RACISM CHARGED IN DRUG BUST

A drug bust that prompted allegations of racial discrimination in a small,
predominately white Texas farming town was launched as a matter of
"ethnic-cleansing of young male blacks," two civil-rights groups said Friday.

The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People and the
American Civil Liberties Union made the claim in a complaint filed with the
U.S. Justice Department, charging civil-rights violations.

Forty-three people, 40 of them black, were rounded up in the undercover
operation July 23, 1999 in northwestern Texas town Tulia. The others were
two whites and one Hispanic.

Nearly 250 of the town's 5,000 residents are black.

"To have these numbers in a town of 246 African Americans, to have 40
adults...that have allegedly engaged in drug-trafficking would suggest
something to you about Tulia that we know is not true," said Gary Bledsoe,
president of the NACCP of Texas.

"We don't think Tulia is the drug haven of the world."