What's so important about Michael Brown? Why not the last ?innocent? guy who got shot by the cops? Why not the next? This happens all the time, because human beings aren't rational actors.[/li][/list]
In their defense a great deal of the story isn't being covered by the media, who have opted for a racial narrative. Unnoticed by much of the tv press was an article researching the Ferguson police department, stating the following claim: When you add the number of warrants/fines together and divide them by the number of households in Ferguson, it averages out to 1 warrant served and 315 dollars in fines per household, per year, for at least a decade consistently. The police there apparently have a long, sordid history of abuse of power, excessive use of force, and shaking down citizens for money/property. Michael Brown wasn't the cause of the riots, he was the final straw in a long series of events that finally broke the local populaces mind. If I had to worry about being arrested or having my property forcibly seized "because I looked funny, or you were available when we were pissed", I'd burn shit down too eventually. If you do everything by the rules, and nothing works, nothing changes, and you're still shit on, violence is always the go to second option for the human species. I can't condemn them for that because I realize that given the right circumstances the only thing separating any of us from them is one really bad day.
Add that to the fact that there have been multiple high profile cases in recent years in which an unarmed black person was killed by an armed white, who was subsequently given a pass because "he felt afraid." Then look at the same situation in reverse and see how many couldn't see how the killing was possibly justified despite that person also being afraid. Peek through the news and you can find an average of 2-4 such cases per month in the US easily. It allows the media to construct a narrative of "Welcome to America, the kill a nigger for free state. We don't mind how much you abuse them, or how many you kill, because after all, they're just a nigger, and no one cares what happens to them." Which pisses off the local white people, who swiftly feel the need to deny they're racist, by doing everything in their power to justify the aforementioned narrative being true. That over-reaction creates an ever-escalating series of events until you have either riots, or someone steps in to separate people and calm them down. We don't really pursue that second option in America. We let it run it's course hoping it will die down eventually, or the people in charge are corrupt and responsible for it happening in the first place.
It's a con game that were post-racial because overt racism isn't allowed much anymore. Maybe it's that I live in a small midwestern town, but there are plenty of people here who commonly say something like "I can't be racist, I don't use racial slurs" while in the same breath stating "You know we only have so much of
their kind in town because the county welfare office is here, and
they flock to those like flies to shit." Just because overt racism is frowned upon doesn't mean that all those people who were racist suddenly stopped being racist because it's no longer welcomed, and it doesn't mean they don't fuck with people. It just means they're less open about it. Where I live, it was common to for african-americans to be called 'nigger' instead of their name well into the late 80's, and they had no choice but to accept that. In high school I considered dating a black girl but was told by my own father "If her parents don't kill you, you're on your own. You can leave my house, because I'm not going to defend you when they or the local cops hang you from a fucking tree." In the 90's it was still pretty common to be arrested for 'driving or walking while black'. In a nearby small town you are still, to this day, required to be a member of the KKK if you want to set up a business in their town. If you refuse you get chased from town, or your business somehow catches fire in the night. There was a recent kerfluffle about a registered sex offender who was listed as white, because he was biracial, and local law still requires anyone who is even one quarter black to be listed as black, regardless of appearance , WHEN BIRACIAL IS AN OPTION ON THE GODDAMN FORM.
For us to talk about a post racial society you need two things to happen: The Silent Generation (which currently makes up much of the electorate that shows up to vote) has to die off, as well as the Boomers. Both generations grew up when racism was considered normal and acceptable, and until their gone you have no real hope of it going away. I might even go so far as to extend that to Generation X, because most of us were raised by the aforementioned generations and are still poisoned by them because of it.
