August 26, 2014

  • We cannot NOT write about Ferguson

    There is so much to say about Ferguson.  Where do we start?  Can we cover it in one post? er, of course not.

    Protests
    Hundreds of people were marching in the street and carrying signs.  That is not news.  Democracy has always had protests.  James Madison was thinking of protesters 250 years ago when he forbade laws

      "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
      assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." (the First Amendment)

    Protests are not new.  Cairo has had mass protests; Kiev, Dortmund, London, Bangkok, Toronto, Wall Street, all had major demonstrations.

    Crowd Control
    The real news is that the small Missouri community reacted by sending out SWAT teams with automatic rifles, mine-resistant tanks, helmets, kevlar vests, camo suits, tear gas, rubber bullets, and sound cannons.

    ferguson_police_riot_gear_812_ap_img
    And this is why Ferguson became a global news event -- idiot police behavior.

    Blame It On The Ghetto
    The White ghetto I mean.  In the small Missouri community, White people are isolated from people of color and from humanity at large.  According to Ferguson mayor James Knowles III, "there's no racial divide in Ferguson," which is of course delusional.  As John Oliver points out, "there is no history of racial tension here" has never been true anywhere on earth.

    We grew and evolved during the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s.  We changed.  We learned to be tolerant, to be just.  Voting rights were now guaranteed by law.  Discrimination in housing and hiring were prohibited.  Finally it seemed that, in the words of Dr. King, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

    Pre-Racial America?
    Rev. Al Sharpton recently said that Blacks must not be treated as three-fifths of a man.  This takes us back to before Jim Crow, to before Civil War politics, to the 18th Century.  We all know that racism is a serious problem in this country, but we didn't expect to hear such pre-civil-rights language again.  What happened?

    Poverty Happened
    The financial elite were never concerned with civil rights.  It's not a problem at the country club.  The working poor do not have time for civil rights.  They are working three jobs.  The upwardly mobile middle class, well -- they disappeared.  The wealth curve has gone from a smooth one-hump camel to a gnarled two-hump camel.  It’s all about the “long tails” at the very top and the very bottom now. We’re all tail and no rat.

    Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (yes, the basketball great) has written a thought provoking essay on poverty as a driver of Ferguson.

      This fist-shaking of everyone’s racial agenda distracts America from the larger issue that the targets of police overreaction are based less on skin color and more on an even worse affliction: being poor.  Of course, to many in America, being a person of color is synonymous with being poor, and being poor is synonymous with being a criminal.  Ironically, this misperception is true even among the poor.  [ more ]

     

    (I will have more to say.)

     

Comments (2)

  • As the gap between rich and poor widens, the rich feel more threatened, hunkering behind their gated communities. I live in a ghetto of sorts, not black, but a dumping ground for the county's parolees, the disabled (by substance abuse and mental illness)and the perennially poor working stiffs. I don't fear them because, even though I have more than they do, I speak to them, I look them in the eye, and I recognize their lack of choices. They were short changed by both nature and nurture. Are they dangerous? Some may be but certainly not most of them. The militarized police force fails to see the poor as people with fewer choices but people none the less. Interestingly, I do fear young, poor people because I don't know them. "We are comfortable with the familiar, even familiar dangers."
    I look forward to your "more to say".

    • Yeah, poverty intensifies the segregation in America. I believe we are time warping backwards into APARTHEID. The top story in the press in Europe, Asia, South America, etc., is now "Racism in America." An unarmed Black man gets killed nearly every month. That ain't right.

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