The Meaning of Ferguson

In the aftermath of the Grand Jury’s refusal to indict the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, TV and print pundits are calling for America-wide soul searching.

Why?

Of course, many ill-informed, and some ill-motivated people, were upset by the decision.  The “rabble” rioted supposedly in response (as if the looting, destruction and burning of businesses in the town, some of which were black-owned, represented a reply to judicial injustice).

Others slammed the Grand Jury’s action as improper and the result of a presumed bias in favor of white police officers and against black victims.

Highlighting that attitude was an ABC interview conducted by George Stephanopoulos who questioned officer Darren Wilson as to whether he would have acted the same way, in self-defense, if the person had been white.  (Is that supposed to be a joke?  Did Stephanopoulos intend to imply that if one’s life is perceived to be at risk by a white assailant, the cop wouldn’t have shot him?)

But here’s another view.

Contrary to widely-circulated initial witness reports following the August episode, Brown had not been shot in the back; the bullets hit him in the front as he was, according to several Grand Jury witnesses, charging toward the police officer. 

The claim that he raised his hands in the air and cried out “don’t shoot” was a myth promulgated by Brown’s friends and bandied about by those in the media and elsewhere with an anti-police agenda in mind.  Yet the failure to indict, and not the reasons for it, has been the focus of protests.  The initial narrative of what happened, fostered by Al Sharpton and Brown’s allies, was plainly accepted as true by those who wanted to believe that the “unarmed black teenager”, repeated ad nauseam by CNN, was gunned down because he was.  The fact that he was a thug who had just roughed up a store owner and was high on marijuana, at least, was ignored.  The perception was aided by the intercession of attorney General Eric Holder calling for a civil rights violation investigation.  The false storyline persisted over the months since August despite leaks of autopsy reports that sharply contradicted it.

 

Why?

It is hardly original to note that blacks and whites typically view violence between the races differently.  Remember the OJ Simpson trial of many years ago?  The conflicting views are particularly stark when the white person is a police officer.  Historically, it’s hard to argue with the tendency in black communities to view such conflicts as targeting them.  Because, of course, for many, many years predominately, if not exclusively, white police forces did exactly that. 

But history also provides proof that such attitudes and conduct have changed significantly over the past half century.  Does any objective observer dispute that both economically and socially blacks are much better off and that racial prejudice is a much weaker force?

Yet people being people, lessons learned over the decades (such as to be leery of white police officers) for self-protection are not easily unlearned despite their reduced or nonexistent relevance today.

So it is understandably true that for many – maybe most blacks – there remains a predisposition to believe that when a white police officer shoots a black person, it was unjustified.  As Ferguson made clear, that predisposition stubbornly resists acceptance of a new racial reality.

[The antics of the Al Sharptons of the world, alas, seem dedicated to feeding and fueling old habits of thinking.  Their incendiary and false accusations helped to ignite the violence in Ferguson.  One can only hope that that wasn’t their objective although it is certainly fair to ask what does one expect when one lights a fuse?]