had a lot of unkind things to say. I can't deal with that or with him. I am confident that the readers and the viewers will look at me and look at him and I'll be willing to rest with their judgment.

MR. MacNeil: You also referred in your speech a week ago to racial violence in other cities. Do you think that generally racism is on the rise in this country?

MAYOR DINKINS: Well, I don't know that it's on the rise, but I have for several years made the observation that we have not come sufficiently far from those days in 1968 when the Kearner Commission rendered its report. As a matter of fact, in 1988, there was a report of the Commission on the cities co-authored by Roger Wilkins and Fred Harris, and they made the observation that the disparity, the gap between family income and family assets was as great today, is as great today as it was 20 years earlier. That was 1988, and so I have often said that racism is still in our country. But I believe that most people are good people and fair minded people.

MR. MacNeil: Well, how do you explain that the mood is what it is? I mean, I can remember very well the mood in the '60s when the great civil rights battles were fought and the legal battles, the principle legal battles won, the mood was one of optimism. How do you explain the atmosphere 25 years later?

MAYOR DINKINS: I can't explain it all, but some measure of it is tied up with the absence of adequate health care and job opportunity and educational opportunity and on and on. Some of these things, these kinds of things exacerbate these tensions. As a matter of fact, in the speech to which you so kindly referred on Friday, I made the observation that we have more child abuse, we have more violence, when resources are short.

MR. MacNeil: So the expectation that having a black mayor of a city like New York was going to have a soothing influence was an exaggerated expectation?

MAYOR DINKINS: Well, clearly, I cannot, because I'm an African- American, wave a magic wand. I think that I as a person who happens to be African-American can do some things better than some others in this regard. I have a different attitude, different temperament, different posture, but it should be recognized that no one but no one can immediately solve all the problems that we have, but we must work at them. Some have suggested very kindly that the mood in our town had changed for the better since I had been elected. I don't know whether that's true or not. The reference made recently around two incidents really, the trial and the grosser circumstance, neither one of which was brand new, they'd been around a while, the boycott's been going on since January, too long, as I say. We had a couple of other unfortunate circumstances, utterances that should not have been made, and people lumped those with the Korean merchant boycott situation and with the trial of the killers of Yusuf Hawkins, those so accused, and they said things are terrible in our town. I think things are not as bad as some would wish them to be.

MR. MacNeil: In your speech a week ago, you got your biggest applause when you said the media, you referred to the media, and you said, they must join in. How are the media not joining in, in your view?

MAYOR DINKINS: Well, first let me say that the media has been enormously helpful and the electronics media, especially by giving the time they gave on Friday. We had no way of knowing whether or not that would be forthcoming. The decision to do the speech on Friday was made on Thursday. We figured we could do it on WNYC, the public radio, the city station, and hopefully some of the other stations would carry some of it. We assumed the print people would cover it, but there's a big difference to have that live on television in prime time, so that was very useful. Following the speech, at least one newspaper that I had been, I had criticized for having run a full page, front page photograph of Al Sharpton with the quote with respect to what would happen if we didn't like the verdict and I thought that that was far less than helpful and I said so. Whether because of my comments or not, I don't know, but I do know that the subsequent front pages have assisted portraying Fred McCray, the teacher who crossed the picket lines, as a hero, for instance, so that's to the good. Guy Vileto --

MR. MacNeil: He was a teacher in a black school who led a group of volunteer students and parents to go actually and shop in that Korean shop.

MAYOR DINKINS: Right. I might add it was their idea. Incidentally, Guy Vileto, a Republican State Senator who heretofore has opposed, or at least not been supportive of legislation against bias-related violence, called me and said as a result of my speech he was now in favor of the legislation.

MR. MacNeil: But in referring to the media, some of your critics say that it was the media that finally pushed you into making that speech. For instance, Richard Carter in a very tough column in the Daily News yesterday, said, Mr. Mayor, don't blame the news media for New York's abysmal racial climate, we may be players, but you're the dealer.

