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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 13, 1991                   TAG: 9103130444
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NEWS IS BIASED/ STREET DEALERS DON'T ORIGINATE DRUG PROBLEM

I AM GLAD the question was asked. I also hope the Roanoke Valley is open and honest enough to look at and accept the responses it receives, starting with the Roanoke Times & World-News.

I subscribe to your paper. I intend after this month to discontinue. Your news coverage is racist.

You never fail to excessively elaborate on negative things in the black community. A good example is drugs.

Economically disadvantaged people may sell drugs, may kill over and for drugs. But they do not bring them into the country. They do not own the planes that transport drugs. They do not have the money, which is the same as power, to create the supply or satisfy the demand. But you continue to report only the convictions of the street dealers and the mules. Then you word it to show they are black.

Drug use, drug dealing and drug-related killings are the symptoms, not the problem. National statistics show that more white teen-agers than blacks use drugs. The issue should be to stop the supplier and help the user.

The working black community pays extremely high taxes in a city that gives very little, if anything, back to them. Where are those tax dollars when we need them? Where are they when we are disabled and can no longer afford to repair our homes or pay our mortgages?

Millions of tax dollars are allocated to help the economically disadvantaged. When blacks work they help pay those tax dollars, but when blacks become disabled they get referred to agencies. The agencies help whites first and blacks if there is any money left.

Many black people will continue to have their homes taken by the city in the name of prosperity and progress. The city got a new civic center and many businesses. The black elderly homeowners got to start all over paying house notes. Slowly but surely, the black community is being attritioned to death. Black genocide - yes, racism - exists in the Roanoke Valley. ESSIE J. MANNS ROANOKE

by CNB