Daily News from New York, New York • 35

ation issue Museums bash requires sense of fairness in politically correct spree erything. Some of these ques tions would test the wisdom of DAVID BRODER Solomon. Illegal alien parents may and often do have chil dren born in the United States Immigration is an issue you can hardly mention without having steam coming out of people's ears. -In the midst of this caterwauling, it was no small achievement for Barbara Jordan, the former congresswom-an and now a professor at the University of Texas, to deliver a unanimous report last week from a bi-partisan and diverse Commission on Immigration Reform, created by Congress JOHN LEO -o who are citizens. If the parents cannot work legally, the children are eligible for welfare.

But programs aimed at The Enola Gay controversy at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington is no isolated incident, just the most publicized example so far of the politically correct makeover under way at the various museums of the Smithsonian Institution. The folks at Air and Space went way too far with plans for next year's exhibition on the end of World War II and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, arguing that with the idea of military valor Famous fighter pilots should -not be considered heroes even Germany's famous Red Baron downed many pilots by "stealth and surprise," not in dramatic dogfights as many imagine. Up in the Air and Space planetarium, a film on "Exploring New Worlds," recently closed, was even more heavily politicized. Exploring the heavens was linked to "the frantic exploration and ex moving families off welfare do not include illegals. Jordan, who was named commission chairman just a year ago, professes no glib an to examine the myriad controversies embedded in that subject Its most controversial recommendation for a pilot program to test the feasibility of a computerized national registry of workers' Social Security numbers, so employers could find out readily if they were about to hire an illegal was treated by the Clinton administration as if it were a grenade.

But when I read the report and went to see Jordan and commission Executive Director Susan Martin, I learned some things ploitation" conducted on Earth by Columbus and Europeans in general. A walkthrough exhibit "Where Next Columbus?" raised the question of whether the West will repeat this alleged exploitation in space. A lighted display asked the vexing question, "Does Mars Have Rights?" Below, the display said: "Historically, the arrival of explorers has not always been benign." Large sections of the Museum of Natural History are closed, presumably for renovation. Meanwhile, "dilemma labels" on the walls apologize for older, unreformed exhibits. One dilemma label complains that in these displays, "Humans are treated as more important than other mammals." Over at the Museum of American History, America was conducting a racist war against Japan, while "for most Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against Western imperialism." That perverse view of the war and American motives, running through hundreds of pages of early draft versions of the show, was bound to attract attention from veterans and historians who knew better.

But the same vision of America as oppressive, racist and destructive increasingly runs through the Smithsonian complex. Part of the new Smithsonian strategy is to keep stressing the negatives. The end of America's most honorable and successful war is celebrated by focusing on the morally ambiguous act of bombing Japanese cities. At the National Museum of American History, the 200th anniversary of the Constitution was celebrated by an exhibition on the document's most spectacularviola-tion the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. It's a good show and Americans ought to know about the internments, but that was it nothing else from the Smithsonian on the bicentennial of a stupendous political achievement The current "Science in American Life" exhibit at the Smithsonian's Museum of American History is another exercise in accentuating the negative.

It's a disparaging, politically loaded look at American science, concentrating, single-miudedly on failures and dangers: DDT, Three Mile Island, the ozone hole, acid rain, the Challenger explosion. An "Avenge Pearl Harbor" poster at the science exhibit makes the same point that the Enola Gay text does: that the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan was an irrational act of vengeance. The exhibition veers well away from science to remind us that armed forces were still segregated in World War II, with a black soldier decrying America as a "so-called democracy." At the Air and Space Museum, a show on A vision of America as oppressive, racist and destructive swers for such a paradox. But she is going to continue working on them for the three years the commission will remain in business. And that is good news, because there is no one in public life who has more of the calm deliberation and steadfast adherence to principle that this issue needs.

When I asked Jordan to place this question in the context of the struggles for justice she has been engaged in all her life, he knew exactly what she wanted to say: "It is not a cliche to say we are a nation of immigrants. Immigrants have been welcomed into this country over the centuries. We hold the Statue of Liberty and the words of Emma Lazarus out there to the -world. "Now, when economic conditions be-come a little stringent, we look around for someone to blame. Right now, the immigrant is the one getting the blame for whatever the social ill is.

It is immigrant-bashing and it is, in my opinion, an outrage for the kind of nation we are a nation with a proud history to see this being used in a callous, political way that is so "The legitimate problem that must be addressed is that we are not only a nation of immigrants, we also believe in the rule of law. If we believe in the rule of law, then people should not be able to get into this country if they violate the law. Illegal aliens, people who are unauthorized to come here, break the law to get in. And any nation worth its salt must control its borders. "Now, if we are what we claim to be in our mottos, then why don't we reinforce our identity as an accepting and caring people and try to deal reasonably and rationally with the real issues.

