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
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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
