Paul Robeson’s Son Hails Racial Mosaic of American Life : Civil Rights: His acclaimed entertainer father was blacklisted, but the things he fought for came to pass.

As an observer of American life, a black man and the only child of a world-famous father, Paul Robeson Jr., 66, decided to write a book. He says, “It’s from 50 years in the civil rights movement, saying, where are we in America, what’s the problem and where should we go.”

The book, “Paul Robeson Jr. Speaks to America,” published by Rutgers University Press, is primarily concerned with how the races fit together in American life and how blacks’ lot can and should be improved. It isn’t a bitter book.

Robeson’s father--twice All-American football player at Rutgers University, who won letters also in baseball, basketball and track; majestic bass singer of lieder, spirituals and “Ol’ Man River” in “Show Boat”; riveting actor in “The Emperor Jones” and “Othello”; spokesman for black betterment in America who praised the Soviet Union as having less racial prejudice--was blacklisted and never worked on Broadway, film or TV after 1945. His son says he died 31 years later, not bitter.

“The things that he fought for all his life came to pass while he was still alive,” Robeson says. “As early as 1949 he thought he would be assassinated because of his political stance. He was ready to die, at peace with himself.

“He wasn’t devastated by the loss of his career. During the ‘50s he gave concerts in black churches and union halls and made records. He retired in 1955, made a comeback in 1958 and did two sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall. He went abroad to resume his career. He came back in 1963 and died in 1976.”

The thesis of Robeson’s book is that America’s melting pot is a thing of the past. And the mosaic, in which groups retain their identity and culture while living beside other groups also retaining theirs, is the present and future.

“The mosaic is here,” Robeson says. “All these groups that were supposed to be melted obviously never got fully melted. All the cultures that were supposed to disappear either refused to or went underground. Blacks were not supposed to be in it anyway. We were underground above ground.

“The problem is to recognize that we are a community of ethnic groups, that people have community responsibility to the group and to the larger society and that individual rights don’t override those relationships. There has to be a balance of individualism, social good and private good.”

At the college level, Robeson thinks there should be a quota system, different from affirmative action in that quotas mean acceptance of those who aren’t qualified.

“What we need is a system where every college in the country takes the best of the unqualified, the ones who are bright but can’t spell, and gives them whatever is necessary to get them through four years of college. If we don’t, we’re going to have a layer of population that’s hopeless. That’s a recipe for a real civil war.

“Most of the black colleges do it. They take kids from families on welfare and the working poor. In a black college, they’re not going to goof off. The aim is perfection. If you’re potentially an A student, they’ll bug you to death if you get a C.”

Robeson recommends that black students major in science. “It is going to be one of the biggest areas in the ‘90s and beyond. Because of blacks being locked out of corporations for so many generations, everybody wants to get an MBA. The sciences have been neglected. There are enormous opportunities there. Many students think they’re not good at math or science, but it may be because these subjects are being taught in a poor way.”

Analyzing the black American scene, Robeson says: “In my generation, our value system couldn’t imagine, ‘I’m going to make it and not worry about the rest of the folks.’ Now, some (black) people may say, ‘I’m making $1 million. It’s OK not to worry about other people and just be a role model, just the image of success.’ That’s not my culture.

“I feel there is a responsibility among black political leaders to challenge the separatist wing in black life. Many black leaders are afraid to do that, afraid of being called not sufficiently black. We can’t afford to play those games in 1993 when what is at stake is where our nation is going to go in the next century.”

Robeson calls the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas confrontation “one of the most significant recent events.”

Hill, a black woman, accused Thomas, a black man nominated to the Supreme Court, of sexual harassment. Thomas denied the allegations and was confirmed.

Robeson says: “The rather tentative but very significant alliance between white and black women across racial and cultural differences jelled in the political sense. There are more black women in politics and a huge support by the black electorate for progressive white female candidates. They’re seen as more progressive than male candidates on health care and jobs.”

Robeson graduated from Cornell University with a degree in electrical engineering. “I was unemployable because I was black and radical. For years I used to record my father and do the sound for his concerts so he could hear himself on stage.” Robeson recently put together some of his father’s recordings on a CD.

“I worked as an instructor in technical trade schools in New York, teaching former GIs to become communications technicians. I was fluent in Russian. I translated Russian physics and engineering journals into English for a living.” Robeson also has been in demand on the lecture circuit.

“My father never lived in the Soviet Union, but I spent two years in school there.

“I graduated from college in 1949, one of the harshest Cold War years there was. The blacklist was ironclad. My father was denied a passport (from 1950) for nine years. He was prevented by presidential decree from traveling outside the United States to places you don’t need a passport for. Cars were sabotaged that were under FBI surveillance. He wasn’t hurt.

“Here was a black male who was one of the most popular artists to black and white alike: actor, singer, intellectual, civil rights forerunner. In 1948 he was talking about voter registration in the South during trips for the Henry Wallace ticket. Many civil rights leaders were first activated by my father two decades before the 1960s movement.

“He was a positive image for Americans during the ‘40s. Every high school chorus sang his version of ‘Ballad for Americans.’

“When he challenged both domestic and foreign policies of the country, he had enormous impact. He was someone that people who ruled the country told children to look up to. When he turned on them, it was an enormous trauma.”

Robeson and his wife, Marilyn, a human resources manager at two hospitals, have two children, David Paul, an electrical engineer, and Susan, a TV producer in Minneapolis, maker of documentary films and author of “The Whole World in His Hands,” a pictorial biography of her grandfather.

Robeson says: “I’m optimistic about the future. I would argue for minimum goals. Let’s get the train off the siding and moving in the right direction and then argue over the engine. If we keep trying to be correct, we’re never going to move.”