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In many ways his problem with race relations is his most exasperating, because, as an oldtime liberal, he feels that his reputation is largely undeserved. For one thing, he has appointed a much higher percentage of blacks to city jobs than any of his three predecessors. For another, there is his handling of a summer job program that got him into trouble with several black groups when he first became mayor. After studying the program, which gave local black leaders the right to hand out a certain number of jobs each, he found that only 76% of those who got the jobs were nonwhite. Koch put an end to the patronage system and set up a computer. The first summer the new system was in operation, 120,000 young people signed up for 60,000 jobs. Of those who got them, 92% were nonwhites. He made a similar improvement in a college program, removing the privilege of selecting participants from the Urban League. The city is now sending 5,000 kids to college instead of 2,000, says Koch, who adds: "You can only get these things done if you're willing to stand up and take all the crap that comes' from rocking someone's boat."
There are some things that Koch will not take. At a public gathering a few months ago, a young physician from California, outraged over the threatened closing of Sydenham Hospital, leaped at Koch and smashed an egg in his face. Koch, who brawls with his eyebrows, did not take the incident philosophically. "I took the bastard to court," he beamed. "And he's going to do some time in jail. That's what he deserves. I won't take that from anybody."
Koch may feel that he does not get enough credit for his good works, but he gets an awful lot of credit by the standards of New York City mayors. Most New Yorkers, prominent and not, are high on Koch, some fairly intoxicated. That is especially true of the middle class, which almost never has a champion, yet clearly has one in the mayor. Koch is even liked in Washington. Senator William Proxmire, chairman of the Banking Committee, who sees a golden fleece in Koch's idea of relying on the Federal Government for the city's economic salvation, nevertheless much admires the mayor's joie de vivre. Almost everyone concedes that for a mad mix of vices and virtues, the mayor and his city are a perfect match.
As for New York's own joie de vivre, is genuine, if precarious. Mike O'Neill, editor of the New York Daily News and an astute observer of the city, exclaims that "it's amazing how the mood of the city has become enthusiastic, optimistic, especially in the cultural, business and economic areas, where everyone seems ebullient about what a great town this is." Foreign money has enriched the city one obvious way. But plenty of foreigners who are nonmillionaires—Cubans, Haitians, Grenadans, Dominicans—have enriched it another, the old way, adding their ore to the melting pot, which still exists.