MAYOR DINKINS: I think that's colorful language and kind of tricky and neat and Mr. Carter is a very fine writer, and as he alluded to the fact in his column that he supported me, and he thinks I'm fine, he doesn't agree with me on this, and that's okay, because I don't agree with him on this either. As a matter of fact, the observation I've made is that it's the media that has made Al Sharpton a would-be leader. It's the media that has done that. But what I've asked of the media in that speech, I wasn't being critical of the media in the sense that they had caused the circumstance. I was asking the media to join in with clergy and business and labor and all other segments of our society to assist in this. Joe Klein will tell you that I have said many times to the assembled press in a press conference that you live here too. Your parents and children and relatives, friends, whether you work in the city only or live and work in the city, you care about it, and you must help me. I've made that kind of comment many many times.

MR. MacNeil: But you think some of the media coverage has been making the situation worse, has been inflaming the racial tension?

MAYOR DINKINS: No, I have not blamed the media. As a matter of fact, I thought I took great pains in the speech to say that I was not blaming the media. I mean, I used those words. It wasn't subtle. You didn't have to extract it. I said it flat out. But what I do believe is that the media could be imminently more helpful than the media is by emphasizing some of the positive good things that happened in our town, and there are many. And there is a way in which the media could be enormously helpful rather than to convey the thought, the picture that everything is strife and struggle, because it's not.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Mayor, thank you very much for joining us.

MAYOR DINKINS: Thank you.

MR. MacNeil: Here to discuss further the status of race relations is Joe Klein, a political columnist for New York Magazine, Helen Zia, president of the New York chapter of the Asian-American Journalists Association and managing editor of Ms. Magazine, and Linda Williams, a research fellow at Harvard's Shorenstein Barone Center. She joins us from public station WGBH in Boston. Ms. Williams, you've been doing a study of media coverage of the racial situation in New York. What do you think of the role of the media in either, in a constructive way or inflaming this situation in its coverage?

LINDA WILLIAMS, Political Scientist: Well, certainly in the case of Bensonhurst, I think, one could say the media has played both roles. On the one hand, I think the media has done a good job across-the-board in discussing what is actually going on and showing both sides of what's going on in Bensonhurst. On the other hand, I think that many times, the coverage is not placed contextually, so that one learns much more, for example, about the defendants in the case from their cultural origins, from Sicily, Italy on, and one learns very little even about the victim's background, so that I think the media has done in some ways a plus kind of job, or should be given an "A" or a good grade, and in other ways, they have really not done a complete job.

MR. MacNeil: What do you feel, Joe Klein? You actually covered the Bensonhurst trial.

JOE KLEIN, Journalist: Well, I've spent this week looking into one of the things you mentioned with the mayor, the difference between now and the sixties, and I think one of the major differences in New York is that we have a tabloid war now and it's really contributed I think to the level of heat and not necessarily to the level of light. I think another major thing that's happened in town has been crack and the crime wave that's resulted, which I think has created a white backlash, increasing white racism, which black people in town have noted, and the third thing has been the absence of leadership. Up until this past week when the mayor really did step out, but people like Al Sharpton weren't able to seize hold of the debate because there was no one competing with them for it.

MR. MacNeil: Ms. Zia, what do you think about the way the media's been handling this and its implication in the race tension in New York?

HELEN ZIA, Asian-American Journalists Association: Well, I agree with what Joe said about the role of the media war, and certainly it's a bit of the nature of the beast on how news gets covered. There are times when a story is hot and people go after it. Racism didn't just get discovered yesterday. In fact, in Bensonhurst, long before Yusuf Hawkins was so brutally killed, the few Asian merchants in the Bensonhurst neighborhood were under siege by certain elements in Bensonhurst. The Asian community did try to get coverage of that but was unsuccessful. The boycott of the Korean green grocers has been going on for almost five months now and it's only now that race and racial tension is so hot that it's become a media event almost. But it wasn't discovered yesterday.

