Ferguson 'Tarnishes
Image of an Entire Nation' (Liberation, France)
"This
verdict may well have been rendered by a jury made up of Blacks and Whites who,
according to all the experts, did their job, but African-American communities don't
believe in their country's justice system. Ferguson is very far-removed from
the post-racial America dreamed of by Barack Obama. … In Missouri suburbs like
this, the population is 70 percent Black, but the police, just like the mayor,
are hegemonically White, tarnishing the image of an
entire nation."
"No justice, no peace," cried protesters in from New
York, to St. Louis, to Seattle to Philadelphia after the acquittal of White
police officer who shot Michael Brown, a young unarmed Black Ferguson this
summer. This slogan, a distant allusion to a speech by Martin Luther King Jr., emerged
after the 1986 death of Michael
Griffith, killed by a gang of White youths in Howard Beach, New York.
Since then, dozens of young Blacks in America have been
killed by heavily-armed police or racists. Such crimes often do unpunished, as
if nothing had changed since Martin Luther King. "We want beings like
Americans, we want a equal justice," said the
weeping parents of Michael Brown on Monday night.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
This verdict may well have been rendered by a jury made up
of Blacks and Whites who, according to all the experts, did their job, but African-American
communities don't believe in their country's justice system. Ferguson is very
far-removed from the post-racial America dreamed of by Barack Obama.
In Missouri suburbs like this, the population is 70 percent
Black, but the police, just like the mayor, are hegemonically
White, tarnishing the image of an entire nation.
For too many young Black men, exclusion, unemployment,
police brutality and prison appear as impenetrable obstacles. As a civil rights
activist wrote this summer, "while our Black bodies are brutalized, the
foundation of American democracy, our freedoms, will be torn to pieces, yet
nothing is done."
