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Opinion Black Voters: Ignored, Taken For Granted “Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now” B ERNIE F OSTER Founder/Publisher B OBBIE D ORE F OSTER Executive Editor T ED B ANKS Advertising Manager J ERRY F OSTER Account Executive L ISA L OVING News Editor H ELEN S ILVIS Multimedia Editor D AVID K IDD Graphic Designer M ONICA J. F OSTER Seattle Office Coordinator J ULIE K EEFE S USAN F RIED Photographers W hat will it finally take for Black people to accept the fact that we have no real political clout? A lit- tle influence, yes, but no power. If our voting bloc were as strong as we like to think, the Republi- cans would not ignore us and the Democrats would not take us for granted. If we had real political power, both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama would have accepted the invitation by the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), NAACP, American Urban Radio Network, MSNBC-TV, and the Grio, to a debate at Lincoln University on October 9. But both candidates declined. Yet, Romney did more than a half-hour and Obama did an hour on the Spanish-language TV net- work, Univision, both answering questions specifically related to Hispanics. Jewish people always get their audience with the candi- dates, and the gay groups never fail to get their face-time with the president – Romney won’t have anything to do with them – but Black folks never get the same positive response when it comes E CONOMIC E MPOWERMENT James Clingman to being included in such events. Ever wonder why? It is so obvious that Black folks are the last to be included, if not omitted altogether, in political dis- course when it comes to debates, press conferences, and private meet- ings, that is, unless you are Jay-Z and his friends who are willing to bring $40K to the table – $50K if you want to hang with Romney. Not that we learn anything new from political debates, as scripted as they have become. But it would be nice to have the candidates dis- cuss specific Black issues every now and then. It would be great to see several, not just one, Black reporter asking both candidates questions relevant to Black peo- ple. You know, the way the His- panic and Jewish people do. So what does all of this mean? Is it that Blacks are willing to accept symbolism and platitudes over substance and pragmatism? Does it mean that we are willing to do the opposite of what MLK decried when he wrote the book, had been waiting for 300 years and could ill-afford to continue to keep waiting. What King called the “fierce urgency of now” was his response to the waiting game being pro- moted by some of his critics dur- ing the early 1960s, but as Howard University’s African American Resource Center Direc- tor, E. Ethelbert Miller, shared on NPR: “How long is now”? Miller reminded us that King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was based on an It is so obvious that Black folks are the last to be included, if not omitted altogether, in political discourse when it comes to debates, press conferences, and private meetings, that is, unless you are Jay-Z and his friends who are willing to bring $40K to the table – $50K if you want to hang with Romney. “Why We Can’t Wait?” King opposed the gradualist approach to the work in which he was engaged, noting that Black people economic premise, i.e. debt, a bounced check, and the “econom- ic condition and problems in America.” How true. University of Texas’ History of Racism The Skanner Newspaper, established in October 1975, is a weekly publica- tion, published each Wednesday by IMM Publications Inc., 415 N. Killingsworth St., P.O. Box 5455, Portland, OR 97228. Telephone (503) 285-5555. E-mail: info@theskanner.com World Wide Web site: http://www.theskanner.com Fax: (503) 285-2900 The Skanner is a member of the National Newspaper Pub lishers Associ- ation and West Coast Black Pub lishers Association. All photos submitted become the property of The Skanner. We are not re - spon sible for lost or damaged photos either solicited or unsolicited. © 2011 The Skanner. ALL RIGHTS RE SERVED. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART WITHOUT PERMISSION PROHIBITED. To see The Skanner News on your smart phone go to theskannermobile.com or scan this QR code with your app. • • • • • • • • Local news Opinions Jobs, Bids Sports Entertainment Music reviews Bulletin board RSS feeds T he affirmative action pro- gram at the University of Texas now under review by the United States Supreme Court should not be looked at in isola- tion. As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in Grutter V. Bollinger, an affirmative action case involving the University of Michigan, “context matters when reviewing race-based governmen- tal action under the Equal Protec- tion Clause.” An amici curiae (friend-of-the- court) brief filed by the Advance- ment Project, an equal opportunity advocacy group, in support of the University of Texas provides excellent context of how the issue of race has played out in Texas and the University of Texas for decades. “UT is the progeny of a state that seceded from the Union in 1861 with the explicit goal of pre- serving ‘negro slavery’ for ‘all future time,’” the brief observed. “Even after rejoining the Union and despite passage of the Recon- struction Amendments, Texas sought to implement its goal of excluding blacks from public life and political personhood. