Nixon's Favorite Sociologist By MATTHEW SEIDEN THE UNHEAVENLY CITY. By Edward Banfield. Little, Brown. $6.95. Edward Banfield, an eminent Harvard sociologist, is one of President Nixon's leading advisors on urban affairs. His recently published book, "The Unheavenly City," presents an unconventional and highly idiosyncratic view of the urban crisis which has considerably influenced the President's thinking. Professor Banfield's urban strategy includes the following political recommendations: 1) "Encourage or require the incompetent poor to reside in institutions." 2) "Abridge to an appropriate degree the freedom of those who in the opinion of a court are extremely likely to commit violent crimes." Those considered most likely to commit crimes would be * confined to a penal village or work camp where they might receive visitors and support a family but from which they might not leave." 3) "Permit the police to stop and frisk and to make misdemeanor arrests on probable cause." 4) "Prohibit live television coverage of riots and of incidents likely to provoke them." Professor Banfield's lack of concern for the Bill of Rights is perhaps only equalled by his lack of concern for the economic and social well-being of the American people. Banfield claims that there i's no real urban crisis. Americans of all classes, he claims, have never* had it so good. The problems which do exist are the inevitable effects of prosperity. Such problems—from poverty to pollution—will disappear in the normal course of economic growth, Banfield says, if only everyone will stop complaining. "The government," he insists, "cannot solve the problems of the cities and is likely to make them worse by trying." In case you've been worrying about rising unemployment, inflation, racial unrest, environmental pollution, etc., take it easy: "Powerful accidental forces are at work that tend to alleviate and even to eliminate the problems." If "powerful accidental forces" sounds like Hindu metaphysics to you, you may be wondering how a Harvard professor of urban affairs came to such conclusions. Banfield is not a mystic; his sophistry is the art of factual distortion and 'specious logic cultivated* in academic isolation from the real life of the city. "The Unheavenly City" is a bitter and self-righteous expression of white backlash, le- gitimated by the style of the social sciences. Banfield doesn't offer solutions to the city's problems. He defines them away. Because Banfield is influential in the government, and because his work is as insidious as it is outraging, it deserves careful refutation. Banfield argues that racial discrimination is not a real problem anymore. For the sake of his argument he creates a distinction between the "Census Negro" and the "Statistical Negro." The "Statistical Negro" is "the Negro when all non-racial factors have been controlled for." That is, if you're comparing the school dropout rate of whites and blacks, you only use the "Statistical Negro," blacks with the same income, education, religious and geographic background as the whites being considered. The not at all startling conclusion is that the "Statistical Negro's" dropout rate is the same as the white's, even though in reality twice as many blacks drop out, according to Banfield. The real issue, of course, is how many black children come from families with the same income and education as whites. The Kerner Commission reports that three times as many blacks drop out. Banfield consistently chooses the most optimistic figures he can find. His manipulation of even those figures distorts the significant facts, obscures the distressing reality, and reveals only the obvious and irrelevant. Based on such "facts," Banfield concludes, "The movement of the Negro up the class scale appears as inexorable as that of all other groups. There is less poverty in the cities now than there has ever been. Housing, including that of the poor is improving rapidly. Most children finish school." "If the situation is improving," Banfield asks, "why is there so much talk of an urban crisis?" Other studies, as well as a quick stroll around any American city, indicate that is indeed an urban crisis. The Kerner Commission reported, for example, that black family income growth is not keeping pace with white family income growth. That means that the gap between white and black living standards has been increasing, not decreasing. In 1968, the Kerner Eep'ort showed that twenty per cent of all blacks were making no significant economic gains despite general prosperity; that unemployment rates for blacks were still double those for whites in every category; that black men were more than twice as likely as whites to be in unskilled or service jobs which pay far less than most; that the unemployment rate among nonwhite teenagers was almost three times the white teenage unemployment rate; that although perhaps "most children finish high school,", blacks were more than three times as likely as whites to drop out of school by age sixteen. The dramatic rise in unemploy- ment since 1968 can only have made things worse for blacks as well as whites, not better as Banfield predicted. Throughout his work Banfield argues with a peculiar illogic which draws generalized sociological principles from the facts of historical circumstance, then declares that the future must inevitably be determined by the same "imperatives.* The status quo is thus unalterable. Banfield absolves

men and institutions of all responsibiltiy for having created the urban crisis. Only the "principles of economic growth" he says, can gradually improve the cities. Banfield claims that the cities grew according to the "logic of metropolitan growth." Though city dwellers complain about urban sprawl, blight, and pollution, they live well, whether they know it or not. The same "logic," Banfield says, will continue to determine the expansion of cities. We might as well get used to it and stop complaining. Banfield mistakes the historical circumstance of unplanned, urban capitalism for an inevitable law of urban growth. He forgets that cities can be planned rationally by responsible governments which curb private profit in the public interest. Cities grew as they did in America because it was profitable, not because it was inevitable. Cities will only continue to sprawl and decay as long as it remains profitable for those who make and influence government decisions. Banfield's thesis is about as logical as saying that there was widespread hunger in China in 1949 because of some "imperative logic" of Chinese hunger. Therefore Chinese must always be hungry. Banfield confuses political priorities with economic laws. Banfield applies the same specious logic to his consideration of the "culture of poverty," perhaps the most insidious part of his book. Poor people stay poor not because they lack opportunities, Banfield claims, but because they lack imagination and discipline. The "lower class" is doomed only by its own "lower class mentality." Banfield's culture of poverty is a complete distortion of Oscar Lewis' original conception of the term. Lewis talked about poverty culture as an anthropological adaptation to economic and physical hardship, not as a lower class mentality which keeps people poor. Banfield defines away the problems of most blacks, and avoids charges of racism by qualifying his thesis. Poor people who have imagination and discipline are not lower class, even if they are very poor. The government doesn't have to worry about them because* they can take care of themselves. The rest, Banfield says, are hopeless. So don't worry about them either. The penal villages or work camps are for them. According to the Kerner Commission, twenty per cent of all blacks would fall into this group, the hard-core poor. John Barkham in a New York Post review of the "Unheavenly City," sums up Banfield's academic isolation: "If this is how the plight of the cities looks from the cloisters of Harvard Yard, I suggest the professor visit the slums of New York and Chicago and tell the welfare recipients how much better off they are than they think they are." If President Nixon continues to follow the laissez-faire philosophy of such advisors as Banfield, it may take some fast talking to persuade the voters in 1972 that they are better off than they think they are.