TIME TO BEGIN HEALING IN TULIA

Community Must Close Chasm

Sometimes even the most embarrassing situations can sow the seeds of
opportunity.

Tulia's residents have been handed such an opportunity. It is time for
them to seize it.

Tulia has been characterized - and caricatured, in many people's eyes
- - as a racist community. Why the characterization? It comes from an
infamous drug bust that resulted in the arrests of 46 people. That's
not all. Thirty-nine of them are black, in a community with a tiny
African-American minority.

Now there is talk of reconciliation in the community of 5,000
residents. That talk must continue, and quicken, and then develop into
mutual understanding.

A lot of bruising has occurred in Tulia since the day in 1999 when
police busted several of the town's residents in a drug raid.
Relations between blacks and whites have suffered. It has become
incumbent in the years since then that both sides have plenty of work
ahead of them to restore some sense of community in Tulia.

How does this occur?

Reporting by Globe-News staff writer Greg Cunningham has revealed in
recent days plenty of opportunity.

Swisher County Commissioner Lloyd Rahlfs has pointed his finger
angrily at outside media for stirring up feelings of resentment both
internally in Tulia and across the nation toward the town.

"We've been slammed so much. We've been called racist. It's time to
put an end to all this. It's time to put it behind us," Rahlfs told
Cunningham.

That won't be easy.

Town meetings clearly are in order. Then the community must make those
meetings known to the very media that have come to the Panhandle to
report on events relating to the drug bust - and to the release from
prison recently of 12 of the defendants convicted.

Is it too late to reconcile hard feelings, as some in the community
have said? Not by a long shot. There always must be hope that a
community that prides itself as being home to the "richest land and
the finest people" somehow can bridge the chasm that has opened
between elements in the community.

Tulia has been through a terrible time. More pain may be on the way,
particularly as the judicial process works through the fate of the
people who now are free but who may stand trial once again.

The time for reconciliation is at hand. May it proceed with sincerity
and with hope that its people can close the divide for good.