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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (June 8, 2022)
Page 2 The Skanner Portland & Seattle June 8, 2022 Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now Bernie Foster Founder/Publisher Opinion Pride, Prejudice, and Power Bobbie Dore Foster Executive Editor J Jerry Foster Advertising Manager Patricia Irvin Graphic Designer Saundra Sorenson Reporter Aurora Hernandez Digital Content Monica J. Foster Seattle Office Coordinator Susan Fried Photographer The Skanner Newspaper, established in October 1975, is a weekly publication, published every Wednesday by IMM Publications 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. ©2021 The Skanner. All rights re served. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission prohibited. une is Pride month in the United States. In big cities and small communities, LGBTQ+ people and their friends, families, and allies will celebrate freedom and progress toward full equality. All fair-minded Americans can celebrate that progress. But there is a growing shadow over this year’s celebrations. The far-right political move- ment is aggressively trying to turn back the clock to a time when LGBTQ+ people were not treated equally under the law. Anti-equality legal groups and anti-equality politicians are pushing legal and politi- cal attacks on our most vul- nerable young people. MAGA movement political operatives are trying to win elections by stirring up fear and hatred against LGBTQ+ people. They are proposing and passing laws that are stun- ning in their cruelty. Some make it a crime for librari- ans to let students read books with gay themes and charac- ters—or for teachers to pro- vide supportive information to LGBTQ+ students. Some make it a crime for doctors to provide appropriate health care to transgender youth. In Texas, parents who are sim- ply trying to love and support their trans kids can now be charged with child abuse. That is beyond unaccept- Ben Jealous Guest Columnist able. It is sadistic. Driving the passage of those laws is a false and inflammatory cam- paign to portray support for LGBTQ+ people as the equiva- lent of pedophilia. Right-wing elected activists and pundits smear gay people as threats to children, and equality advo- “ They are pro- posing and passing laws that are stun- ning in their cruelty cates as “groomers.” That kind of smear is dan- gerous. False and demonizing stereotypes have a long his- tory that Black people know well. Lies about Black men were used by violent bigots to justify lynching as necessary to “protect” White women— and continue to drive police violence against Black people today. The more elected offi- cials and far right-wing ac- tivists spread the “groomer” lie, the more likely it is that some bigots will try to justify discrimination and violence against LGBTQ+ people as nec- essary to “protect” children and youth. And then there’s the Supreme Court. Histor- ically, it was in June that the Supreme Court overturned state laws that made gay peo- ple criminals. A dozen years later, in another June decision, the court ruled that states can- not refuse to marry same- sex couples. June has given us many reasons to celebrate the march toward full equal- ity. But that could all change. Thanks to hard-right justices named by former President Donald Trump, the same ma- jority that considers states’ rights more important than voting rights is preparing to overturn Roe v. Wade—strip- ping Americans of a constitu- tional right that the court has recognized for half a century. The far-right court majori- ty’s eagerness to eliminate a long-recognized right to pri- vacy and abortion is deeply troubling to those of us who support legal equality. An- ti-LGBTQ+ legal and political groups that urged the Court to overturn Roe v Wade are hoping the same justices will reverse more recent rulings that recognized the equality of LGBTQ+ people and same- sex couples. They don’t just want to over- turn the court’s marriage equality ruling. They also want the court to let states criminalize homosexuality, making it possible again for gay people to be fired, or have their children taken away from them, because of their sexual orientation. They want to make America dis- criminate again. It is time for all Americans who support equality and civil rights to re- ject anti-LGBTQ+ smears and the harm and the discrimina- tion they cause. And it is time to remember that the earliest equality marches were not focused on pride, but on free- dom and liberation—from po- lice harassment, oppressive laws and culture, and insti- tutional discrimination. Let’s celebrate pride this month. We could all use a good dance party right about now. But let’s also make sure that people understand how much progress is at risk. And let’s organize. We’re just six months away from local, state, and national elections. Those elections will either give more power to the raging anti-freedom forces that want to take the country back—and move us all backwards—or they will help us move toward the goal of freedom and jus- tice for all. Are American Classrooms Producing Mass Shooters? L Local News Pacific NW News World News Opinions Jobs, Bids Entertainment Community Calendar LOCAL NEWS BRIEFS LOCAL EVENTS Updated daily online. d ay ! • L i ke u s o n F ebo m me • nts TheSkannerNews o k • learn • co in y o u r c o m m u n to y • ac it Hear about it first. Sign up for Breaking News and Events at et’s face it. With all the mass shootings in Amer- ica today, it is difficult to tease out the various motivations that prompt murderers to unleash their automatic weapons on unsus- pecting and innocent individ- uals they do not even know. This country being awash in guns is certainly a major con- tributor to the constant car- nage. But a theory of “one size fits all” does not apply to these killings. Some shooters suffer from mental illness. Others have a fixation on attacking people because of their sex- ual orientation or religion. And then there are those who attack people because of their race or ethnicity. We need to find ways of bringing an end to all types of shootings. But to do so, we need to understand and ad- dress the underlying factors that drive the perpetrators to commit their heinous acts. While we must address all forms of hate, I want to speak to one specific piece of this puzzle – race-based slaugh- ter. First, I want us to recall Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white male living in Eastover, South Carolina, who drove 98 miles to Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charles- ton and killed nine African Oscar Blayton Guest Columnist Americans he did not know on June 17, 2015. Next, I want to bring your attention to the murders that took place Aug. 3, 2019, when 21-year-old Patrick Crusius “ We need to understand and address the underly- ing factors of Allen, Texas, drove more than 600 miles to kill 23 Lat- inx strangers at an El Paso Walmart. Finally, on May 14, 2022, Payton Gendron, an 18-year- old white kid drove more than 200 miles from his home in Conklin, New York, and killed 10 random African American shoppers in a Buffalo super- market. Identifying only these three mass shootings is not to take away from the horror of the Uvalde, Texas, school shoot- ing that took place just 10 days after Gendron went on his rampage; the San Ysidro McDonald’s massacre of 1984 in San Diego, California; the Columbine High School shooting on April 20, 1999 in Colorado; or any of the oth- er horrific mass murders our politicians are content to endure. But Roof, Crusius and Gendron were all white males, 21-years-old or young- er at the time they committed their massacres and had very little time to be influenced by anything other than their socialization by their family and their educational experi- ences. Public policy cannot invade the family dinner table and dictate what parents teach their children, but respon- sible citizens must wonder what type of education these young men received in the schools they attended. It ap- pears that all three attended public high schools; Roof at- tended at least two. Is it legitimate to ask if some of the ideas and beliefs they acquired in high school led these mass shooters to be susceptible to targeting Black and Latinx victims based sole- ly on their race or ethnicity? As rabid white suprema- cists howl about the damage done to their children by being exposed to the truth about American history, is it possible that in many class- rooms across America, seeds of bigotry and hate are being planted in the minds of some white children so that they grow to become shooters like Dylann Roof, Patrick Crusius and Payton Gendron? It was not that long ago when schools in southern states were segregated by law. Today, schools in every sector of the country are racially im- balanced because of histori- cal housing patterns created by a string of racist policies. So, is it unreasonable to take a closer look at our educational system to see what practices in our classrooms might pos- sibly have a hand in creating mass murderers driven by ra- cial hatred? Racial hatred exists in the United States. We witness it every day and feel its ef- fects throughout our entire lives. To witness it and not investigate its source is as ir- responsible as denying that such hatred exists. What’s worse than either of these are the multiple attempts across America to lock away the his- tory of this hatred so it cannot be addressed. Read the rest of this commentary at TheSkanner.com nt • lo c a l n e w s • eve
