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Opinion The Barack Obama I Voted For “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 B RUCE P OINSETTE Reporter D AVID K IDD Graphic Designer M ONICA J. F OSTER Seattle Office Coordinator J ULIE K EEFE S USAN F RIED Photographers 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 F or more than four years, I have said that I liked candi- date Barack Obama better than I like President Obama. Can- didate Obama addressed the ques- tion of race head-on when pressured to distance himself from Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the Chica- go pastor who led him to Christi- anity. But President Obama has been a different story. According to research conduct- ed by Daniel Q. Gillion, an assis- tant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, in Obama’s first two years in office, the nation’s first Black president made fewer speeches and offered fewer executive poli- cies on race than any Democratic president since 1961. Frederick C. Harris, director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University, noted that Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address was the first by any presi- dent since 1948 to not mention poverty or the poor. In the words of scholar Michael Eric Dyson, “This president runs from race like a Black man runs from a cop.” Obama’s first comment on Trayvon Martin was that if he had a son, he would look like Trayvon. But he didn’t say what he would do to make sure Black male teenagers are not treated the way Trayvon was treated by George Zimmerman. Obama’s first words in the after- math of Zimmerman’s acquittal were predictably insipid. In his written statement, Obama said: “The death of Trayvon Mar- tin was a tragedy. Not just for his family, or for any one community, but for America. I know this case has elicited strong passions. And in the wake of the verdict, I know those passions may be running even higher. But we are a nation of T HE C URRY R EPORT George E. Curry laws, and a jury has spoken. I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son.” To quote another president, I thought, “Well, there he goes again.” But last Friday, candidate Barack Obama and President That includes me,” he told reporters in the White House brief- ing room. “There are very few African American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hear- ing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me — at least before I was a senator. There are very few African Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nerv- ously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.” He explained, “And I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African American community But he didn’t say what he would do to make sure Black male teenagers are not treated the way Trayvon was treated by George Zimmerman Barack Obama finally became one. He spoke with passion, with- out the aid of a TelePrompTer or notes, about what it’s really like to interprets what happened one night in Florida. And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear. The ‘There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me’ President Barack Obama be a Black man in America. “There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. African American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws – everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws. And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.” While being candid about how Whites generally treat Blacks, President Obama was equally frank when he said a Black person faces a greater likelihood of being killed by another African-African than by a White person. “I think the African American community is also not naïve in understanding that, statistically, somebody like Trayvon Martin was statistically more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else. So folks under- stand the challenges that exist for African American boys. But they get frustrated, I think, if they feel that there’s no context for it and that context is being denied. And that all contributes I think to a sense that if a White male teen was involved in the same kind of sce- nario, that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the after- math might have been different.” The president demonstrated real courage by addressing race in America without being forced to as was the case with Rev. Wright. Moreover, he challenged us not to let the last chapter of Tayvon’s life be marked a misguided not guilty verdict. “And for us to be able to gather together business leaders and local elected officials and clergy and celebrities and athletes, and figure out how are we doing a better job helping young African American men feel that they’re a full part of this society and that they’ve got pathways and avenues to succeed – I think that would be a pretty good outcome from what was obviously a tragic situation.” George E. Curry, former editor- in-chief of Emerge magazine, is editor-in-chief of the NNPA. 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. © 2012 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 Blacks are the ‘Other’ Americans I was told a story the other night. Apparently on the evening of the Zimmerman acquittal, in a bar in South Carolina, a group of White patrons were talking. Some of them, upon hearing the news, shouted “Free at Last!” in celebra- tion of the decision. One person, however, a White labor union activist, decided that this was not his gathering, and left in disgust. The responses to the acquittal have told us a great deal about the USA. The bottom line is that many people who knew or know nothing about who Trayvon Mar- tin was have concluded that he was a demon and deserved death. I realize that this is a very blunt comment but I believe that it is important to cut to the chase. These individuals have decided that aggression against a Black youth who looks “suspi- cious” (whatever that means) can be raised to the level of death and actually justified. But here is the other piece. There have been Whites and some Blacks who have argued that we should not be so upset about the Zimmerman verdict when there are so many examples of Blacks killing Blacks that go Page 4 The Portland Skanner July 24, 2013 T RANS A FRICA Bill Fletcher Jr. without comment. In other words, we are hypocritical for protesting the Zimmerman acquittal. This notion actually misses a larger point. The acquittal of Zimmerman is linked to a steady shift in the racial relations that we have experienced reflections of this change. The Zimmerman acquittal is a reminder that we have rights that are not worthy of respect, even though those same rights are on the books. None of this means that Black- on-Black crime is of no or little importance. Black-on-black crime destabilizes our communi- ties and is a reflection of the con- tinued economic and social ravaging we have experienced over the years. The fact that this crime is frequently ignored or treated as inevitable leads to despair. As a result our ability or capacity to respond to larger issues is undermined. Thus, we should not be posing The Zimmerman acquittal is a reminder that we have rights that are not worthy of respect, even though those same rights are on the books since the late 1970s. The erosion of affirmative action, voting rights, and unstoppable police profiling and brutality, are all the Trayvon Martin case against Black-on-Black crime. They both need to be addressed, but the Zim- merman acquittal speaks to a very dangerous trend in the larger U.S. society that we can ignore only at our peril. This trend suggests, once again, that we have remained the “other”, that is, a segment of the population that is considered by too many Whites to be unknowable and dangerous; a seg- ment whose lives and experiences are not worthy of any particular investigation and concern. A seg- ment that must be marginalized or, if we appear out of the dark, swat- ted away, as one would do with an annoying pest. This is a time for reflection, as President Obama suggested, but a different sort of reflection. One that really takes us into an in depth understanding of the continued operation of race in all features of US society. Yes, that discussion again… Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Poli- cy Studies, a columnist with The Progressive, the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum, and the author of “They’re Bank- rupting Us” – And Twenty Other Myths about Unions. Follow him on Facebook and www.bill- fletcherjr.com.
