WHY ARE THEY LOOTING? As I watch CNN concerning the situation in Ferguson, Missouri and I see so many people looting the stores and businesses, so many people are asking “Why are they looting”. Let me explain, not justify their actions (because I’m totally against breaking the law or looting), but just try to explain. The symptoms of structural racism stain America everywhere, but its execution is particularly perverse in places like Ferguson. It’s not just that black drivers are stopped more often for alleged crimes than white drivers, despite the Missouri attorney general’s report that white people break the law more often. It’s not that Ferguson’s police force is 94% white in a town that’s two-thirds black. It’s not even, that black people – many unemployed – “do more to fund local government than relatively affluent whites” by way of those stops and the subsequent fines. The real perversion of justice by way of modern American racism is that black people in Ferguson – like black people nationally – are marginalized economically and physically from day one. THAT IS THE REAL LOOTING OF FERGUSON. As African Americans, we are consistently twice as likely to be unemployed – and in and near St Louis, “47 percent of the metro area’s African-American men between ages 16 and 24 are unemployed”. Our men are more likely to be convicted and our women are more likely to be evicted. We are more likely to be victims of predatory loans. Our children are twice as likely to have asthma (even before you teargas them). Our babies are twice as likely to die before the age of one – and their mothers are three or four times more likely to die as a result of bearing them. NOT EXCUSING, JUST EXPLAINING… But when I hear the CNN commentators call for a stop to illegal looting that “undermines ... justice”, I wonder: Why do they care? Why should any black person care about the storefronts of Ferguson? Or care about the business life of a community where almost half of young men are locked out of the workforce – and where, if they get a criminal record while unemployed, they will effectively be locked out from employment forever? Too often, a call for non-violence becomes a blanket excuse to do nothing and maintain the status quo. No doubt, the National Guard will be called in to maintain the status quo and that is unacceptable – because black Missourians, like most African Americans, were already drowning in the status quo when Mike Brown was still alive. IT’S TIME TO PRAY!!
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 04:14:37 +0000
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