CLASS CONFLICTS TO BE TOPIC FOR COLUMNIST'S WEDNESDAY SPEECH

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

DATE: TUESDAY, February 18, 1992                   TAG: 9202180175
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-5   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: MELANIE S. HATTER NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium
CLASS CONFLICTS TO BE TOPIC FOR COLUMNIST'S WEDNESDAY SPEECH
Washington Post columnist William Raspberry didn't want to give away his speech before he delivers it at Virginia Tech on Wednesday.
But he was quite willing to talk about anything else, he said.
As part of Black History Month, Raspberry is speaking in Squires Student Center at Virginia Tech at 8 p.m.
After some persuasion he did say he would discuss "warring factions" among races and sexes and social and geographic groups in America.
Raspberry, whose column appears in 175 newspapers across the country including the Roanoke Times & World-News, has been with The Washington Post almost 30 years.
In a recent telephone interview, he talked about the importance of reaching out to black children who are falling by the wayside.
"We have an obligation to rescue as many of the children as possible," said Raspberry, who gained national recognition and the Capital Press Club's Journalist of the Year award for his coverage of the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles.
He said African-Americans are split into two groups: Those who are doing reasonably well and can be categorized as the black middle class, and those not doing well whose prospects are getting dimmer every day.
The first group doesn't owe anything to the second group, he said, but "their own well-being depends on reducing the so-called underclass."
People are not doing nearly enough, he said.
"In every community someone is doing something, but I don't know of any community that's doing all that needs to be done," Raspberry said.
Those who are able to provide help have little contact with those who need it, he said. They live across town from each other or go to different churches, "their paths don't cross normally."
Fortunately, "there are some who will offer mentoring or guidance to those who say they want it. . . . We can do it, whether we will or not, I don't know."
Society is losing young black men to the streets where they are killing each other. It's a moral problem that can be treated, but "only by people who care. Governments can't care," although they can provide funding for programs, he said.
Raspberry recently signed up for a mentoring program offered through the National Urban League that matches men and women over 50 with junior high school students. He doesn't know what the results will be, but he's going to try, he said.
He supports having the option of schools for young black men and compared it to an intensive care unit in a hospital.
"Black boys are in such desperate trouble, they need special attention and care," he said. "It's not discriminatory to put me in an intensive care unit if I need special care."
Many blacks are dying from AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) and some say basketball star Earvin "Magic" Johnson, who tested positive for the HIV virus, will influence young blacks to be careful about sexual activity.
But Raspberry isn't so sure.
"It won't make a helluva lot of difference . . . he's not telling them anything they haven't heard before," he said.
Commenting on the rape conviction of former heavy-weight boxer Mike Tyson, Raspberry described it is as an "all round tragedy. But what I have difficulty with is those who ought to know better came to his defense as if it were just another black man being victimized. They forgot he brutally raped a young black girl."
People seem to believe that the rich and famous are immune to intolerable behavior, Raspberry said, but it's a huge mistake not to hold them to high moral behavior.
As a father of two daughters, aged 20 and 23, Raspberry said he could imagine young women in a celebratory atmosphere doing "something foolish." He also has a 19-year-old son.
If it had been one of his daughters, he said, "I would've been outraged and we would have had a long talk . . . but the fact that my daughter did something stupid doesn't give him the right to attack her."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB