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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 1, 1995                   TAG: 9511010043
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IMAGES

YOU'VE seen pictures, of course, in your dreams, and in advertisements: bright-eyed, smiling children of all races - playing together, learning together, happy to be together.

These are the image of our hopes for school integration and the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. Today, sadly, such gatherings of children must still often be staged.

Oh, sure, youngsters from different ethnic backgrounds share classrooms and school athletic fields. But while they meet as more equal, they too often are still separate - divided not by institutions so much as by mutual isolation, and by racial attitudes passed on to them mostly by adults.

But before you despair, read on the opposite page letters sent to us by students at Blacksburg High School and James Madison Middle School in Roanoke, in response to our Readers Forum query: What can we do to improve race relations?

Yes, the students tell us what we already knew: The schools are not oases where young people are protected from the gales of racial tensions blowing outside school walls.

Some students, though, have clearly given serious thought to what is perpetuating racial divisions. And the letters suggest a genuine desire among many young people to overcome the invisible barriers.

Alan Stone of Roanoke, for example, speaks of the city's recreational program that sets up teams based on where young people live, meaning that kids mostly end up playing with those they already know - from neighborhoods predominantly white or black.

``We all need to make an effort to get to know people who are different from ourselves,'' writes Erica V. Bates of Blacksburg, wisely. ``People tend to immediately retreat to their own groups and not meet different people."

Charlie Hunt of Roanoke suggests: ``Most racial issues will be dropped by the time those in my age group are adults. Our age group is getting along better with other races than adults are now."

This is to be, at the very least, earnestly hoped. Inside ourselves we carry an image of what that world would would be like.

by CNB