LIBERAL RACISM.

In the end, the objection to the NYPD's successful anti-crime policy amounts to a desire to ignore racial disparities in crime and to escape their implications. Liberals in particular are unhappy fighting crime if they seem to be fighting mainly black crime. Their favorite offenses are "hate" and white-collar crimes where, they hope, more of the "perps" will turn out to be white. And they shrink from police tactics that, though they may greatly benefit the black majority by increasing their safety, may undermine liberal myths of pervasive white racism and black victimhood. It is this liberal racism that forms the emotional backdrop to the Diallo case in New York.

Admittedly, there are local enemies who would like to check Giuliani's career and who are not above falsely attributing his success to racial discrimination in law enforcement. An earlier victim of police brutality, Abner Louima, was persuaded by one of his "advisors," probably either "the Rev." Al or one of his accomplices, to make the false allegation that a cop had shouted out, "It's Giuliani time!" in the course of beating and sodomizing him. Nor do the mayor's enemies stop at the city line. Democrats and the Clinton administration have recently launched no fewer than three inquiries into police tactics in New York, and President Clinton devoted a recent radio talk to police brutality. These were almost certainly precautionary steps in a possible Senate campaign by Mrs. Clinton.

But the glue that holds all liberal critics together is the conviction that white America is fundamentally racist and has to be continually restrained from its punitive racist impulses. Hence the trends in media coverage and political rhetoric noted above: White-on-black crimes must be highlighted to shame white America out of its racism; black-on-white crimes must be downplayed lest they encourage white America in its racism; and any broader social indicators-whether crime statistics or police tactics-must be judged by the test of whether they serve to encourage or restrain white racism.

As with almost all liberal policies, of course, the unintended consequences are likely to prove more important than those intended. Hastily recruited minority cops will be more likely to act, and shoot, as hastily (the Detroit and Washington forces, which have higher numbers of minorities, also have much worse records of police brutality); uniformed cops will be unable to surprise criminals; and monitoring "racial" friskings will waste police time and discourage the frisking of manifestly dangerous suspects when the relevant quota has been filled. Even while these reforms are still in the discussion stage, the number of street-crime arrests in New York has fallen by 60 percent since the Diallo killing, and the murder rate has ticked up slightly. Once they are implemented, crime will resume its increase, including black crime; white racism will then have more to feed on; and-oh yes-the number of black victims will rise disproportionately too. But what will that matter to comfortable middle-class liberals as long as "the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die"?