In this disparate commission, we tried to cut through the rhetoric about immigration and tried to look at the problems in a very factual, non-emotional way. I think it is time for reason and logic to prevail. What we are dealing with here is nothing less than the definition of America." I can imagine no better arbiter and moderator of the needed national debate on immigration than Barbara Jordan. an exhibition on America from 1780 to 1800 treats Indians, blacks and Europeans as three equally excellent cultures, with Indians and blacks perhaps a bit more excellent because they "studied nature in order to work in harmony with it not to control it" and they "developed sophisticated methods of systematizing their knowledge and elaborate technologies." On a recent two-hour trek through th history museum, I noticed very little celebrating American achievement nothing about the Founding Fathers, or what Americans have in common. Instead, the emphasis is on separateness and the alleged need to resist the constant oppression by the narrow and exclusionary dominant culture.

This is the familiar ideology of campus political correctness, imported whole into our national museum structure. Your tax dollars at work. Reprinted from U.S. News World Report Barbara Jordan: There is no quick fix that were not obvious from the political reaction. First, Jordan and her colleagues have been careful not to claim any quick fix for the problem of illegal immigration.

The strategy they recommend is a carefully balanced mix of measures that would strengthen the U.S. capacity to prevent illegals from entering the country, make it harder for them to find work, and define sensible national principles for deciding which benefits and social services immigra. canreeeive. I do nbt know that they have solved ev World War I is essentially used to indict the airplane and technology in general for the vast slaughter of civilians and soldiers over the past 75 years. The show is impatient Refuting hate a matter of life and death E.R.

SHIPP I I anguished question rang out, piercing through whatever composure anyone was able to hold onto Saturday morning at the House ers, yes. And our society for making violence glamorous. And ourselves for not teaching children that in our cities at this time they can no longer play games like cops and robbers. That lesson hadn't sunk in Saturday where, a few blocks from the church, four 10 and 11-year-old boys in baggy baby-thug clothing gleefully fired toy pistols A838s they called them outside a Kansas Fried Chicken. One of the boys said that Nick's, death had only convinced him to "keep my gun in my pocket" when cops are around.

There is mainly sympathy for Officer Brian George, who fired the fatal shot that killed Nick. Even as the grieving family was departing the church, heading to the cemetery, a clump of men who had attended the funeral discussed the situation. "He had a right to be scared," said one man in defense of the cop. A day later a woman told me: "If a 9-year-old shoots you, you're just as dead." She recalled recently seeing a 4-year-old pretending to shoot a passing police officer with his finger. Suspicion about police officers based on the demonstrated racism and corruption of some of them cannot lead us to permit children to "dis" all cops.

I saw that happening outside the Abyssinian Baptist Church on Sunday afternoon, where a group of kids shooting baskets in a makeshift hoop near the church were asked by two cops to move their game out of respect for churchgoers. The kids dispersed but not before heaping verbal abuse upon the cops and the churchgoers. ENDANGERED SPECIES. That's how black children are being referred to these days. According to the Children's Defense Fund, a black child dies from firearms every four hours and a black child is arrested for a violent crime every 11 minutes.

At the funeral, the Rev. Herbert Daughtry took note of the violence, drugs and disease that claim so many lives and the prison cells that await far too many more. He recalled the names of other black boys "killed by people we pay to protect us," adding: "You understand why some thoughtful people are driven to the conclusion that the youth of African ancestry are an endangered species." "Endangered Species" is the name of a play being performed this month at the National Black Theatre in Harlem. The play, by Judy Shepherd-King, depicts the live-or-die choices urban children make every day. It "takes what it actually looks like and puts it on stage," explained Alimi Ballard, the actor who plays Bigger, one of the leading characters.

"It says, 'Hey, this is what you could look like. Check it' The message seemed to get through to the 40 to 50 youngsters who attended each performance over the weekend, kids from group homes, community centers and housing projects like the Albany Houses in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuy-vesant where the theater's producer, Tunde Samuel, grew up. "We've got to do whatever we can to keep the black man from becoming extinct" Bigger says at one point "Let's say no to hate. Let's say no to violence. Let's say yes to life." Indeed.

of the Lord Church in Brooklyn. For we had come to bury another black child. Why indeed? In this case the child, Nicholas Na-quan Heyward Jr. Nick to his intermediate school principal and his pastor, Naquan to family members was slain last week by a housing police officer who mistook his toy rifle for the real thing. Nick and his pals had been playing cops and robbers on the roof of one of the buildings that make up the Gowanus Houses, where this year alone there have been four murders, 19 reported instances of shots fired, 19 robberies and 34 serious assaults.

Reaction has been muted, for whom should we blame? The toy gun manufactur at a. 3 CD a..