Ferguson Missouri Is The Very Definition Of Race Relations In America

by Scott Ledbetter

11-25-2014

A scene from Ferguson, Missouri

When you go to other countries, you will see different groups of people clashing and fighting for hundreds or thousands of years.  The Balkan conflict during the Clinton years was two groups of people that hate each other.  Ask Albanians and Turks, or Greeks and Turks how they feel about each other.  Look at how the Shia and Sunni Muslims treat each other.  There are some gaps that are seemingly impossible to bridge.

In the United States, there are more than a lot of people who believe that in this modern time that we live in, that race relations have improved.  They trot out people like Allen West and Herman Cain as examples of how that race relations are improving.  But the problem is that, although there are exceptions to the rule, the pulse of race relations is really no better than it was in the 50's or 60's.

An excellent read on why this is still a problem is an article written in The Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates.  But I want to focus on exactly what we are seeing in Ferguson, Missouri.  It is the same thing, although with a slight difference, in Sanford, Florida with the shooting of Trayvon Martin.  Simply put, there is absolutely not trust of the other race, and that is why we are where we are at.

To the vast majority of whites, they are brought up from birth with a picture painted of blacks as drugs, gangs, murders, rapes, poor, uneducated, looking for trouble, and prison people.  And all those who believe this way have to do is look at rap/hip-hop music and point to how some of the artists use these same images in their songs.  They point to statistics where blacks have a higher percentage of their population in jail, on drugs, in single parent homes, on welfare, and so on.  This all breeds distrust, because they think, even subconsciously, that blacks are there to rob, kill, rape, and sell their children drugs.  All the evils of society are pinned on the African-American race.

None of that is new, and is actually as old as the United States.  If you take the time to read Ms. Coates article, you will see that blacks are distrusting of the white establishment and, by extension, law enforcement and have been for as long as their has been a United States.  Plenty of politicians have promised them equality, but they still feel like society is looking at them as nothing more than diseased people (see previous paragraph).  So when a white cop (or a half white half hispanic want-to-be-cop) shoots an unarmed black man, then it is just another case of white supremacy and oppression.  When the grand jury, stacked with 9 whites when 9 votes is the minimum to not indict, returns a no bill, then it is just another example of how that blacks are viewed as worthless trouble makers.  

A postcard dated August 3, 1920, depicts the aftermath of a lynching in Center, Texas, near the Louisiana border. According to the text on the other side, the victim was a 16-year-old boy.

Hate breeds rage, and rage begets violence, and that is what we are seeing in Ferguson now.  Regardless of whether or not Officer Darren Wilson actually killed Michael Brown in cold blood, both sides are so entrenched that the truth does not matter.  He is either the hero for fending off another black hoodlum or he is the current poster boy for racism/white supremacy.  And there are those on both sides of the racial divide that are using this in order to demonize and subjugate the other side.

Just as in the conflicts world wide that I mentioned at the beginning of this article, there may be no bridge that can be built - or at least none in our lifetime.  South Africa is another good example, as the blacks that finally got out from under the oppressive white government, have instilled a government openly hostile to whites now.  Vengeance has replaced the calls for unity, and now whites are still distrustful of the blacks and are leaving South Africa in droves.  

I have lived in both Mississippi and in East Texas.  Jasper, Texas is a great example of all of this.  Whites stare at blacks and blacks stare at whites with each loathing each other.  What is going on in Ferguson right now with the rioting is bubbling just under the surface of Jasper, and it will not take much to ignite it.  In the absence of trust, there is great hatred.  The racial divide in America is just as great as it ever has been, and until trust can be built, then it never get any closer and there will be many more Martin's and Brown's as well as Ferguson's.