What was going on when I was born?

Two dispatches from Dallas last week discussed a speech on Jewish-black relations by Rabbi David Saperstein at the convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The rabbi, who is Washington representative of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, said most Jewish organizations had views supporting goals and timetables in the cause of affirmative action.

An article in Metropolitan Report on Friday about The Village Voice incorrectly described the departure of a Voice writer, Alexander Cockburn. Mr. Cockburn, a critic of Israel, was suspended in February 1984 for having accepted a $10,000 grant from the Institute of Arab Studies to write a book about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The Voice's editor, who had said the grant created a conflict of interest, later invited Mr. Cockburn to return, but the writer declined. He was not dismissed.

Until the night of June 12, when he lay dying outside Morningside Park of a gunshot fired by a plainclothes policeman who was not much older than he, 17-year-old Edmund Perry seemed bound for a destiny far removed from his Harlem surroundings. So, it seemed, was his 19-year-old brother, Jonah. ''Don't look for praise,'' Edmund had written the month before to a girlfriend at Milton Academy outside Boston. ''Don't ask for pity. Don't rise for glory. But know yourself and command respect.'' To many who knew Edmund and Jonah Perry - and to many who knew the police officer - the turn their lives took that warm June night seems inexplicable even now.

The 83-year-old Chinese prelate recognized by the Vatican as Bishop of Shanghai, the Rev. Ignatius Kung, was released from prison on parole today after spending nearly 30 years in jail, the New China News Agency announced. Bishop Kung, whose Chinese name is Gong Pinmei, is the best-known of the hundreds of Chinese clerics who were persecuted by the Communists in the 1950's for their refusal to bow to a movement that severed ties between the Roman Catholic Church in China and the Vatican. The movement, in effect, placed the church under Communist control. Despite the recent liberalizing of many aspects of Chinese life, that control is still in effect.

An obituary on June 26 of Walter R. Staub, retired chairman of the accounting firm of Coopers & Lybrand, erroneously located the firm's headquarters. It is in Manhattan.

Reacting to a trade deficit that the Reagan Administration says could hit $150 billion this year, Congress is wading into a flood of bills to curb imports of everything from shirts, sweaters and shoes to ferroalloys and lumber in the postwar era's greatest deluge of protectionist legislation. Moreover, the protectionist drive is bipartisan, and some of the bills, notably those to curtail textile imports and telecommunications products, are expected to pass at least one house of Congress, if not both, and test the liberal trade policy of the Administration. This situation is bringing protests from leaders of other nations, who fear their economies will suffer if the United States curbs their exports, and is subtly affecting world diplomacy. Comments From Congress ''This thing is going to correct itelf one way or the other,'' said the chairman of the House trade subcommittee, Sam Gibbons, Democrat of Florida. ''We can't go on the way we are. Eventually the system will collapse. In the meantime, we may enact some dangerous legislation.''

''I felt a little old. I know 26 is not old age but I've been on the tour eight years and at times, it catches up to you.''

A FEW years ago Jeffrey A. Hollender and Mitchell Deutsch had to coax booksellers to glance at their wares: non-music audio programming - from self-help to science fiction - on cassettes. No more. At the spring convention of the American Booksellers Association in San Francisco, ''suddenly the lights went on,'' Mr. Deutsch said. One of the reasons for the newfound popularity of Mr. Hollender, 30 years old, and Mr. Deutsch, who is 28, was that in January they sold their company, Network for Learning, to Warner Communications, which renamed it Warner Audio Publishing. Another reason is that the booksellers, like Warner, had discovered that the audio cassette is now one of publishing's hottest products - and that Mr. Hollender and Mr. Deutsch are arguably the hottest audio publishers.

In a move that could make the Squibb Corporation a major player in the pharmaceutical industry, the Food and Drug Administration approved the company's Capoten drug for treating all levels of hypertension, Squibb said yesterday. The announcement caused Squibb's shares to jump $3.25, to $67.25, a 20-year high. It was the fourth-biggest dollar gainer on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday.

Rosemarie O'Keefe remembers life in Bay Ridge before the fiscal crisis as a halcyon time of officers walking the beat, sanitation workers sweeping steadily and park custodians waiting to hand out basketballs in the morning and lock up checkerboards at night. In 1975, a new elementary school for which neighborhood leaders had fought long and hard was rising triumphantly on Third Avenue beneath the Gowanus Expressway. Amid their well-tended silver maples and well-paved streets, the residents of this middle-class Brooklyn community generally regarded the city fathers as beneficent and remote. ''We didn't have to worry about anything,'' recalled Mrs. O'Keefe. ''We just had to come home from work, take a dead pill and watch TV.''

Last year's Christmas card from two employees of the Toy Manufacturers Association pictured an exhausted Santa Claus slumped against a hearth. A man with a briefcase labeled Consultant Inc. hovered nearby, telling Santa what he already knew so well: ''We've got to help you level out this seasonal peak.'' Indeed, a more level sales pattern is the longstanding desire of the highly seasonal $12 billion toy industry, and some manufacturers, retailers and analysts think they are beginning to fulfill that desire. Most toy manufacturers are adopting some of these strategies to encourage year-round sales: * Developing ''collectibles'' - toy lines marketed as a series and that include products at varying prices such as Coleco's Cabbage Patch dolls and Hasbro's Transformers.

A report by The Associated Press in the Metropolitan Briefs column on Monday, about criticism of the Transit Authority's police radio system, incorrectly described communications between Officer Irma Lozada, who was slain on duty last September, and her partner. Only Officer Lozada carried a radio, and the transit police said there were no indications of transmission problems from the site where she was killed.