Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (May 25, 2016)
Page 2 The Skanner May 25, 2016 Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now Bernie Foster Founder/Publisher Bobbie Dore Foster Executive Editor Jerry Foster Advertising Manager Christen McCurdy News Editor Patricia Irvin Graphic Designer Arashi Young Reporter Monica J. Foster Seattle Office Coordinator Susan Fried Photographer 2015 MERIT AWARDS WINNER The Skanner has received 20 NNPA awards since 1998 The Skanner Newspaper, es- tablished in October 1975, is a weekly publication, published every Wednesday by IMM Publi- cations Inc. 415 N. Killingsworth St. P.O. Box 5455 Portland, OR 97228 Telephone (503) 285-5555 Fax: (503) 285-2900 info@theskanner.com www.TheSkanner.com The Skanner is a member of the National Newspaper Pub lishers Association 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. ©2016 The Skanner. All rights re served. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission prohibited. Local News Pacific NW News World News Opinions Jobs, Bids Entertainment Community Calendar RSS feeds BE A PART OF THE CONVERSATION #SkNews Opinion I Saw These ‘Stunning’ Anchors, But My Jaw Did Not Drop I f you are like me, you some- times find yourself surfing the Web when you are sup- posed to be doing some- thing more important. You may notice “click bait” that poses questions like, “What has happened to these child- hood stars?” or offers, “Se- crets of the Mayans revealed.” Well, the other day I noticed one that concerned a list with dozens of allegedly, gorgeous news anchors called “News Anchors Who Will Make Your Jaw Drop.” Out of curi- osity, I decided to take a look. Let me tell you what I found. The list was all women. I mention that because my wife’s first comment was that there are many male news an- chors and that some of them are good looking. For some reason I did not as- sume that there would be any men, but that may be my own blindness. The second thing was that Bill Fletcher Jr. The Global African they were reasonably attrac- tive, they tended to be on the younger side, and there was not one identifiable Black woman among them. The sto- “ skinned, not one looking Af- ro-Latina or, for that matter, indigenous. The Asians were all quite light, with Western looks, and with not one of them looking like the browner Asians one might find in Guam, the Phil- ippines, Cambodia, Malaysia or Indonesia, not to mention, South Asia. I kept assuming that I would come across at least one iden- tifiable Black news anchor. There were a couple that ness from the mainstream, the White supremacist bias always finds a way to raise its ugly head. Beauty remains a category defined largely in European terms with a dismissal of the very notion that beauty can take myriad forms. This situation is not reme- died by the selection of one identifiably Black person to fill a quota. It really goes to the very basic question of how one They were reasonably attractive, they tended to be on the younger side, and there was not one identifiable Black woman among them ry does not stop there. The list included Euro- peans, Euro-Americans (Whites), Latinas and Asians. Yet the characteristics of all of the women were European. The Latinas were all light- looked like they might have a little African in them some- where, but I felt that I was reaching. Despite periodic initiatives towards Black pride and de- feating efforts to erase Black- defines beauty and breaking with the assumption that the closer we are to the “purer” European — whatever that means — the more beautiful we become. I will leave it at that. Sanders and Trump Two Sides of the Same Angry Coin F or all their dueling ide- ologies, Senator Bernie Sanders and “presump- tive Republican nomi- nee” Donald Trump are two sides of the same coin. Both of them are angry, so intense- ly so, that they are inciting a destructive anger among their followers. When Repub- licans brawled and pushed and shoved at Trump rallies, I never anticipated the flip side — the fisticuffs and rhetoric at the Nevada state Democratic “ Julianne Malveaux NNPA Columnist Sanders expected to have more than 1,500 delegates to his credit. And now that he has them he doesn’t know what to do with them. Both he and “Duh” Donald are public- Both the Chump Trumps and the Burning Bernies are being led by whining, angry, entitled White men, separated by ideology, but joined by both outrage and naiveté convention, the likes of which might have put Trump terror- ists to shame. Both the Chump Trumps and the Burning Ber- nies are being led by whining, angry, entitled White men, separated by ideology, but joined by both outrage and naiveté. I don’t think either Bernie or “Duh” Donald planned to get as far along in the presi- dential process as they have so far. Sen. Sanders proudly carries the redistributionist flag with rousing rhetoric about social and economic justice. His agenda seems to have been to raise these issues aggressively and he did. His presence in the cam- paign pushed Hillary hard to the left and made her engage with constituencies she might otherwise have ignored. For all his success, I don’t think ly floundering, signaling that they never had a winning -- or graceful losing -- plan. Secretary Clinton and her followers shouldn’t be so hard on Bernie, though. While they should not demand that he get out of the race, he is well ad- vised to tone is rhetoric down. I sat with women at the 2008 campaign who sobbed their way through then-Senator Clinton’s concession speech and appeal for party unity. I debated a PUMA (Party Unity My “Hind Parts”) activist who swore she would not support nominee Obama. In 2008, Hillary devotees were as pas- sionate as Bernie devotees are now. The kumbaya moment comes in July in Philly -- not just yet. It reflects poorly on the Hillary camp to dismiss or ignore those who are passion- ate about Senator Sanders. At the same time, it is im- portant to note that extreme anger is a unique privi- lege of White men. Imagine then-nominee Obama rag- ing at Hillary in the way that Bernie has. His temperament would have been sliced and diced and parsed and inspect- ed and he would have been so damaged by the conversation that it might have affected his electoral results. If Secretary Clinton ever managed to get her voice to Bernie’s decibel, if she every managed to proj- ect such rage, she’d be written off as a crazy lady and pe- ripheralized. But when angry White men yell and scream and whine and lie, they are celebrated not condemned. That sounds like a double standard to me. Both Bernie and “Duh” Don- ald are whining about rules they say are rigged against them, but the rules may have “ likely to award delegates on a proportional basis, which means that a close race might give each candidate nearly the same amount of delegates. Sanders has no standing to call the system rigged. He has kept his distance from the Democratic Party for most of his career, never participat- ing in the rules process. If he wanted to write his own rules, he should have run for President as an independent. Sanders and Trump have positioned themselves as out- siders, but they want insiders to roll out the red carpet for them because they jumped into a game they haven’t mas- tered. They haven’t worked at establishing a foundation, but they are demanding the keys to the house. They ar- en’t willing to put the work into reforming our flawed, two-party system. Instead, Both Bernie and “Duh” Donald are whining about rules they say are rigged against them, but the rules may have favored them favored them. Donald Trump has garnered a greater per- centage of delegates than votes because of the way some states have chosen to award delegates. He wants more, but he failed to invest as much time learning the rules as some of his competitors did. Senator Sanders says he should have more delegates -- but if he had to play under Republican rules, he’d have fewer. Democrats are more they are finding unfairness when none is there, whining when work might make a dif- ference, and leveraging their angry, White maleness into voter approval. Julianne Malveaux is an au- thor and economist based is Washington, D.C. Her latest book, “Are We Better Off? Race, Obama and Public Policy is available via amazon.com and juliannemalveaux.com.
