Action Programs

WASHINGTON -- A coalition of black leaders, holding an emergency meeting to discuss concerns over the legislative agenda of the incoming GOP leadership in Congress, vowed yesterday to fight attempts to gut programs that help African-Americans."

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration will announce a new approach in the awarding of government contracts that may end race-based preferences for some minority-owned businesses while making billions of dollars in federal contracts available for others, officials said yesterday.The new effort reflects a commitment within the administration to preserve some affirmative action programs while complying with court rulings that severely limit them.The revised approach, in proposed Justice Department regulations to be issued this week, will substantially change the rules for awarding federal contracts worth $200 billion a year.

Three in four Marylanders say race relations in the state are "only fair" or "poor," according to a survey by the University of Baltimore's Schaefer Center for Public Policy.The survey of 845 Maryland residents showed considerable pessimism about relations between blacks and whites in the state. (No questions were asked about Latinos and Asian-Americans.)Asked to "characterize the conditions of race relations in Maryland," 50 percent called them "only fair," 25 percent "poor," 21 percent "good" and 1 percent "excellent."

PRESIDENT GEORGE Bush a closet liberal? That has to be the biggest political shocker in modern times. But it appears to be true.Despite everything he has said, it's now clear that Bush believes in racial quotas and affirmative action, which are almost obscene words to most of his fellow Republicans.It has to be assumed he believes in these measures because he has just practiced affirmative action and observed a racial quota.As you surely know, he has nominated Clarence Thomas, 43, to replace Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court.

A push by Mayor Martin O'Malley to recruit more minority businesses comes as courts across the country have struck down government programs that are favorable to a specific race, gender or ethnic group - including Baltimore's minority contracting policies. But city officials say the outreach plan introduced by the mayor this week should escape legal challenges because it offers no preferential treatment to minority-owned businesses, which still must compete against other businesses for public dollars.

The invitation for "Baltimore's Bubblin'," the Citizens Planning and Housing Association's annual Neighborhood Nosh, called for "construction site chic." That described not only how guests were dressed but also the party site itself -- Tide Point, the old Procter & Gamble factory, which is being transformed into a high-tech business center. About 300 folks socialized around sawhorses and 2-by-4s festooned with yellow caution tape and bunches of balloons. The guests sipped champagne, while machine-made bubbles floated in the air. Co-chairs Caroline Moore, Carolyn O'Keefe and Helen Szablya supervised the shindig, which included: Ava Lias-Booker, CPHA board president; Peter Behringer, Joe McNeely, Ruth Wolf Rehfeld and Michael Sullivan, board members; Bill Struever, president of Struever Bros.

Washington. -- "GU,'' for ''geographically undesirable,'' is one of the most remarkable terms the singles world ever produced. It refers to some hot number you just met who suddenly turns cold, in your assessment, once you find out that he or she lives too far away to make a continuing relationship conveniently worthwhile.Sure, it sounds like a typically stupid, cold, callous, self-centered and dehumanizing me-generation thing to say. (Whatever happened to the old-fashioned notion of ''I'd go to the ends of the Earth for you''?

Washington.-- When an injustice goes uncorrected, it becomes an evil -- and the Rodney King verdict is evil.Only the most foolish among us could say that 56 blows with metal batons is not excessive force for a swarm of officers trying to fix handcuffs on one kneeling man already dazed from the shock of a stun gun. The fact that the jury reportedly came to its conclusions early makes it all the more revolting.This is one of the most disgusting displays of courtroom injustice since 1955 when a southern jury set free two men who later -- when they were beyond the reach of the law -- casually confessed to the murder of Emmett Till.

CATOCTIN FURNACE -- On a recent Saturday night, about 50 people -- mostly young men and women -- stood in the back yard of a home here that offered a sweeping view of the countryside and distant Sugarloaf Mountain. They listened to nearly two hours of "white power" speeches and watched a tall, cloth-wrapped cross being burned.Few outside the immediate area paid any attention, but to leaders of Frederick County communities it was an image they would like to go away.It was a meeting of a Ku Klux Klan group that for years has called part of the county home and the gathering represented the group's latest effort to get its message beyond this rural Catoctin mountains area.