JUST BETWEEN US BLACKS

Which is where this collection of radio commentaries by the former U.S. Ambassador to Finland should have remained -- for this is the most banal pottage of liberal hokey-dokey since Hubert Humphrey stopped campaigning for president. When Rowan's not deploring drugs, poverty or Watergate, he's offering advice to blacks on joining the local Rotary or country club to make business contacts. In true nebbish fashion he finds a silver lining in every cloud -- the black illegitimacy rate in D.C. may have gone up in 1972, but the number of babies went down -- isn't that wonderful! As for reprinting dated broadcasts, Tricky Dick and Agnew have gone the way of Roy Wilkins (as the author writes: ""tempus fugits"" [sic]) -- it would have been kinder to let these Chrysler-sponsored speeches requiescant with them in pace.