CHANGING PATTERNS OF PREJUDICE: A New Look at Today's Racial, Religious and Cultural Tensions

Dr. Marrow, a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences and board chairman of a manufacturing company, served from 1956 to 1960 as Chairman of New York City's Commission on Intergroup Relations. This survey of shifting cultural patterns in America is drawn largely from his experience with COIR, and as such deals not only with race relations but with anti-Semitism, juvenile delinquency, academic freedom, immigrant acculturation, the crisis in public-school physical facilities, and the moral and legal answers to these problems. From his COIR work stem his procedural recommendations: participation, negotiation, publicity, appeal to law, and education. He advocates development of a ""Federal Bureau of Intergroup Relations"" to make available funds for scientific study, but he stresses the need for efforts that are broadly based among the population at large: ""...if people in a community are encouraged to participate in finding solutions to local problems, the fact that they discover for themselves what is wrong and how to deal with it leads to changes in their conduct."" Because of the vast complexity of the question (including the plight of non-Caucasian UN delegates), Dr. Marrow devotes much of his space to the historical and contemporary implications of White-Negro relationships, deeming these ""the conflict most fraught with peril for all mankind"" in an epoch in which more than two-thirds of the world's inhabitants are colored.