Ferguson

There's a lot to be said about the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson on August 9.  One is the shocking report (discovered from a link by blogger Billmon) from USA Today (and picked up by Melissa Harris-Perry) that from 2006 to 2012, an average of two black people per week were killed by white police officers.

And Brittney Cooper makes an impassioned statement on our new racial low point.

I will not concede that destruction of property is equal to the taking of life. I will not answer calls to be reasonable in the face of unreasonable, unjustifiable black death. I will not believe the lie that black propriety and respectability – pulling our pants up, speaking corporate English, never, ever doing anything wrong – will save us.

These are scary times. They are times for rage. Time for telling the truth. Time for ripping the band-aids off our gaping wounds. Time to recognize that we can neither heal nor fix that which we will not confront.

Update (August 23):  Reflections at Salon on suburban poverty, white privilege, and senseless death.

Update (August 24):  Kevin Horrigan tells the story of multinational corporation Emerson Electric whose headquarters are only a mile from where Michael Brown was killed, and whose CEO threatens to move jobs out of the U.S. which have already left long ago.  Jobs that impoverished communities like Ferguson could use.

Update (August 25):  Sean McElwee explains why race still matters.

Update (November 24):  The grand jury in Ferguson has declined to issue an indictment against Darren Wilson.  My initial reaction is disbelief--the prosecutor seemed to go out of his way to explain why the eyewitnesses didn't see what they claimed to see.

Update (December 6):  It seems to be very difficult to bring charges against white police officers who kill unarmed black men.

Update (December 16):  Representative John Lewis reminds us of a speech Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave in 1967.

King describes what he calls the "other America," one of two starkly different American experiences that exist side-by-side. One people "experience the opportunity of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in all its dimensions," and the other a "daily ugliness" that spoils the purest hopes of the young and old, leaving only "the fatigue of despair." The Brown and Garner cases themselves are not the only focus of the protestors' grievances, but they represent a glimpse of a different America most Americans have found it inconvenient to confront.

Update (December 17):  Yes it is true that eye-witness testimony can be unreliable, but it is also possible that testimony is totally fabricated.

Update (March 7, 2015):  Kali Holloway examines how racism is ingrained into the lives of white people.

1. College professors, across race/ethnicity and gender, are more likely to respond to queries from students they believe are white males. 

2. White people, including white children, are less moved by the pain of people of color, including children of color, than by the pain of fellow whites. 

3. White people are more likely to have done illegal drugs than blacks or Latinos, but are far less likely to go to to jail for it. 

4. Black men are sentenced to far lengthier prison sentences than white men for the same crimes. 

5. White people, including police, see black children as older and less innocent than white children. 

6. Black children are more likely to be tried as adults and are given harsher sentences than white children. 

7. White people are more likely to support the criminal justice system, including the death penalty, when they think it’s disproportionately punitive toward black people. 

8. The more "stereotypically black" a defendant looks in a murder case, the higher the likelihood he will be sentenced to death. 

9. Conversely, white people falsely recall black men they perceive as being “smart” as being lighter-skinned. 

10. A number of studies find white people view lighter-skinned African Americans (and Latinos) as more intelligent, competent, trustworthy and reliable than their darker-skinned peers.