MR. MacNeil: But there's also heavy competition on the local television scene as well. It's not just in the tabloid newspapers.

MR. KLEIN: That's right. The tabloids are not only competing against each other, but they're competing against six local TV stations, all these trashy infotainment shows, plus all talk radio stations that didn't exist 20 years ago either, both in the black community where the owner of the black station told his listeners to cool it this week because their remarks had become so incendiary and also in the white community where there are some very heavy, racist programs on.

MR. MacNeil: Ms. Williams, your point is that the coverage of different races is different as to perpetrators and to victims and that the level of social curiosity in the media about the individuals is different, was that what you were saying?

MS. WILLIAMS: Exactly. And I want to say something to what the other guests have said. First I think it's clear that reportage of crime news did not precede racism. Racism came in this country, and I don't think there's anyone who would disagree, before reportage of crime news, so that clearly it is not crime or its reportage that is responsible for racism. So I don't think that anyone should argue that crime precedes that. The second thing in the reportage on crime, and this is the part in which you're asking me about, I think that the media does bear some responsibility there because in general you don't see the actual mix of crime reported in the news media, you don't see the actual proportion of crime that is actually committed by blacks reported accurately in the news media, and so therefore, what we come up with is a very distorted picture. Let's take the issue that Joe Klein brings up, crack abuse or more generally drug use. According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, 80 percent of all drug abuse is really drug abuse among whites. But that is not the portrayal that one gets in the media so at the end if there is a reaction in white America to the belief that drugs are the perpetrators of all crimes or most crimes or drug abuse, et cetera, I think that the media has to look at its own portrayals.

MR. KLEIN: I would disagree with that. I think that the level of racism isn't a constant thing, especially over the last 20 years. I think it ebbs and flows and I think that it ebbed in the late '70s,early '80s, and that when crack came in in New York and Prof. Williams has to acknowledge that a disproportionate number of crimes in the inner-city are committed by blacks especially against other blacks, and I think that the nightly parade of black youths who had committed horrible crimes being led into precinct houses did cause a reaction in the white community.

MS. WILLIAMS: But, Joe, you bring up a very important point, because while, as you just said, most of those crimes even were crimes against blacks. That is not the crimes that get the most coverage in the press. The crimes that get the most coverage in the press are inter-racial crimes which are a very small minority. Approximately 85 percent of all crimes against blacks are committed by blacks. A similar percentage is true of whites so that in terms of what we're discussing tonight, racial fears, I think the media could do a better job in terms of really discussing who commits crimes against whom.

MR. MacNeil: Helen Zia, you nodded there.

MS. ZIA: Well, I think if you look at the situation with the Korean green grocers and the community in Flat Bush, there is a strong feeling in the Asian community that this has gotten a great deal of media attention because it's a black against Asian situation.

MR. MacNeil: Which is a relatively new ingredient, or at least new in --

MS. ZIA: Very much so. The racial violence against Asians has been building up since the '70s and in contrast to what Joe is saying about the relationship to crack, that's been building in direct proportions to the economic tensions that people feel and the need to scapegoat the Asian community for the political and economic situation with Asia and the Pacific Rim and Japan in particular. And while we'd been talking about crime and racial violence, I think we can't ignore the political tenor of the nation which in the past ten years has certainly downplayed racial crimes and, in fact, the example set by the federal government under the Reagan administration has been very poor in terms of how those crimes would be dealt with.

MR. KLEIN: I agree. There have been boycotts against Korean markets since the early '80s in New York City.

MR. MacNeil: May I just follow up on Linda Williams' point though just for a second? She said it's mostly interracial crimes that get reported and built up in the press, for instance, the attack on the white woman stockbroker, jogger in Central Park by a gang of particularly black youths, but that is, interracial crime she said is a very small proportion in crime.

MR. KLEIN: The two crimes that really set the tone in New York last year were like anti-bellum fantasies, you know, a group of children of color attacking a white woman, and then a black man being lynched mistakenly in a crime of passion. I mean, the vast majority of crimes are different and the racial problem in New York is different from that now. The real heart of the racial problem is the growth of an under class over the last 25 years, and it's amazing that that I thought was the central issue of last year's mayoral campaign, and we in the press couldn't get the two candidates or any of the candidates to discuss it.

MR. MacNeil: You studied that election, Ms. Williams. Do you agree with that?

MS. WILLIAMS: Well, one wonders whether or not the candidates were discussing it. The candidates of course often say they were discussing it and the media simply didn't pick it up. On the other hand, I think that there were a number of articles that to some extent, particularly in print media, that did discuss some of those tendencies. Nonetheless, I think that particularly after Bensonhurst, but beginning with the Central Park rampage, that a lot more attention was given to race. And that's not surprising in this country. If there's a hidden secret, a thing that is never discussed hardly, it really is class in this country, and I think that that is really the under discussed issue in the crimes that we talk about in New York City today. In truth, were class variables better known and understood by Americans in general, we might say that the Italians in Bensonhurst and Yusuf Hawkins and the blacks in Brooklyn, et cetera, actually had more in common, the same so we might say of Koreans and blacks. But in general again, if race is not dealt with very well by the press, I think class is rarely, if ever, discussed.

MR. MacNeil: Do you want to discuss that?

MS. ZIA: I think certainly with regard to Asian-Americans the perception that's been largely perpetrated by the medias, my colleagues, is the model minority and that Asians are one monolithic group and that we are successful and achieving and that we do not experience racial violence.

MR. MacNeil: And that in turn could provoke resentment by blacks who find it harder to rise out of the social morbidities that the mayor and others --

MS. ZIA: Absolutely, and not just blacks, by whites as well.

MR. MacNeil: So by stereotyping Asians as all successful, you inflamed the resentments of other groups?

MR. KLEIN: I think that there have been a lot of stereotypes going on all around. I mean, there are a lot of white people in this town who think that all black youths are criminals or at least the vast majority of them, and the exact opposite is true.

MR. MacNeil: Yeah. We did a story on that about a year ago, talking to young black men who say that any of them starts to run on a street, he's automatically a criminal, no matter what he is.

MR. KLEIN: The question is though, what's the appropriate response? Where are we in the history of the civil rights movement? Are boycotts and marches still the appropriate response, or is it time for more concentration on individual achievement?

MR. MacNeil: I'd like to turn it finally to another point that I asked the mayor about. Starting with you, Linda Williams, it's been widely assumed for a long time, going back to the '60s and the Voting Rights Act, that if you could get more minorities voting and then electing minority leaders to high elective office, this would have a strong remedial effect, role model effect, and everything else, on easing this tension. We're living in a time when more, in the case of black leaders and Hispanic leaders are holding elective office than ever before. We just talked to one of the most prominent of them, there's a black governor in Virginia. What do you think about that expectation and the fact that it doesn't seem to, the growth in minority political leadership doesn't seem to have been accompanied by an easing of racial tensions?

MS. WILLIAMS: Well, I'd say essentially three things. First we have to keep in mind that blacks and Hispanics, as well as other minorities, have ascended to public office only very recently and change usually requires time. I think we have to also keep in mind that we're still talking about very small minorities. For example, the proportion of black elected officials of all elected officials are still less than 2 percent. Hispanics are only around 1 percent, so that we really still in this country don't have all that many minority elected officials. The second point though that I would like to make is that essentially we have, indeed, evidence that at least racial tensions do not grow. For example, I would like everyone in the audience, as well as the guests, to ask what city that has had a long time black mayor, really that has had the kind of racial violence that we are seeing today in some cities that do not have such mayors, and certainly in New York City. The, in fact, kind of violence that we've seen in those cities have been rather internal to the black community, such as the move incident in Philadelphia, or in Coleman Young, in Detroit's early years, some racial riots in the black community. So we have not seen quite the kind of intra-ethnic, intra-racial violence that we saw before those cities got black mayors, so I would argue they do have some salutary effect.

