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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 2, 1990                   TAG: 9005020479
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Richmond Times-Dispatch
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WILDER AND THE BLACK AGENDA

BY ELECTING L. Douglas Wilder their governor, the people of Virginia clearly embraced the ideal of racial unity. This black political leader would not have made it to the state's highest public office without substantial white support.

Now, however, some political observers are criticizing the governor for, in effect, not making racial divisiveness a policy of his administration. They seem to want him to be a "black" governor.

This is the gist of remarks certain political scientists made in a recent Associated Press article concerning Gov. Wilder's performance. The story reported that "some critics say he has ignored black concerns" by, among other things, favoring expansion of the death penalty and by refusing to support the admission of women to the presently all-male Virginia Military Institute.

Charles E. Jones, associate professor of political science at Old Dominion University, was especially critical of the governor's refusal to take a strong stand on the VMI issue. Associate Professor George Persons of Georgia Tech was quoted as saying that if the governor's "agenda is just going to be politics as usual, then I don't think there's that much for blacks to be excited about."

Gov. Wilder should ignore such pernicious carping. It is, first, racist to suggest that a govenor who has been elected to serve all the people should consider himself obligated to give priority to the "concerns" of members of his own race. Would the political scientists who castigate Wilder for not doing so applaud a white governor who pursued such a biased policy? Second, the critics err by describing crime and the VMI admissions policy as issues on which there must be opposing "black" and "white" views.

Crime is no respecter of persons; and deterrence of crime is in the interests of citizens of all colors. To advocate the death penalty for the most vicious murders is not to be against blacks; it is to be against vicious murderers. Many whites oppose the death penalty, and many blacks support it. It is not, the professors' complaints to the contrary notwithstanding, a "black" issue.

As for VMI's male-only admissions policy, that is in no way comparable to the all-white practices that kept blacks out of public schools and colleges for generations. Discriminating solely on the basis of race implies that people of one color are "better" than people of another, which, this nation has decided, is abhorrent to the principles on which this republic was founded. Barring women from a military school like VMI can be justified by its adherence to rigorous standards and programs that might be too demanding physically for most women, by the missions of the college and by other factors which do not suggest that males are inherently better than females.

It was the goal of the late Martin Luther King Jr. and his colleagues in the civil rights movement to topple racial barriers that kept blacks out of the American mainstream - to use one of Gov. Wilder's favorite words - and to make them full and equal partners of whites in social, economic and political affairs. Gov. Wilder's election was a spectacular fulfillment of the civil-rights crusaders' hopes. Arguments that he should become a "black" governor are manifestations of the very segregationist mentality that the crusaders fought so hard to discredit.

by CNB