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the Court repeatedly struck down Texas statutes designed to deny blacks full citi- zenship.” The brief noted, “Nixon v. Herndon, 273 U.S. 536 (1927), ranks among the many Texas- based cases that illustrate the state’s relegation of blacks to sec- ond-class citizenship. The litiga- tion involved Dr. L.A. Nixon, a black physician in El Paso, Texas and a member of the Democratic Party. Dr. Nixon filed suit claim- ing he was unlawfully excluded from participating in the Demo- cratic Party primary elections. The case made its way to the Supreme Court, where Justice Page 4 The Seattle Skanner October 17, 2012 College. T HE C URRY “As the public face of the struggle against segregation in R EPORT higher education, Sweatt faced harassment, on and off UT’s George E. campus,” the brief recounted. Curry “During Sweatt’s first semester at the law school, a cross was burned on the law school grounds. Opponents of integra- tion threatened Sweatt’s life, in Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing person and by mail. Vandals for a unanimous Court, held that defaced his home and threw Dr. Nixon’s rights had been vio- rocks, shattering windows. Sweatt lated under the Fourteenth fell ill and struggled academical- Amendment.” ly, financially, and personally. Despite the ruling, Texas Life at UT became unbearable. refused to allow Dr. Nixon to par- Sweatt eventually dropped out of ticipate in the political process. school—a “physical and emotion- He appeared before the Supreme al wreck.” Court again five years later and Blacks who followed Sweatt at “[University of Texas] is the progeny of a state that seceded from the Union in 1861 with the explicit goal of preserving ‘negro slavery’ for ‘all future time’” got another ruling that forced Texas to comply. Higher education was also sub- ject to state-mandated segrega- tion. “Texas’s flagship university was founded by white Texans for white Texans,” the Advancement Project brief stated. “UT categori- cally barred black Americans from the University and from its graduate and professional schools.” In one of the most famous Supreme Court cases, Sweatt v. Painter, the court forced the Uni- versity of Texas Law School to admit Herman Sweatt, a qualified African-American who had grad- uated from Jack Yates High School in Houston and Wiley the University of Texas also faced barriers. “UT excluded blacks from liv- ing in the on-campus dormitories designated for whites and specifi- cally forbade all black students from entering the living quarters of white women,” the brief recounted. “UT established sepa- rate and inferior residential hous- ing for blacks. UT barred black students from intercollegiate ath- letics, excluded them from extracurricular activities such as music and theater, and permitted segregated fraternities and sorori- ties. UT even banned black stu- dents from using the same bathroom facilities as whites. All told, in Sweatt’s wake, blacks faced an all-encompassing stig- ma, purely on account of race.” Not surprisingly, the Brown decision was not well received in Texas. “One of the most significant racial flare-ups in recent years at UT concerned a campus landmark built in 1954 and named in honor of William Simkins, a professor at UT’s law school from 1899 until his death in 1929,” the brief stat- ed. “Within five weeks of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, UT named its new dormitory in honor of Simkins … “Simkins was not merely a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He, along with his brother Eldred James Simkins (a regent of UT from 1882 to 1896), was ‘a crim- inal and a terrorist, a gun-toting, mask-wearing, night-riding Klansman who headed a group in Florida that murdered 25 people in three years in just one county.’” The Advancement Projected brief stated, “Black students continued to experience a hos- tile environment. In 1969, for example, Professor Robert Hopper greeted black sociology major Rosetta Williams on the first day of class in a most unwel- coming way. ‘I want feedback from the students because I don’t want you sitting around like a bunch of niggers nodding your heads not saying nothing.’” A campus statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was defaced in 2003 and again in 2004. The Daily Texan, the campus newspa- per, came under fire earlier this year when it published a cartoon that mocked the killing of Trayvon Martin, unarmed Florida teenager, and ran a feature refer- ring to him as “a colored boy.” As Justice O’Connor stated, context matters.