MR. MacNeil: It might be a lot worse, in other words?

MS. WILLIAMS: It could be a lot worse. And one thing that there is relatively good proof is that police brutality, which used to be the kind of incident that sparked violence really in those cities, cases of police brutality have declined.

MR. MacNeil: Brief comment.

MR. KLEIN: Well, I think that the division here isn't in race. I think that the fact that the mayor is civil as opposed to all the loud mouths who are besetting the city had a major impact on lowering the temperature in New York this week, and I think that that's a consequence of his personality more than his skin color.

MR. MacNeil: Well, thank you all three, Helen Zia, Joe Klein, Linda Williams, for joining us. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Still ahead on the Newshour, Gergen and Shields, and Roger Rosenblatt's thoughts on Sammy Davis, Jr., and Jim Henson. FOCUS - GERGEN & SHIELDS

MS. WOODRUFF: It's Friday and that means political analysis from our regular team of Gergen & Shields. That's David Gergen, editor at large at U.S. News & World Report, and Mark Shields, syndicated columnist with the Washington Post. Well, gentlemen, while New York City is trying to figure out its own racial problems, Pres. Bush it appears over the last week has been trying to improve his relations with blacks. He's had three meetings this week with various civil rights group representatives and the early reports were that he was considering softening his opposition to the civil rights bill. What is going on here? Mark.

MR. SHIELDS: Well, I think that first of all George Bush is an entirely different kind of Republican from the ones in the White House in the '80s. George Bush has had 40 beatings, 40 separate black events in the less than a year and a half that he's been in the White House. Unlike Ronald Reagan who opposed the civil rights acts of 1964 which allowed blacks to go into restaurants and buy McDonald's hamburgers, in '65, which guaranteed the rights of blacks to vote, in 1968, the Open Housing Act, and Reagan opposed all three, Bush was one of the two Southern Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted for that 1968 bill. It was the only one he was in there for, so he has an entirely different background. He's now running, Judy, at 65 percent of his polls, 65 percent approval among black Americans. Ronald Reagan had an 83 percent negative. This is a constituency, an important constituency for him, because it has been the core and the real foundation of Democratic votes in national elections. If he can take, he won 11 percent of it in 1988 against Michael Dukakis, if he could win 20, 25 percent doing what he feels comfortable doing, the Democrats are really in big trouble.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, David, is that what this week is all about then really?

MR. GERGEN: Well, to correct one point, I don't want to leave this standing, that the implication somehow Reagan was anti-black and Bush is pro-black. I would agree with Mark that the relationship between Reagan and blacks broke down very early in the administration and I think that there was a lack of communication and Bush has I think very wisely and done well at building up a relationship already and he is obviously the standing he has with blacks in the polls not only strikes a dagger right at the heart of the Democratic constituency, just as Mark says, it also helps to account for his very high standing generally in the polls. You lift yourself up.

MS. WOODRUFF: Because he's perceived as more moderate.

MR. GERGEN: Yes, and his moderate roots I think have begun to show. He is clearly not the son of Ronald Reagan. He's more clearly the son of a Gerald Ford, but what's happening this week I think is that George Bush is elevating the art of ju jitsu to a high form. Just as we saw in Lithuania, we've seen now in civil rights, and we've seen now on the budget question, he's very good, and when an issue has two sides and they are polarized, and he has supporters on both sides, he's very good at moving toward one side first and then moving toward the other side, and then trying to bring the two sides together for a compromise, and that's what he's been doing on civil rights this week.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, is he going to be able to pull it off, Mark?

