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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (May 2, 2018)
Page 2 The Skanner May 2, 2018 ® Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now Opinion Bernie Foster Founder/Publisher Black Non-Voters Spit in the Face of a Generation of Heroes Bobbie Dore Foster Executive Editor “I’m just one vote.” “My vote won’t matter.” “Them White folks gone do what they wanna do anyway.” Jerry Foster Advertising Manager Christen McCurdy News Editor Patricia Irvin Graphic Designer Monica J. Foster Seattle Office Coordinator Susan Fried Photographer 2017 MERIT AWARD WINNER 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. ©2018 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 LOCAL NEWS BRIEFS Updated daily. SAVE THE DATE The Skanner Foundation MLK Breakfast January 21 2019 T hese are some of the many excuses given by some African Americans when it comes to exercis- ing their right to vote; a right fought for by many people in this country—both Black and White—that has cost so many people so much; even their very lives. Obtaining the right to vote was a major part of the civ- il rights history of African Americans in this country. However, many Black people have turned a blind eye to the struggle that it took to obtain the right to vote, flippantly taking it for granted today. From 1880-1965, there was an all-out assault on prevent- ing African Americans from voting by having their right to vote deemed invalid. Those who sought to disen- franchise Black people knew the importance of voting. They knew that voting had a profound impact on repre- sentation, political outcomes and critical decisions that needed to be made concern- ing major issues. Many southern states knew that the Fifteenth Amend- Jeffrey Boney NNPA Columnist ment prohibited blatant dis- enfranchisement on the basis of race or prior enslavement, those states came up with a slew of new and innovative al- ternative techniques to disen- franchise African Americans. The traditional techniques of violence, such as with the Ku Klux Klan, and voter fraud relative to vote counting, wel- comed new friends to the game as these new methods were introduced to American politics. Poll taxes restrict the Black vote After the ability to vote was extended to all races by the enactment of the 15th Amend- ment, many southern states enacted a poll tax as a means of restricting Black people from voting. A poll tax was a flat-rate tax levied on all mem- bers of a population, often as a prerequisite to voting, which often included a grandfa- ther clause. This grandfather clause allowed any adult male whose father or grandfather had voted in a specific year prior to the abolition of slav- ery to vote without paying the tax. Of course, this was prob- lematic for Black people, be- cause no Black person had the right to vote prior to the aboli- tion of slavery and, therefore no Black person could qualify. Whites used impossible lit- eracy tests to bar Blacks from the polls The first formal voter liter- acy tests were introduced in 1890. Literacy tests were used to keep Black people from vot- ing and were administered at the discretion of the officials in charge of voter registra- tion. Whites did not have to take the literacy test, if they could meet the alternate re- quirements that systemati- cally excluded Blacks. These included demonstrating po- litical competence in person, which Black people tried to adhere to, or falling under the Grandfather Clause. If the official wanted a person to pass, he could ask the eas- iest question on the test. The same official would require a Black person to answer every single question correctly, in an unrealistic timeframe, in order to pass. Southern states abandoned the literacy test only when forced to do so by federal leg- islation. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 suspended the use of literacy tests in all states in which less than 50 percent of voting-age residents were registered as of November 1, 1964, or had voted in the 1964 presidential election. Af- ter the passage of the Voting Rights Act, Black voter regis- tration in the South increased significantly. Much has been given The names of individuals who lost their lives in the struggle for freedom during the modern Civil Rights Move- ment from 1954 to 1968 are inscribed on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala. Those unsuspecting vic- tims became martyrs, killed because of their focus on securing voting rights and fighting for the civil rights of Black people in this country. On August 13, 1955 in Brookhaven, Miss., Lamar Smith was shot dead on the courthouse lawn by a White man in broad daylight while dozens of people watched. The killer was never indicted, because no one would admit they saw a White man shoot a Black man. Smith had orga- nized Blacks to vote in a re- cent election. Read the rest of this commentary at TheSkanner.com Facebook has Failed the Black Community Too Many Times “M r. Zuckerberg, would you be com- fortable sharing with us the name of the hotel you stayed in last night?” That was a question Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) posed to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s congres- sional hearing in which the latter responded with an awk- ward “no.” It is likely that Mr. Zuckerberg found this ques- tion too intrusive, yet when 87 million users lost their privacy under Facebook’s ne- glectful watch; its CEO doesn’t bat an eye, offering only an in- substantial, “I’m sorry.” The Cambridge Analytica hack is just one of many trans- gressions by Facebook, in which an apology will simply not suffice. Facebook’s lais- sez-faire attitude toward pri- vacy protection is not just a betrayal and insult to its user base, but it is compounded by its lack of vigilance to protect one of the platform’s most vulnerable user demograph- ics — African Americans. For example, late last year, Facebook hosted Rus- sian sponsored ads that por- trayed African Americans in a less than flattering light. The ads had political motives and aimed to sway viewers to vote for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. An- other example arose just this month when the news broke Derrick Johnson NNPA Interim President & CEO that the largest Black Lives Matter group on the social media platform was in fact a fraudulent page, created by a White man in Australia de- signed to discredit the youth- “ These com- munities can- not be sati- ated with an apology based civil rights group. Either of the above exam- ples is enough to seriously question the general dispo- sition and integrity of the social media juggernaut. However, Facebook’s lack of transparency, reliability, and accountability in these two situations also substantiates the increasing doubt regard- ing the fairness of the 2016 presidential election. Specif- ically, Cambridge Analytica worked with the Trump cam- paign, and among the data it misused were pictures, pro- files, and even direct messag- es between users. This data mining—which used the per- sonal information of 87 mil- lion people without their con- sent — was used to develop techniques for the firm’s work on the Trump campaign. This combined with the racially charged Russian ads, some of which explicitly purporting that Black Lives Matter activ- ists were murderers, is not only wholly unscrupulous, it also carries the stench of voter manipulation. Swaying voters toward one candidate based on racially exploitative lies smacks of a type voter suppression that, while more insidious, is not unlike the voter ID laws that currently attempt to suppress the Black vote. As a pioneer in the tech in- dustry serving 1.4 billion us- ers each day, Facebook has a moral and ethical obligation to protect those most vulnerable on its sites, including minors, women, and LGBT, Brown, and Black communities. As a whole, Americans are more tolerant of hate speech than others in the world; howev- er, this does not and should not permit Facebook to turn a blind eye to the copious amounts of hate speech the Black community, and other vulnerable communities ex- perience on Facebook. These communities cannot be satiat- ed with an apology, but rather require a clear and thorough plan of defensive and offen- sive action. More care needs to be taken by Facebook and its tech industry peers to en- sure that in connecting peo- ple with one another, these connections are positive — a sentiment which Mr. Zucker- berg said his company strives to achieve. Moving forward, compa- nies like Facebook can take a greater stance against those who wish to use online spaces to corrupt. First, they must be on the offense, not just de- leting but reporting and per- haps even fining advertisers with such ill intent. Second, they should also be more ag- gressive on the defensive front, removing the burden of reporting hate speech from the user and instead placing it on themselves. While Face- book has already started this approach, devoting more re- sources to this effort would allow for a quicker and more intelligent sweep of bad con- tent. Additionally, these re- sources must include hiring more people of color across all levels of the company—an initiative that would address Silicon Valley’s failure to take real steps towards embrac- ing diversity. This is an issue brought up on Day 2 of Zuck- erberg’s hearing. Read the rest of this commentary at TheSkanner.com
