Fortunately, this opinion piece doesn’t come from the Editorial Board, which features a whopping one African-American amongst the nineteen member board, but Michael Eric Dyson, who is actually a bit more thoughtful, at least as the writing in his books shows
Where Do We Go After Ferguson?
WHEN Ferguson flared up this week after a grand jury failed to indict the white police officer Darren Wilson for killing the unarmed black youth Michael Brown, two realities were illuminated: Black and white people rarely view race in the same way or agree about how to resolve racial conflicts, and black people have furious moral debates among ourselves out of white earshot.
It’s not just black and white, but conservative and progressive. Lefties see an evil cop who shot a gentle giant unarmed black kid, and wonder, if Michael Brown was actually charging Officer Darren Wilson, why Wilson couldn’t do Something Else to subdue Brown. They get a little sketchy on what he should have done, but, hey, he’s still an evil racist who is part of an evil racist system so let’s bum rush him to prison and disarm all the cops.
What conservatives see is a large man who robbed a convenience store, assaulted the owner, was a fool for walking in the street, attacked a police officer, hit the officer, tried to take his gun, ran away, then came back for more, refusing the officer’s demands to stop and get on the ground. Police are trained to shoot center mass, not for extremities. Wilson had a split second to make his decision. There was no time to call for backup.
We also see that this occurred in a heavily Democrat voting area. We see most of the protests and/or riots and/or lawlessness occurring in heavily Democrat voting areas.
From the start, most African-Americans were convinced that Michael Brown’s death wouldn’t be fairly considered by Ferguson’s criminal justice system. There were doubts that the prosecution and defense were really on different teams. The prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, looked as if he were coaching an intramural scrimmage with the goal of keeping Officer Wilson from being tackled by indictment.
Ferguson folks demanded a Grand Jury, which originally wasn’t even on the table based on the facts of the case. When they got it, and Wilson was not indicted, they then complained. And rioted and looted in their own neighborhoods.
These clashing perceptions underscore the physics of race, in which an observer effect operates: The instrument through which one perceives race — one’s culture, one’s experiences, one’s fears and fantasies — alters in crucial ways what it measures.
Where do we go after Ferguson? Here’s the best idea: get the Black communities out of under the thumb of Democrats, Progressives, community agitators organizers, and other left wing loons who whip the communities up as well as keeping them dependent upon left wing government. Better school systems, more available jobs, more responsibility. Sure, it still won’t be a perfect utopia, there are problems in Republican areas, too. People are not always good. And, hey, even educated Liberals are great at race baiting and inciting racial strife, but, it would be a damned sight better than it is now.
IT is nearly impossible to convey the fear that strikes at the heart of black Americans every time a cop car pulls up. When I was 17, my brother and I and a childhood friend were pulled over by four Detroit cops in an unmarked police vehicle. This was in the mid-70s, in the shadow of the infamous Detroit Police Department task force called Stress (Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets), which was initiated after the 1967 riots. The unit lived up to its name and routinely targeted black people.
Eric Holder calls us a nation of cowards for refusing to discuss race. OK, so, here’s something non-PC: might there be a reason for a good chunk of that fear of police? It’s also strange that a good chunk of those with a fear of police live in areas run by Democrats.
As big a fan as he is of respectability politics, Mr. Obama is the most eloquent reminder that they don’t work, that no matter how smart, sophisticated or upstanding one is, and no matter how much chastising black people pleases white ears, the suspicions about black identity persist. Despite his accomplishments and charisma, he is for millions the unalterable “other†of national life, the opposite of what they mean when they think of America.
And right there is a difference in opinion: Liberals, not just Black ones like Mr. Dyson, race-bait, and fail to see that it is Mr. Obama’s politics and policies that are at issue, not his color. Mr. Dyson decides to deep dive into the race-baiting
Barack Obama, like Michael Brown, is changed before our eyes into a monstrous thing that lacks humanity: a monkey, a cipher, a black hole that kills light. One might expect the ultimate target of this black otherness to have sympathy for its lesser targets, who also have lesser standing and lesser protection, like the people in Ferguson, in Ohio, in New York, in Florida, and all around the country, who can’t keep their unarmed children from being cut down in the street by callous cops who leave their bodies to stiffen into rigor mortis in the presence of horrified onlookers.
Again, what we see is a horrible president, regardless of skin, who acts as the leader of the Democrat Party, not as POTUS. Someone who is nasty, to say the least, to those who oppose his policies, who thinks of those opponents as enemies. One who is thin-skinned and uses the apparatus of government to attack opponents. When Obama assumed office, I stopped doing my Surrender Monkey Friday posts, because, even though they had absolutely nothing to do with race, people would, and did, pitch a fit (it went back the old “cheese eating surrender monkeys” schtick, based on the French). It will return when Obama leaves office. We see an 18 year old man who decided theft and attacking an officer of the law was the proper decision, and he paid for it. Now Darren Wilson has to pay for the actions of Michael Brown.
More than 45 years ago, the Kerner Commission concluded that we still lived in two societies, one white, one black, separate and still unequal. President Lyndon B. Johnson convened that commission while the flames that engulfed my native Detroit in the riot of 1967 still burned. If our president and our nation now don’t show the will and courage to speak the truth and remake the destinies of millions of beleaguered citizens, then we are doomed to watch the same sparks reignite, whenever and wherever injustice meets desperation.
The truth? How about that Black Americans suffer tremendously under the hands of Leftists and their plantation politics. The truth? Black people are more likely to be victims of crime perpetrated by other Black people. They are more likely to be killed by other Black people. They are more likely to have higher crime rates in their communities. The Truth? Don’t want to be treated like a thug, do not dress like a thug, don’t act like a thug. People respond immediately to the way people are dressed. They develop almost instant evaluations of a person the way they are dressed. A white person, a Latino, an Asian, if they are dressed like a thug will be thought of as a thug. And Liberals can’t say much, because they see someone dressed in overalls and speaking with a deep Southern accent as a moron and hayseed.
Crossed at Right Wing News.
Read: NY Times: Say, Where Do We Go After Ferguson? »
