AND WHAT about racism? As one might expect. its existence is largely exaggerated. Actually, what some of us confuse as race prejudice is really class prejudice. Nothing much would change overnight if all Negroes turned white. Besides, most of them prefer black neighborhoods. Prejudice is no longer the key obstacle to decent living conditions: after all, they prefer to spend their money on things other than good housing. We'd all be much better off if groups like the Kerner Commission stopped overemphasizing racism.

Really, the biggest thing wrong with our cities is that small part of the population which is lower class. Banfield defines them as those whose "time horizon" is such that they cannot conceptualize the future, but, instead, are obliged to live from moment to moment.

Banfield hastens to add that not all Negroes are lower-class. On the other hand, the present lower class is mostly black. (Banfield does not appear to consider that 300 years of living in white America may have played a role in forcing some blacks to be "present-oriented.")

Well, what are we going to do about those lower-class people who are fouling up the cities? (Their number is a relative mystery: Banfield devotes a four-page appendix to discussing that, but with no clear results.) At least twice in the book, he wistfully points out that if only those lower classes would "disappear." "... there would be no serious urban problems worth talking about."

Of course, we can't really make them disappear, can we? Maybe we can cut their birth rate? Or how about taking the children from their parents before the damage is done? Why not permit lower-class parents to sell their infants to "qualified bidders, both private and public"? Alas, though, that would just encourage some people to bring more children into the world. Well, he ponders, we could always make sterilization of the "vendor" (how much better a word that is than mother or father) a condition of sale. But no, it is wrong to represent human beings as commodities.

BANFIELD admits that this lower class is probably growing. And that makes him "apprehensive."

Some of his suggestions-repeal the minimum wage so employers can afford to hire the unskilled, reduce the school-leaving age to 14-are not likely to be enacted, he concedes.

(Others, on the other hand, seem to be part of the present administration's program: Avoid rhetoric tending to raise expectations, give intensive birth-control guidance to the "incompetent poor." intensify police patrol, permit "stop and frisk," "abridge" the freedom of those "extremely likely to commit violent crimes.")

If the do-gooders would just shut up, if that small group of opinion-makers (like journalists) would stop misperceiving the situation, if only we could all get a more realistic (Banfieldian?) view of the urban situation, then maybe public opinion would be ready to accept his rational policies that could more effectively deal with the problems.

Here is a book to please the Nixon-Agnew-Thurmond administration.