The cover of this week’s issue of the New Yorker is awash in red and yellow, the silhouettes of protesters with raised arms backlit by the spotlights of a police armored vehicle manned by a helmeted figure with a gun. Eric Drooker’s illustration, based on a photograph by Scott Droll, aptly embodies the fallout that has resulted from the August 9 shooting of 18 year-old black teenager Michael Brown by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in Ferguson, MO. Perhaps because of the still-hazy facts surrounding it, and perhaps because of the glaring issue of the militarization of American law enforcement it has provoked, the shooting has garnered headlines and polarized punditry. But to what end?
National reactions to protests and to the heavy-handed bungling of Ferguson police reveal systemic issues that have manifested at every level of American society. The shooting says something profound—and profoundly dismaying—about continuing issues of race relations, including the poor representation of minorities on police forces and municipal governments in towns like Ferguson, barriers to minority enfranchisement and political activism, and daily socioeconomic barriers. It has also invited criticism of the advanced militarization of police departments across America and police brutality in response to citizen protests. Moreover, it has laid bare the stark reality of how some in this country view young black men: not as children, not as innocents, but as perpetrators who are guilty until proven innocent.
A feature story for The Atlantic this year by renowned African-American journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates made the case for reparations by the American government as recompense for decades of oppression, disenfranchisement, and federally condoned inequality against black Americans subsequent to their emancipation. Ferguson has violently blown the lid off the ugliest still-living roots of this greatest national failure. Fifty years after the signing of the Civil Rights Act, even conversations in the public forum are hamstrung by race’s third-rail status in American politics and society. When the first African-American president of the United States, constrained by the fear of political backlash, sends his attorney general as an emissary to comment on issues of race in his stead, we are struggling with a deep-seated societal ill that further dialogue— even when scheduled to take place at Georgetown—will not be sufficient to resolve.
Ultimately, understanding what happened in the noon heat of August on a small-town city street will go far beyond ballistics, testimony, and even crime and punishment. The shooting of Michael Brown was Ferguson’s tragedy, but the issues it has dredged up are America’s pain.
