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