July 16, 1981

Secretary of Transportation Drew Lewis said yesterday that if Mayor Koch and Governor Carey submitted a joint request, he would approve a plan to trade in Federal funds earmarked for the Westway for use on mass transit. In a letter to Mayor Koch, Mr. Lewis said for the first time that the 4.2-mile underground highway along landfill on the West Side of Manhattan would be considered ''nonessential'' to a unified and connected interstate highway sys- New York City officials, fearing that some taxes to aid mass transit might be difficult to collect, have proposed changes in them. Page B3. tem and that he would ''therefore approve a request if one were submitted.''

Clyde Woody, who has lived in the historic black neighborhood here for 36 years, was chatting recently about the latest offer for his two-and-a-half-story house. ''A white man came by the other day and offered something in the 60's for it,'' recalled Mr. Woody, a retired auto worker, as he sat on the narrow portico of the white clapboard house at 13 Green Street. ''I told him I wasn't interested. He asked would I be interested if the offer was in the 70s. I told him no because, I've got nowhere else to go.'' Mr. Woody is one of a number of black homeowners in the area known as Witherspoon-Jackson who in recent years have been offered sizable sums for their homes by whites.

The American auto industry had only modest hopes for 1981, after a disastrous year in which the domestic producers lost more than $4 billion. Sales, they said, would increase to 10 million cars from 8.9 million in 1980. Even that goal has been unattainable so far this year, and analysts are now saying that the industry will be lucky to sell more than 9 million cars. The only time when sales exceeded 10 million on an annual basis was in February and March, when profit-sapping rebates were in effect.

A map of Minnesota yesterday incorrectly labeled the river that forms Minnesota's border with Wisconsin in the southern sector of both states. It is the Mississippi.

President Reagan has privately assured black leaders that he will not cripple the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but at the same time Administration officials are cutting back civil rights enforcement by the Justice Department and weakening the regulations against racial discrimination in employment. Administration officials and civil rights leaders acknowledge these developments as the major components in a Reagan Administration civil rights policy that seems to be evolving. Under this policy, Mr. Reagan is publicly reaffirming his philosophical commitment to black rights while enforcement agencies turn away from such remedies as busing, lawsuits and affirmative-action programs that the Government has used to fight racial discrimination. Confusion and Fear Among Blacks Mr. Reagan's apparent shift in favor of extending the Voting Rights Act is part of an Administration political offensive against what Arthur A. Fletcher, a black Republican invited to the White House last week, called ''the inordinate fear that is pervading the black community'' since Mr. Reagan took office. But the President's remark that he was having second thoughts about his earlier position that the Voting Rights Act ought to cover all 50 states caused confusion among his black guests and some Administration officials.