Ferguson Movement Isn't Just About Ferguson Anymore

There has been a lot of hate going around the internet about people's reactions to the events in Ferguson. Almost all the negative attention is coming from white people who have little to no social interactions with people of color and seem utterly unable to understand where all the anger is coming from. As an example, yesterday a few players on the St. Louis Rams football team raised their hands in the "hands up" gesture that has been adopted by the Ferguson protesters during their pre-game entry. There was immediately a strong negative reaction from the police union and many white fans who took offence to the gesture. The reaction to such a public show of support for the protesters is telling of the views of different sectors of our society. Most leftists and people of color were quick to show support for the gesture while the negative reactions was almost exclusively from whites. Most negative reactions come in the form of a statement like this, "Why are you showing support for a thug who robbed a store and attacked a police officer?" This statement is loaded in many ways because it focuses squarely on the events surrounding Michael Brown's death and is loaded with racial stereotypes about black youths. In the days following the death of Michael Brown it became evident that regardless of the actual events in Ferguson, the protest movement that was rising was focusing more on the issues of police militarization, police brutality, and racially motivated police practices than just on the events in Ferguson. This is why I say that the Ferguson Movement is bigger than Ferguson itself. These are issues that are deeply rooted in our police and our criminal justice system. Police are regularly allowed to use brutal measures with people of color in order to ensure their "compliance" while if similar treatment were used in white communities there would be an uprising. It is telling of the deep rooted nature of these issues that minority communities have not acted sooner. They have been so terrified and forced into submission by the police and our judicial system that it took a tragic and explosive situation to rouse them out of their oppression.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that people who are against what is happening in Ferguson need to look past the events themselves to see the bigger picture. This isn't about Darren Wilson or Michael Brown anymore, it is a debate over the role and actions of our nation's law enforcement community, especially in communities of color. Until the detractors can see past the surface of the situation they will never understand why the protesters are so motivated and willing to confront the police. This isn't just about Ferguson, it's about America.

We live in a state of de facto apartheid where minorities are brutally oppressed by the police, have little hope for a good education in their underfunded schools, and are destined to a life of poverty because of a total lack of opportunity for good paying jobs in their own communities. The most depressing aspect in all of this is that many whites refuse to even acknowledge that these problems exist. When whites look at communities of color they choose to see the crime and gangs rather than the systemic failure on the part of society to alleviate the roots causes of problems in minority communities. Instead of providing better education and good job opportunities, whites focus on increasing policing and giving minority criminals harsh prison sentences. We will never be able to solve the inequalities between whites and minorities without addressing the root causes of inequality. "Better policing" and "tough on crime" approaches only have the effect of glossing over the problems rather than actually fixing the problems in those communities.