MR. SHIELDS: I don't think so. Where we are right now on this whole debate is on the question of quotas. Nobody wants to say quotas. It's like Dick Darman and taxes. It walks like a duck, looks like a duck. Everyone's for affirmative action, which is employers having the responsibility to go out and reach and recruit and enlist people who have been traditionally unrepresented in the work force and I think this is the problem that George Bush has with it. I do want to correct one piece of history. The difference between George Bush and Ronald Reagan is profound. I'm not saying that Ronald Reagan was personally a racist. Ronald Reagan said he rooted for Joe Lewis, he rooted for Jackie Robinson, he just opposed every historic civil rights act. Ronald Reagan's first year in office he was for Bob Jones University in South Carolina getting a tax break. George Bush, by contrast, with his wife went to D.C. Hospital and picked up and held black babies with AIDS. And that's a profound and significant difference.

MR. GERGEN: Mark, I think we're going to be wasting a lot of time to argue the Ronald Reagan record.

MR. SHIELDS: All right.

MR. GERGEN: Let me just say I think there was a philosophical difference that Reagan had with some of those bills about the role of government. That would not make Reagan anti-black.

MR. SHIELDS: I know how blacks react. Those were the most important acts in the 20th century to black Americans, that they could vote, that they could go into and stay in a Holiday Inn, they're important, David. Ronald Reagan was wrong on them, on the long history of American civil rights, he's wrong.

MR. GERGEN: Ronald Reagan was in favor of civil rights. He was in favor of getting there in a different way. I really don't think, we can debate this, I'm perfectly willing to debate, but I think we ought to move on to George Bush.

MS. WOODRUFF: And on the civil rights bill, is it possible that a compromise can be worked out where Bush can satisfy, as I understand what's going on here is he's going to try to satisfy both the conservatives who hope that he's not going to go along with quotas, and he says he's not going to go along with quotas, and win the support of blacks who really want him to go along with this bill.

MR. GERGEN: I hate to be so disagreeable to that, but, Mark, in contrast to what you just said, I believe that there is a way, you know, I think that they will come up with a compromise because --

MS. WOODRUFF: To finesse it is what you started to say, finesse.

MR. GERGEN: -- because Bush does want to sign a bill. He wants to get a bill that he can sign. Had Reagan been in the office, I think he probably would have said, I'm not going to try to find a compromise. Bush is a compromiser who wants to find a bill and it's a question now of lawyers' language. The question of quotas, it's a complex bill. Essentially the main difference on the civil rights bill right now revolves around what are the standards that an employer must meet to prove that he's not discriminating. There are conservatives and business people say that the standard that some of the Democrats are putting forward would require them to go to quotas. What they're trying to do is find a way that businessmen can prove they're not discriminating with something less than quotas. I think that's possible. You're dealing with lawyers' language now. There are various standards floating around town. It seems to me with good will on both sides, and I think Bush has shown enormous good will on this, I think it's possible to get there.

MS. WOODRUFF: But, Mark, you don't?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, Judy, we're in the area of racial preference and I think that becomes terribly dangerous and what has happened to civil rights from the earlier days, there was a national consensus for legislation to take down these traditional barriers that had segregated black Americans. It had all gone to the courts and it was only in the last couple of years that courts have stopped ruling the way liberals liked on the matters of affirmative action and de facto quotas, so this legislation is an attempt by the Congress to correct it without really saying we're going to correct it. I mean, it's kind of, we're not talking quotas, but the important political element here is that there wouldn't have been a civil rights movement in the United States without the active involvement, without the intelligence and the commitment and the real political skills of the American Jewish community and there is no group of Americans who are more repugnant to whom the idea of quotas, which were used historically to discriminate against Jews being admitted to Ivy League schools for example, they find quotas just abhorrent.

MS. WOODRUFF: So how are you saying quickly --

MR. SHIELDS: I'm simply saying that that's the real division, that the civil rights consensus I think flounders on that.

MR. GERGEN: Yes, but there's a real question, the civil rights groups right now will tell you that the bill, the compromise bill that's being worked out in the House and the Senate does not require quotas. They think it's not in the bill now. Arthur Fletcher, who's head of the President's Civil Rights Commission, says that this bill does not require quotas. That's what they need to work out. I think they can find reasonable language that bridges some of the gaps.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right, let's move on to another subject that seemed to be on a lot of people's lips this week, speaking of lips and no new taxes, and that is the budget summit. It got underway. We had two sessions this week between representatives from the Congress and the White House. TheDemocrats say that at their first meeting they went around and every one of them in that session asked the President to go on television and tell the American public just how serious a problem we have with the deficit. He says, no, we're not going to do it. Why, why not?

