Official Under Fire Over Racial Views in Book

The chairman of a federal panel said Wednesday that she does not share the racial views contained in a book she once said she co-authored, as angry House members circulated a letter calling for her removal.

“Those views are not mine, period,” Marianne Mele Hall, chairman of the Copyright Royalty Tribunal, told the House subcommittee on courts, civil liberties and the administration of justice.

“I was merely the editor . . . simply verbs, nouns, pronouns, dangling participles, sentence structure,” Hall said. “I considered myself a ghost author. I never did any research or any writing or offered opinions or drew conclusions or indicated that those views are mine. They are not mine. They are Dr. Hafstad’s.”

‘Foundations in Sand’

The book in question, “Foundations in Sand,” lists its authors as Lawrence Hafstad, a physicist, with Marianne Mele and John Morse.

Hall, an attorney, was confirmed by the Senate on April 2 for her $70,000-a-year job with the panel, which sets royalty rates for cable television stations, public broadcasting, the recording industry and jukeboxes. She listed herself as co-author of “Foundations in Sand” in response to a question on a Senate document.

Among the eight essays in the 71-page book is one called “The Minority Problem,” which contends that most American blacks “insist on preserving their jungle freedoms, their women, their avoidance of personal responsibility and their abhorrence of the work ethic.”

The authors denounce sociologists for putting blacks “on welfare so that they can continue their jungle freedoms of leisure time and subsidized procreation” and recommend a “separate but superior” school system for blacks.

The schools should be staffed by male teachers, because blacks resent female teachers, and school principals should be “retired star athletes,” the essay says.

In a letter to President Reagan, Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose) and other House members said the book “reeks with the stench of racism” and called on the President to remove Hall from her position “without delay.”