AJ+
People around the world have watched Ferguson, Missouri in disbelief that what they’re seeing is taking place in the United States. But Ferguson is actually quite American. AJ+ host Dena Takruri explains how the city is a microcosm of the systemic racial inequality that persists in the U.S, from poverty and unemployment to the police targeting of African-American communities.
Doesn’t surprise me at all. The fact it doesn’t surprise me puts me in the minority section of whites. The same type of racism is rampant towards Native Americans. I live in northern Minnesota in a county with part of three reservations. The racism is extreme and very tightly clung to. Americans have the opinion that laws change things which they do not. Unfortunately, America was founded on a platform of racism/genocide from it’s very beginning.
The description of life in the US for black people as offered in the video is depressingly accurate. Yes, white people and their institutions have used, abused and attempted to control black people in various ways ever since the founding of the nation. What we see in Ferguson is the desperation with which whites now react to the phenomenal patience and endurance that has allowed black people to survive while surrounded by implacable hatred. Whites have been expecting revolts from blacks since slavery. Both militias and police have armed themselves formidably to prepare for the day when they will have an excuse to commit genocide. The rioting police in Ferguson, heavily armed with military weapons, facing unarmed black people with their hands raised, nevertheless show abject terror. Whites fear of blacks rots their reason and their souls. That is the America in which blacks have survived since its inception. There is no relief in sight.
What was witnessed was two kids walking down the middle of the street in defiance after robbing a store. An officer directs them to the sidewalk, and one guy punches the cop in the face while attempting to take his gun. The rest is no more than bombastic rhetoric. The guy in st louis, was directed to put down his knife, instead he jump up on a wall, knife in hand postured to attack. This attitude is what the broader community experiences everyday, and knows that only the police are authorized to address it. No, perhaps death doens’t have to be the result, and more than likely the Police are becoming risk adverse, but we all have rule to follow, and I, for example, wouldn’t have walked down the middle of the street to begin with.
“What was witnessed”? Really? Glad to hear from your end of the spectrum, guessing you weren’t there and have not been keeping up with the reported facts.
What I observe, first hand, in my Tampa Bay middle working class area, is a lot more pickups bearing the proud Stars’n’Bars flag, 4 x 6 foot or so, often flapping next to that yellow “Don’t Tread On Me” insignia of a similar size. This in a place where you can stand your ground, where you can buy a silencer for your pistol or rifle for “hunting,” so as the salesman puts it with a smirk, “you won’t give your position away,” where open carry is in the wings for the wingnuts, and if there were an opening of any sort made by any kind of disorder, any soupcon of a “vacuum,” you can bet that the equivalent of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi would have a ready market for the same flavor of idiocy to bring together the Totally Unregulated Militia types under one or both of those banners.
At least the banners ain’t black…