MR. SHIELDS: This to me is the classic example of the difference between Ronald Reagan and George Bush and their approach to the office. Ronald Reagan understood the use of the bully pulpit, he understood wholesaling, that is speaking to all the American people one at a time. George Bush is a brilliant retailer. He's great with dealing with members of Congress, he's great with dealing with members of the press on a one on five basis. He cannot make his case to the nation. He's done it once. He did it on drugs. It was an easy one. He likes Eastern Europe. He likes to be President of Eastern Europe, likes to be President of Central America, when it comes to President of the budget, he called this budget summit. The President did. The Congress didn't, the Democrats didn't, he said, we've got to have a budget summit. Now we say, could you tell us, Mr. President, could you tell us why we have to have a budget summit? Well, I wouldn't want to upset the markets on Wall Street, he says. The markets on Wall Street are already nervous for goodness sakes because they know that there are problems. It was only three months ago, Judy, that George Bush said, we're going to meet the Gramm-Rudman targets, untrue, we're going to lower the deficit, untrue, we're going to balance the budget by 1993 without any new taxes, untrue. I mean, he was inaccurate then. We're not back to campaign '88 and no new taxes, we're three months ago.

MS. WOODRUFF: David.

MR. GERGEN: That was quite a barrage. Clearly, George Bush does not want to go on television right now because there is a game of blame avoidance going on. He does not want to take blame for the higher deficits and then for the harsh medicine that's coming. I think that what the Congress is trying to put together with the President now, which is a package of some 50 to 60 billion dollars in spending cuts an tax increases, is going to be much tougher to get than what we're talking about in the civil rights bill. This will be a package for next year that would be twice as big as any bill we've seen in the last 10 years, four times as big as the average cut in the deficit we've seen in the last 10 years. This is a massive program. It's going to require lots and lots of cuts and the President does not want to get out in front of it. Clearly he would like to come out in bipartisan cover. I think he's playing a political game. Everybody in town is playing a political --

MS. WOODRUFF: Can there be a deal cut though if somebody doesn't get out front on it, or are you going to turn the question around and say that's the only way there can be a deal?

MR. GERGEN: In effect, that's in effect, they want to have a deal that has a virgin birth. They don't want to have anybody who takes responsibility for this.

MR. SHIELDS: This is Presidential leadership. I mean, it really is Presidential leadership. And George Bush just has thus far fallen far, far short. He was hoping, and I think John Sununu was as well, the chief of staff of the White House, that they announce the summit, then the press and the Democrats would carry it and say, gee, this means new taxes. They didn't and everything was on the table and all of the sudden the spotlight went back to the President and he's got political laryngitis, Judy. I mean, that's what a President does. A President has to go to the country, and he's the only person that's elected by all of us to tell -- Tom Foley, the Speaker of the House, as mild mannered and deferential around Presidents as any speaker is, suggested in the private meeting, Mr. President, couldn't you spell out what the problem is? George Bush came up out of his chair according to the people in the meeting.

MS. WOODRUFF: David, are you saying that the Democrats are just playing a game when they ask Bush to do that?

MR. GERGEN: No, they're playing very smart politically. They want to get the President out front and let him take blame for these deficits. Mark is making, that is, Mr. President, you said we could do this easily, it's now clear you've under estimated the deficit, you take the responsibility for telling the American people their harsh medicine, they don't want to be responsible for that. I don't blame them for that. If I were a Democrat in that situation, I wouldn't either. But I do think this, Mark. I think it's a little early to judge Bush on this. I think we have to await some results. I agree, I think it would be good, I would say the President ought to step up and say the budget deficit's much worse than we thought and by the way, deficits matter. A lot of Republicans said a few weeks it doesn't matter. I think that's right. But --

MR. SHIELDS: I wish you'd write speeches for the President.

