FERGUSON, MO. Aug. 21 (DPI) – The shooting by a white police officer of an unarmed black youth here last week has set off more than 10 days of protests and some rioting, the latest tragic reminder that views on justice and treatment by law enforcement remain racially segregated, even in 21st century America.
The racial tensions spurred by the August 9th shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown have only recently abated. US Attorney General Eric Holder visited the victim’s family this week, and a grand jury commissioned by the state attorney general will review the case, which has been the source of conflicting accounts on what exactly led to the shooting.
The television media — CNN especially – has followed the nightly protests, as well as the early riots and street violence, serving to magnify this single, sad event into a monumental touchstone for what’s still the nation’s biggest social divide.
Comment boards everywhere reflect anger, anguish and frustration – but with views starkly drawn down what appear to be racial lines (that is, to the extent that commentators identify themselves).
Ferguson, Mo., a close-in suburb of St. Louis and just east of the St. Louis airport, is a hardly a stage for both the shooting and the aftermath: It’s where many African Americans moved in the last three decades after deciding that the crime and street violence of North St. Louis and other urban areas couldn’t be tolerated any more. Crime statistics confirm that Ferguson, population 21,000, doesn’t have remotely the crime rate that urban areas do:
http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Ferguson-Missouri.html
http://www.city-data.com/poverty/poverty-Ferguson-Missouri.html
http://www.city-data.com/top2/c3.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/13/us/if-they-gunned-me-down-protest-on-twitter.html
The most popular reader comments accompanying a NYTimes.com article on white perceptions of black stereotypes reflect the anguish, the anger and the sadness from all sides. Most popular reader posts, in order:
1) My daughter’s summer camp, like many, posts a private photo blog of campers. In many of them, the tween and teens are making the very peace sign in Michael Brown’s “thug” photograph. Because the girls are white, they simply look like teenage posers — silly and unthreatening. But the very same photo of a black male teen reads to most of the readers here as “dangerous.” THIS is what the article is about, readers. YOUR SKEWED PERCEPTION. When an action is done by a white teen: silly. Same action by a black teen: threatening, dangerous, worthy of fatal police reaction.
We ought to be ashamed. Horrified. Standing up.
2) Does anyone imagine — anyone at all — that Mr Brown would have been murdered if he were white? I’m white, and live in integrated neighborhood. I have no doubt whatsoever that Mr Brown was murdered by a member of our militarized police whose equipment (automatic weapons, Darth Vader patrol cars to name just two), organizations (SWAT teams), and behavior all over the country simultaneously demonstrate and encourage their attitude towards civilians: we are the “enemy.” In a larger context, not just the police but our “intelligence” apparatus are out of control, well down the path to a militarized police state. Scoff if you will … ’til the show plays in your town.
3) “This affects me deeply because the stories of Mike Brown, Renisha McBride, Trayvon Martin, Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo and many more could have been me,” Mr. Atkins wrote, referring to the shooting deaths of blacks, some at the hands of police.
This statement reveals the intellectual dishonesty of Mr. Atkins and so many blacks. Thousands of black men are murdered every year by other black men, and he chooses to focus on a handful of whites who were responsible for the death of a black person. Where are all the protests from black leaders for the routine slaughter of blacks by other blacks? This is more about blaming others than actually changing all the dysfunction in the black community
4) I’m pretty shocked by the comments here thus far. I usually expect better from NYTimes commenters.
I certainly don’t expect everybody to agree with everything that Mr. Atkins is saying, but it really seems like most of you are completely missing his point.
Yes, black-on-black violence is a major concern. That’s not the issue he’s addressing here. He’s talking about the Media crafting a narrative that they want, but which doesn’t reflect reality.
Furthermore, it seems like many of you completely fail to understand the context of his picture with a bandana, and think that maybe he chooses to represent himself this way or walks around like that all the time, and the tux photo is maybe something he wears “3 or 4 times a year”. Well done, folks! You literally just summed up his entire point by making statements like that.
5) I also saw pictures and videos of dozens of people smashing store windows and gleefully looting the contents of every store in sight. Or is that a misrepresentation as well? I believe young black men are unfairly characterized on a continual basis, I believe that is abhorrent; but I also believe that there is a problem with behavior in many cases that drives that characterization.
6) “This affects me deeply because the stories of Mike Brown, Renisha McBride, Trayvon Martin, Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo and many more could have been me,” Mr. Atkins wrote.
Mr. Atkins, you’re far, far, far more likely to die at the hands of similarly skin-toned peers than by the police. It doesn’t justify what happened to you but the “woe is us” attitude that lurks everywhere in “black” society is a poor excuse for the enormous absence of responsibility that results in broken homes and a culture that glorifies violence (see World Star Hip Hop).
7) All I can say is I have plenty of pictures in suit, tux or graduation gown but none of me with a bandanna or gang sign. Self-image begins with self.