Page 2 The Skanner June 1, 2016
®
Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now
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Opinion
Cop Killings Bear Strange Fruit for Families
I
’m about to be extremely fa-
cetious!
We’re Black, right? We all
like a “hook-up” on some-
thing every now and then,
don’t we?
Well, it seems as if Black
people have found a way to in-
stantaneously enhance their
lives, and all it takes is the sac-
riice of one of our loved ones
in order for us to come up.
Wanna hear more about
this exciting new phenome-
non that’s sweeping the na-
tion? Glad you said YES!
I want to introduce every
Black family in America to
an innovative new way to lu-
cratively bless your family
for years to come – it’s called
“The New Black Beneit Pack-
age.”
That’s right y’all. Forget
about school. Forget about
college. Forget about athlet-
ics. Forget about entertain-
ment. Forget about learning a
trade. Forget about life insur-
ance.
Forget about investing.
Why the hell should we pur-
sue any of that stuf, when
all we have to do is send our
Black men, women, boys and
girls out here to get killed
by members of law enforce-
ment?
I mean, with the rate at
which cities across America
are breaking the bank to pay
of Black families ater the
Jefrey
Boney
NNPA
Columnist
death of their unarmed loved
ones, it seems as if these cit-
ies have seemingly come to
the conclusion that this is the
best way for Black families to
become inancially free and
then remain quiet about the
lack of law enforcement ac-
countability in this country.
“
timore police were wrong.
Just last month, the fam-
ily of Tamir Rice, who was
12-years old when cops rolled
up on him in 2014 and shot
him to death in less than 2 sec-
onds for having a toy gun, set-
tled their lawsuit out of court
with the city of Cleveland for
$6 million. Guess what? This
Black family got a huge settle-
ment and the oicer who shot
Rice got away with murder.
No accountability whatsoev-
er.
What about Eric Garner, the
43-year-old Black man who
was choked to death on cam-
This Black family got a huge settle-
ment and the oicer who shot Rice
got away with murder
Let’s just look at examples,
some as recent as last year.
I know you remember Fred-
die Gray, right? He was the 25-
year old Black man who was
murdered in police custody
ater sufering a severe spinal
injury. Well, in September of
last year, the city of Baltimore
settled a lawsuit with his fam-
ily for $6.4 million. I know
what you’re saying. There
were six oicers who were in-
dicted for Gray’s death, right?
Well guess what? Gray is still
dead and the city of Baltimore
never acknowledged the Bal-
era by an oicer in July 2014?
In July of 2015, New York City
settled a lawsuit with Gar-
ner’s family to the tune of $5.9
million and as usual, the oi-
cer who killed him got away
with murder.
Then you have 50-year-
old Walter Scott, who was
shot down from the back in
cold-blood by a police oicer
in South Carolina. Starting
to see a pattern? The city of
North Charleston agreed to
settle a lawsuit with Scott’s
family for $6.5 million in Oc-
tober 2015. Although the oi-
cer, Michael Slager has been
charged and was terminated,
the city refused to acknowl-
edge that the oicer or the po-
lice department did anything
wrong.
Shall I keep going?
What about Oscar Grant III,
the 22-year old Black man and
father, who was fatally shot in
the back by a police oicer at
the Fruitvale station in Oak-
land in 2009 on New Year’s
Day?
The oicer worked for Bay
Area Rapid Transit (BART)
and they agreed to settle a
lawsuit brought by the fam-
ily by giving $1.3 million to
his mother and $1.5 million
to his daughter. The oicer
resigned a week ater the in-
cident and was charged with
murder but was only con-
victed of the lesser charge of
involuntary manslaughter.
The oicer only served about
a year of a two-year term and
BART made no admission of
wrongdoing.
Again, of course I’m be-
ing facetious. However, as
I look at what is happening
all across the U.S., it seems
as if Black families are being
forced to accept cash settle-
ments as a substitute for real
accountability and payouts as
an alternative to true justice.
Read the rest of this story at
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Remembering Vernon Jordan, the Rosa Parks of Wall Street
“D
on’t just give us
money, and don’t
just show up for
the Equal Oppor-
tunity Day dinner. That is
not enough when you look
at Black consumer power in
this country. It’s not enough
for you to come and shake our
hands and be our friends. We
want in.” — Vernon Jordan,
National Urban League Pres-
ident 1971 -1981, on his mes-
sage to corporate executives
The National Urban League
recently released our annu-
al report on the social and
economic status of people of
color, the State of Black Amer-
ica®.
This year’s edition, “Locked
Out: Education, Jobs & Jus-
tice,” was especially signii-
cant because it marked the
40th anniversary of the re-
port, irst issued in 1976 by
Vernon Jordan.
In a video message Jordan
recorded for the State of Black
America® release, he recalled
the tears he wept the night
Barack Obama was elected
President
“It dawned on me that my
tears were not really my
tears, but they were the tears
of my grandparents and my
parents. They were the tears
of all those black people who
toted that cotton and lited
that bale,” said Jordan. “The
Marc H.
Morial
National
Urban League
notion that Obama was going
to be President, or that any
black person was going to be
President, is stunning.”
While we relect this year
on how far we’ve come since
Jordan irst issued the State of
Black America®, Jordan’s own
life is a vivid illustration of
“
According
to
the
Bloomberg
proile,
pub-
lished on the occasion of
his 80th birthday last year:
“As a young man in Jim Crow
Georgia, his irst job was
chaufeuring a White banker
who was shocked that he could
read. Now he counts some of
America’s most wealthy and
powerful citizens as friends
and CEOs of Fortune 500 com-
panies are proud to call him a
mentor.”
Jordan himself oten re-
counts what he calls his
earliest political memory,
listening to Georgia’s segre-
He realized that the irst phase of
the modern civil rights movement
was ighting legal segregation, but
the roots of racism were funda-
mentally economic
the progression of civil rights
throughout the latter half of
the 20th Century and into the
21st.
“He is kind of the Rosa Parks
of Wall Street,” Harvard his-
torian Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,
told Bloomberg.
“He realized that the irst
phase of the modern civil
rights movement was ight-
ing legal segregation, but the
roots of racism were funda-
mentally economic.”
gationist Governor Eugene
Talmadge on the radio in
1943, when Mr. Jordan was
only eight years old.
“I have two planks in my
platform,” Talmadge said.
“N***rs and roads. I’m against
the irst and for the second.”
Persuaded by a recruiter to
apply to an integrated college
in the north, Vernon enrolled
at DePaw University in Indi-
ana over his parents’ misgiv-
ings.
“Here were Negro parents,
both of whom had grandpar-
ents who were slaves, who
to some extent were condi-
tioned to the southern way
of life,” Jordan told author
Robert Penn Warren in 1964.
“They could never quite ad-
just to the idea of their boy
even being in Green Castle,
Indiana, the only Negro in
a class of 400 students, and
they felt their boy, their baby,
their prize, would be happier
and have less frustrations if
he went to a predominantly
Negro institution.”
But his parents came to re-
alize the signiicance of Jor-
dan’s choice the night a White
classmate came to stay at the
Jordans’ home.
“In the middle of the night,
my father got out of bed and
came into my room and turned
on the light and stood there
with tears in his eyes, put the
light out and went back to bed
and said to my mother, ‘You
know, this democracy thing is
really here, and it’s right here
in my house.’”
Having struggled in college
due to his sub-standard seg-
regated education in Geor-
gia, Jordan determined upon
graduation to pursue a career
in civil rights.
Read the rest of this story at
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