al sharpton blew into town – as he does whenever there is racial gold to be mined – and told the protesters, rioters and looters (some of whom fit all three categories) that they should demand answers, not just be told to shut up, that the police were “militarized” and acting like it is a “war zone”, that “this isn\’t over yet”.
jesse Jackson blew into town – as he does whenever there is racial gold to be mined – and, without benefit of any proof whatsoever, called Michael Brown\’s death a “state execution”
Afterwards, what had mostly calmed down from rioting and looting to protests and confrontations that would test any police officer\’s ability to restrain him/herself, went right back to rioting and looting.
One of the stores that was looted last night? The convenience store where Michael Brown was shown, on surveillance tape, to have stolen merchandise from, then shoved and threatened the owner who tried to stop him from leaving the store without paying for it.
The owner of the store\’s “crime”? Being a victim of Michael Brown\’s thievery….and having what has turned out to be the bad judgment to open a store which serves the people of Ferguson, Missouri.
If he could go back in time and decide whether to open there or somewhere else, what do you think he would do?
Now suppose you are a racist (I hope for your sake this is only supposition and not the real thing). What would you be saying about the last couple of days?
You\’d be saying:
“See? I told you they all were like that. Now maybe you\’ll believe me. They don\’t know if the shooting had anything to do with race at all, but because the cop was White and that thief was Black, they decided to make race out of it – and when they do that, the first thing that happens is that stores get looted. They LOVE when a __________ (fill in whichever pejorative for Black people you care to) gets killed, because it\’ means free stuff for them. But when those _______________kill each other, they don\’t protest, that\’s just their way of life. And then they wonder why White people don\’t want to live anywhere near them? Too bad we can\’t ship them all back to Africa, where they can run around with the other monkeys and leave White people alone”.
Don\’t doubt for a minute that those words, in one form or another, are being repeated all over the country. And don\’t doubt for a minute that those words, buttressed by the images seen on TV, are finding receptive audiences.
And the fact that, while TV video makes it seem like the whole town was doing this, it really was just a tiny fraction of the Black population? To a racist that would be irrelevant\’n\’immaterial.
But since it is neither irrelevant nor immaterial to me…
…having pointed out how much nourishment Ferguson, Missouri is giving the racist crowd, I will end with a perspective that no racist will want to consider, but I hope every reader of this blog does.
There are about 14,000 Black people in Ferguson, Missouri. Count up all the people you saw running wild in the streets. Then double it just to be sure you are not understating how many there were. Then subtract that from 14,000. That is how many Black people did not have anything to do with what you saw.
When you do that, you realize how unfair it is to blame Black people, in general, for what is happening in Ferguson. And if this busts the balloon of racism? Good: that\’s exactly what it is supposed to do.
