Thoughts on the Ritual Now Taking Place in Ferguson, Missouri
18th August 2014
John Hinderaker is not afraid to ask the hard questions.
Eight days ago, a Ferguson, Missouri police officer named Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, a young but very large (6? 4?, 300 pounds) African-American, under circumstances that remain murky. Since then, a ritual with which we have become tiresomely familiar has unfolded: demonstrations that turned into riots, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson–still!–descending on the scene, pleas for peace, intervention of federal authorities, calls for reappraisal of American race relations. Followed by more riots and looting.
We have been here before, too many times. But why? What is so special, so symbolic, about the death of Michael Brown? In the month before the Brown case exploded on the nation’s front pages, 40 people were murdered in Chicago, a large majority of them black. This led to no demonstrations or riots, no news coverage outside Chicago, no appearances by Sharpton and Jackson. So what made the death of Michael Brown so newsworthy?
Two factors: first, Brown was killed by a white man; second, the white man was a police officer. But here we come to a fork in the road. Was this particular death noteworthy because it was typical of so many others, or because it was so rare? Evidently the latter. Last time I checked the numbers, there were about 15 times as many instances where blacks murdered whites as where whites murdered blacks. Why do we never have riots over the murder of a white person by a black man? Such events happen, relatively speaking, all the time.