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
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Advertising Manager
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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
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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.