MR. GERGEN: But the critical question is going to be whether we get a deal, and if he breaks his tax pledge, as he may well do, and that's the direction in which we're tilting now, I would have to say, you're going to have to say the guy had a lot more courage than your remarks implied. I think it's a little early yet.

MS. WOODRUFF: And that business of breaking that tax pledge is something we want to talk about at a future time, and you were both so good this evening we're going to have you back again. David Gergen, Mark Shields, thank you both.

MR. SHIELDS: Only if you're here, Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: No, we don't play it that way. ESSAY - DEATH OF AN ENTERTAINER

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight Essayist Roger Rosenblatt has some thoughts about the deaths of two major figures in the entertainment world.

MR. ROSENBLATT: Why do we feel the deaths of great entertainers personally? The reaction is strange. We don't know these people. Often what we do know of their private lives is unpleasant, unsavory. Al Jolson had a reputation for brutality. Joan Crawford was vilified as an abusive mother, a shrew. Elvis Presley was known to take to take drugs. None of it seems to matter very much. When Elvis Presley died, public grief seemed unending, especially among the 40 and older crowd. Even years later, his fans' eyes will well up with tears at the sight of Graceland or when clips of the king are shown on TV and we hear again the songs sung expressly for us. That's most of the answer I think. The reason we feel the deaths of great entertainers as if they were deaths in the family is that in a way they are. Entertainers lead lives that project outward like light beams. Whatever their individual vices, the role they play in society is that of givers. They give. We take. They have our constant if unarticulated gratitude. What's more, they touch us where we live, our homes, our moods, the flashpoints of our biographers. Entertainers appeal to the general, but we're the particulars who receive them.

BETTY DAVIS: [SCENE FROM MOVIE] Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night.

MR. ROSENBLATT: Didn't Betty Davis say those words with you alone in mind? Was that dance of Fred Astair's meant for anyone but you? This week, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Jim Henson died on the same day. It was doubly hard to take, the genius of the song and dance and the genius puppeteer, shown in clips doing their stuff on the same night. [SAMMY DAVIS, JR. SINGING]

MR. ROSENBLATT: Sad enough to lose the voice that sang as if it created its own echo chamber. [SAMMY DAVIS, JR. SINGING] [CLIP WITH JIM HENSON AND BIG BIRD]

MR. ROSENBLATT: Then there was the giver who gave our children their own mythology and bestiary. [CLIP WITH KERMIT THE FROG AND MISS PIGGY]

MR. ROSENBLATT: Here were two people about whom we knew no private blemish. They were loved for themselves as well as for what they made. But it was they made that caused our hearts to heave as we watched the pictures of their separate acts on the evening news. [SEGMENT FROM SESAME STREET WITH BERT AND ERNIE] [SAMMY DAVIS, JR. SINGING AND DANCING]

MR. ROSENBLATT: Davis and Henson invented themselves and by such inventions showed what is possible for the human mind to do when its sole intention is to make people happy. [SCENE FROM MUPPETS MOVIE]

MR. ROSENBLATT: The great entertainer's purpose in life, the test of the success of their craft is our joy, our pleasure. [SAMMY DAVIS, JR. PERFORMING]

MR. ROSENBLATT: No wonder we feel their deaths as if they were our own. They were. I'm Roger Rosenblatt. RECAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Once again the main stories of this Friday, there was progress reported in arms talks between the Soviet Union and the United States. Soviet Pres. Gorbachev said a compromise on Lithuania was possible, and East and West Germany signed an agreement to merge their economic systems. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Judy. That's the Newshour for tonight. I've just come back from four days in Canada, where a new effort to save the difficult marriage between French and English cultures has exploded into a constitutional crisis, with some even predicting the breakup of Canada. Beginning Monday, I'll have a series of special reports, "Canada Divided". Until Monday night, I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.