Questions of Color : Dividing by Race in American Politics : Politics: Consensus between blacks and whites on racial questions is growing more difficult for political leaders of both parties--and both races.

In American politics, some issues are never resolved.

That is the jagged reminder emerging from the past few weeks of racial unease and political turbulence in states from New York to Arizona. The angry clashes between blacks, whites and Asians in Brooklyn; the black Harvard Law School professor vowing to strike until the school hires a black female colleague; the threat by Arizona conservatives to launch an initiative drive to repeal the state’s new holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.--all testify to America’s persistent division over the most basic questions of race and responsibility.

This division remains an elemental force in U.S. politics. Last fall, some commentators hailed the stunning elections of black Democrats L. Douglas Wilder as governor of Virginia and David N. Dinkins as mayor of New York City as glimmers of a new era of post-racial politics. Now that prospect appears as distant as ever.

If anything, the past few weeks have ingrained the lesson that consensus between blacks and whites on racial questions is growing more difficult for political leaders of both parties--and both races.

At the root of the dilemma is the nation’s contradictory views on race relations. Polls show that in many respects Americans have grown more racially tolerant. But such scars as the murder last year of a black teen-ager by whites in Bensonhurst, N.Y., mark the endurance of pockets of racial hatred. And surveys reveal that while most whites no longer feel blacks are discriminated against in the schools, the job market and the courts, blacks still see racial prejudice as a defining condition in their lives.

For politicians, few things are more frustrating than trying to balance those clashing perspectives. Over the past 25 years, white Democrats have probably had the most experience seeking that equilibrium--with results that underscore its elusiveness.

Ever since Democrats embraced the civil-rights and anti-poverty initiatives of the 1960s, the party has faced the perception among disaffected whites that it is too pliant to black political demands. During the 1988 presidential campaign, many Democrats felt President Bush’s campaign shrewdly manipulated those subterranean sentiments by using furloughed black Massachusetts convict Willie Horton to suggest that Michael S. Dukakis was soft on crime.

Following Ronald Reagan’s success at pummeling Democrats for coddling “welfare queens,” Bush’s ability to push those old buttons on crime clearly caught the party’s attention. Many Democrats this year sound more like Dirty Harry than Harry S. Truman.

Privately, some party strategists concede that the clamorous enthusiasm for the death penalty, boot camps and prison construction springs partly from the Democrats’ desire to reassure white voters that they will stand up to minorities. That impulse may also have influenced the Senate’s rejection last week of legislation that would have barred the death penalty in cases where the defendant could prove a pattern of racial discrimination in its application.

“Unquestionably part of the stridency on crime is a worry about race,” said one Democratic pollster involved in several statewide campaigns. “This is still a Democratic party . . . afraid, in its timidity, that the American people see us as too close to blacks. . . . Everybody knows that when they talk about executing murderers, they are talking about blacks and Latinos.”

In that respect, the hard line on crime represents an attempt to shift the party’s balance back toward the perceived concerns of suburban whites. But that shift carries its own risks. Black voters tolerate crime no more than whites--not surprisingly, polls suggest that besieged inner-city residents support even tougher measures than suburbanites.

But some white Democrats have misstepped by appearing to give crime a black face. Earlier this year, Florida gubernatorial candidate Bill Nelson was forced to apologize after contending that the early prison release of a black convict who was later accused of killing two police officers would be the Republican governor’s “Wille Horton--only worse.” And this month, black leaders criticized Gov. James J. Blanchard (D-Mich.) for a reelection ad that featured a white guard dressing down a black inmate.

Neither the Florida nor Michigan campaign will turn on these incidents--but as symbols of subtly realigning priorities they remind us how narrow a line politicians must walk when disturbing the unsettled ground of race. In different ways, the same lesson has been impressed upon Wilder and Dinkins in the past few weeks.

As moderate, unthreatening, coalition-builders, Wilder and Dinkins have been hailed by many white Democrats as “reasonable” alternatives to racially polarizing black leaders such as Jesse Jackson. But not all blacks are certain they need an alternative.

Both Wilder and Dinkins can depend on the vast majority of black voters for as long as they remain in politics. But some black leaders maintain that each, in his desire to reach out to whites, has failed to press black needs aggressively enough. One group of black protesters marching through Bensonhurst earlier this month denounced Dinkins as a “Judas.”

“Their strategy is out of tune with . . . what is happening in the black community,” Georgia state Rep. Tyrone Brooks said. “There is a growing militancy in the black community that we cannot ignore. They try to run from it, and people are going to say, ‘I don’t see you representing me or standing up fighting racism.’ ”

Wilder, Dinkins and other ambitious minority politicians--such as former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, now a gubernatorial candidate in Georgia--are pinioned between those sentiments and electoral reality. The hard fact is that the path to greater political power for blacks now runs mostly through white neighborhoods.

All but one of the congressional districts where blacks constitute a majority is already represented by a black; though some additional black seats might be created after the 1990 reapportionment, blacks will increase their numbers in Congress and statewide offices largely to the extent they can appeal to whites. The same dynamic affects Latinos.

As a result, Wilder, Dinkins and candidates like them are finding it impractical to embrace demands of blacks or Latinos as unreservedly as the minority politicians who have few whites in their constituencies. Like white Democrats, and such early crossover politicians as Tom Bradley in Los Angeles, they are now forced to balance racial interests--and sometimes disappoint supporters who prefer the old, uncompromised advocacy.

Just as white Democrats have long split over how to deal with minorities, the prospect is that minority Democrats will increasingly divide over how to deal with whites. “We may be seeing a significant threat to what was once perceived as the monolithic political strategies of the black community,” said Eddie Williams, president of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank that analyzes issues affecting blacks.

For much of the modern civil-rights era, Republicans have not had to make these choices. With little prospect of winning minority votes, many Republicans reflexively resisted their agenda.

That’s still standard procedure for portions of the GOP. But since 1988, President Bush has reached out to blacks with great success.

The price of that popularity is that Bush now faces the same perilous balancing act confronting Democrats. Black leaders have already warned Bush that a veto of the pending legislation restoring civil-rights protections trimmed by recent Supreme Court decisions could destroy much of the good will he has accumulated.

By reaching out to blacks, Bush creates risks for those Democrats who would make the party less attentive to minority needs. But he has complicated the GOP’s political strategy, too. The Reagan Administration essentially used civil-rights issues to appeal to whites , not blacks. Now Bush wants to satisfy both. As any Democrat could tell him, on racial questions that’s not an easy job. But none is more worthy of a President’s sweat.