RACIAL TENSION

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 3, 1993                   TAG: 9304050234
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short
RACIAL TENSION
OUTSIDERS coming in to help Franklin County residents resolve the racial tensions that have surfaced at the county high school? It's worth a try.
An impartial third party may be the best hope for assessing the situation and figuring out how to improve it. With the level of mistrust high, investigations and assurances by school authorities are suspect. Superintendent Leonard Gereau has shown both an understanding of that and a desire to end discord by asking a Justice Department mediator to investigate complaints of racism in the schools.
The thought of an outside agency poking around, asking questions about the touchy subject of racial attitudes, may cause resentment initially. But it is a chance to start a constructive dialogue, which has been sorely lacking.
Mediator Frank Tyler says he'll talk to as many people as possible from every interested group - students, parents, teachers, school administrators - to get their perceptions of, and ideas for improving, race relations. We hope he can. The initial outcry, stirred by an allegation of racist remarks by one white teacher, would long since have faded if there were not larger, underlying tensions.
The incident seems merely to have raised to the surface a boil of racial animosities and distrust that continues to fester. It needs to be lanced.
Perhaps Tyler can be the instrument for that. The wounds can be healed, though, only by the people of the county, black and white, with the will to get beyond old prejudices and hurts.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB