At the risk of offending people on all sides of this national debate, here are some uncomfortable, inconvenient truths about Ferguson.
1) My namesake Michael Brown is the wrong poster boy for the campaign against alleged police brutality.
In the early days of the civil rights movement, Rosa Parks was not the first black woman to refuse to give up her seat on a bus to a white person.
But she was the right person.
Before her, there was a young black woman who also refused to give up her seat, but when the civil rights leaders learned that she was pregnant out of wedlock, they knew she could not be the face of their movement, especially at that time in our nation’s history.
In the same way, 18-year-old Michael Brown cannot be the poster boy for today’s campaign, despite the attention surrounding his killing.
Had he not been filmed robbing a convenience store and angrily shoving the clerk shortly before his death, and had there not been credible witnesses who described his failure to obey Officer Wilson’s commands and to verify the confrontation that ensued, then his tragic shooting could have been a rallying point for the nation.
But in light of his videotaped thuggery – even if it were a one-time act – and in light of the controversy over just how and why he was killed, black leaders must find a better case to present to the nation, one that really portrays an innocent, unarmed black victim being gunned down by police. (Sadly, such examples are not lacking.)
The fact that Brown’s stepfather called for the burning down of Ferguson immediately after the grand jury’s decision was announced only reinforces the fact that Brown’s tragic shooting is far too divisive to use as a national rallying point.
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2) There is a reason that black America is hurting.
I refuse to believe that there is no basis for the grief and anger experienced by many black Americans today. I refuse to believe that, all too often, they are not victims of injustice.
I have had too many black listeners call my radio show and share their horror stories. (I’m talking about pastors and corporate employees and people living in the suburbs who have been mistreated by the police simply because of the color of their skin.)
It doesn’t help to say, “What do you expect the cops to do when blacks commit a disproportionate amount of the crimes?”
That doesn’t justify the mistreatment of a law-abiding citizen, and that doesn’t take away from the corporate sense of indignation many black Americans feel when they believe injustice has been done.
One black caller asked me to remember how I felt when O. J. Simpson was acquitted. What a travesty of justice that was! That’s how many black Americans feel about the verdicts in the killing of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, right or wrong.
At the very least, we need to understand why many blacks so deeply mistrust our legal system (without for a moment minimizing the evil of arson and looting). They have had their dignity and personhood attacked more than enough times by now.
3) Overzealous police and a flawed legal system are not the greatest enemies of black America.
David Horowitz and John Perazzo, in 2012, wrote, “The rise of the welfare state in the 1960s contributed greatly to the demise of the black family as a stable institution. The out-of-wedlock birth rate among African-Americans today is 73 percent, three times higher than it was prior to the War on Poverty. Children raised in fatherless homes are far more likely to grow up poor and to eventually engage in criminal behavior, than their peers who are raised in two-parent homes. In 2010, blacks (approximately 13 percent of the U.S. population) accounted for 48.7 percent of all arrests for homicide, 31.8 percent of arrests for forcible rape, 33.5 percent of arrests for aggravated assault, and 55 percent of arrests for robbery. Also as of 2010, the black poverty rate was 27.4 percent (about three times higher than the white rate), meaning that 11.5 million blacks in the U.S. were living in poverty.”
What are the causes of the deterioration of the black family in the aftermath of the successes of the civil rights movement? What can be done to help men and women who start life with two strikes against them?
A young black man suggested on an excellent video on personal responsibility that those who don’t like living in the hood need to make different life choices to get out of the hood. But it’s often easier said than done, especially if your dad and stepdad are in jail, your kid sister was killed in a drive-by shooting, you’ve been around drugs and drug dealing since you were 5, and you can barely read and write as a teen.
These are complex, difficult issues, but as long as we focus on the symptoms rather than the cause, we will never make progress together as one nation.
4) The NFL is politically correct to the point of being downright hypocritical.
Do you remember what happened to Don Jones, a player on the Miami Dolphins football team after he tweeted out “OMG” and “Horrible” after newly drafted, openly gay Michael Sam kissed his boyfriend on national TV?
Jones was immediately disciplined by the team and put on suspension until he completed “training” relative to his comments. And the Dolphins issued an immediate statement of apology and renunciation, followed by one from Jones.
Yet this past Sunday, when five players on the St. Louis Rams came out on the field in the “hands up, don’t shoot” pose, to the chagrin of the very police officers who were there to protect them, the NFL said there would be no disciplinary action, despite a strongly worded protest from the police.
What hypocrisy! But that seems to be the spirit of the league these days.
With that, I’m out of space and out of here until next week.
Media wishing to interview Michael Brown, please contact [email protected].
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