Revelations of "Postracial" Ferguson

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Revelations of "Postracial" Ferguson

Wednesday, 03 December 2014 10:24
By David Theo Goldberg, Truthout | News Analysis


Much blood and ink have been spilled around Ferguson. Together they have revealed deep cleavages across the United States around race as well as novel modes of racist repression and resistance. And the differences in conception and rationalization, attitude and response, and media coverage and public comment regarding race are deeply racially etched. Here then is a list of driving if not completely comprehensive Ferguson revelations regarding race and racism in the United States today. Together, they constitute something of a current temperature-taking on racial matters and the public "debate" on racism across the country.

First, it is now undeniable that far more black than white people in the United States, especially young black men, are likely to be accosted, violently treated and ultimately killed by the police. Over the past 30 years, blacks have been shot by police 21 times more readily than whites. And while the numbers differ some from region to region, city to city, black and brown residents are far more likely to be stopped by police than are whites, both relative to their demographic representation and, more tellingly, in absolute numbers. The more people are stopped, the higher the likelihood some wrongdoing will be established, and the higher the probability of disproportionate arrest and criminal records that follow. Black citizens as a consequence are far more likely to be stopped by police, arrested, indicted and ultimately imprisoned than any other racially defined group.

If one didn't know before, there is now no excuse for not knowing that black and brown men make up 77 percent of the all-too-large prison population nationally while constituting something like 26 percent of the population. It is telling that young black folks can be imprisoned for a number of years for marijuana possession while privileged young white men of the same age hardly get expelled from elite colleges for serious rapes, including gang rape, and most avoid any criminal charges.

Police, and perhaps most white people more generally, seem readily disposed to regard black men as suspect, as weaponized, as violent for little or no reason other than they are black. What else convincingly explains the account Darren Wilson has given publicly about his sense of Michael Brown as a large, violent, probably armed young black man? Or the shooting with absolutely no warning of 12-year-old Tamir Rice for carrying a pellet gun in an otherwise empty snow-filled park, mistaking him, as the policeman put it, for a 20-year-old? Or the luckily unsuccessful shooting at a black father by mistaking for a weapon the 6-year-old daughter he was rushing to save from a severe asthma attack? And on, and on. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/27773-revelations-of-postracial-ferguson