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

DATE: SATURDAY, June 19, 1993                   TAG: 9306220347
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

COUNTRY NEEDED GUINIER

APPALLED but not surprised would only begin to describe my outrage at the thoughtless June 5 editorial ("An embarrassing but right retreat"). Some of you in the majority will never get it, hence 100 more years of racial strife and global turmoil.

One day you may realize that the majority is not somehow mystically endowed with the power of always knowing what is right. I would offer the majority institutions of slavery and Jim Crow, and a constitutional reference to three-fifths human, as evidence of your powers of democratic right. And now at-large elections and primary run-offs, and on and on.

Professor Lani Guinier is what this country needs to move beyond those mystic majority powers of righteousness - a fresh mind, ideas and fresh thought, and real enforcement to end this stale centuries-old race war. The attempt to silence her and her supporters will never prevail.

Spineless is a kind label, considering that it should rightly be placed upon the majority members, including the editorial staffs, that help keep this war raging and these systems intact. It appears to me that your writings are far more suspect, and bear out Guinier's.

You suggest it would not be realistic for the Congressional Black Caucus to support Guinier because she happens to be the best person in the country for the job. Rather, it must be out of blind, misguided racial loyalty. I suggest these Congress members represent scores of people who happen to be white, and who are no less hurt by majority politics that deny human civil rights to anyone. The caucus chairman was right to point out that they provide the winning margin on many bills before that House.

I have never read a more racist statement in this paper. Indeed, your editorial staff could use some fresh minds, ideas and thought. STEPHEN J. JONES ROANOKE

by CNB