Posted on 11/27/2014 7:35:03 AM PST by Kaslin
On Tuesday, the day after it was announced that Officer Darren Wilson would not be charged in the slaying of Michael Brown, the president for a second time called for calm. His statement was measured, careful and responsible. He condemned violence and looting while acknowledging the legitimate concerns animating the protestors. He wasn't all that moving or eloquent, but this might have been one of those times when swinging for the rhetorical fences wasn't what the moment needed.
One theme he hit repeatedly, and correctly, was that the passions of many protestors are rooted in something very real. The "frustrations that we've seen are not just about a particular incident," Obama said. "They have deep roots in many communities of color who have a sense that our laws are not always being enforced uniformly or fairly."
There's no doubt that is true. As Jonathan McWhorter writes in Time magazine, "The key element in the Brown-Wilson encounter was not any specific action either man took -- it was the preset hostility to the cops that Brown apparently harbored." Officer Wilson made a legitimate request of Brown. Brown, in turn, saw no legitimacy in it and behaved recklessly.
In a community where cops are feared, resented or reviled, it's almost inevitable that bad things will happen when cops try to do their job, even if they do everything by the book. Moreover, to simply say that the resentment of the police is unwarranted does nothing to solve the problem. People forget that for a brief moment in August, the protests turned peaceful and law-abiding when Missouri Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson, an African-American from Ferguson with credibility in the neighborhood, was put in charge of policing the protests.
Eventually, thanks in large part to an influx of professional agitators, rabble-rousers and opportunists -- attracted to television cameras like ambulance chasers to a bus accident -- the protests got out of hand again. But that moment was instructive.
Now, if you've been following the news lately -- and by lately, I mean the last several years, or even decades -- none of this is particularly shocking. Friction between police departments and minority communities has been part of the national conversation on race (that liberals insist hasn't been going on) for as long as I can remember. The New York Times has been regularly covering that beat for at least half a century. It's a major theme of movies and music. It's a huge profit center for Al Sharpton, who doesn't lack for influence or microphones.
And while I have no respect whatsoever for Sharpton, I do think the issue is real. President Obama is right about that.
But what's left out of the narrative that drives so much of the national conversation are the other real experiences of other Americans. On MSNBC, particularly last August, the discussion of Michael Brown -- much like Trayvon Martin before him -- has been almost entirely abstract. Brown wasn't a person who allegedly robbed a convenience store. He was a stand-in for racial injustice. That's what was so powerful about Brown's (probably mythological) "hands up" gesture.
The outrage that followed when the convenience store robbery video was released and details from the grand jury were leaked was at least in part fury at having the narrative muddied. No one likes to see fresh gospel fact-checked. No one wants to hear that their martyr was in fact no angel. And, in the case of Wilson, no one wants to see their demon humanized.
My point here isn't to "blame the victim" -- or even assign blame in this tragic nationalized game of Rashomon. It's simply to note that there is a huge chasm between the way the talking heads and politicians talk about America and the way Americans actually live their lives. Most people aren't lawyers or academic theorizers. The people we interact with on a daily basis aren't abstractions, they're normal human beings, which means they're a mixed bag. In the nightly shouting match, for instance, we're told immigration is all This or all That. But in our lives we see the good and the bad.
The national media -- on the right and left -- has an insatiable desire for storylines so clear-cut they might as well be allegories. The problem is that life isn't allegorical. It's messy.
Odd, Jonah, I found his speech to be spoken in a flat, disinterested manner. Not as far as having flat affect, just disinterestedly.
And as for his statement that their black rage was understandable......
uh NO.
Or, just as likely, Brown knew his ass was in a sling having just robbed a convenience store and still had evidence connecting him to the crime so he tried to intimidate his way into getting out of being held responsible for his actions as he was used to doing.
Using that same "logic" we conservatives have every right to go out today (Well, OK let's wait until after Thanksgiving!) and burn this entire nation to the ground. We have suffered greater offenses at the hands of the Øbozo regime than the residents of the town of Ferguson have at the hands of their own civil servants.
Let's go riot!
Too complicated?
How’s this:
Thug tries to grab cop’s gun after punching cop in face.
Cop shoots thug from restrained position in cruiser.
Thug starts to run away.
Cop pursues assault/robbery suspect.
Thug decides to put beat down on smaller cop.
Cop puts rounds into thug to neutralize threat.
Gibsmedat local community goes tribal over one of theirs getting due justice.
Not very complicated, actually very predictable in Obamas society.
Ferguson has struck the primordial fear in blacks. Blacks down deep fear that one day whites will rise up and institute massive genocide against the unwanted blacks. That is why blacks respond in this manner when a black is killed by a white especially if the white has an official capacity. Silly and paranoid? Perhaps from the white perspective but not only do blacks believe it but many feel it will happen in their lifetime.
People on welfare, dependent people, never grow up. They remain infantile, and throw themselves into tantrums and violent behavior in a heartbeat. They are either whining or bashing things. This is true of spoiled white kids or anyone else in a state of dependency on others.
Human nature.
Yeah! I'll join you right after we give thanks, enjoy our Thanksgiving feast, and watch some football. Be right there...
If only the plantation owners had picked their own cotton! ! ! ! !
If they want to keep asking racist questions, no one can get over it.
I just read a Freeper (sorry .. I forget who) who basically said, ;
White America has done more (and ALL the) changing since the 1960's and black America has refused to do anything about ITself
The time is now ... screw 'em.
Seriously? Is that what drives this? Some deeply ingrained subconscious belief that they’ll be wiped out by whites?
They are doing enough to wipe themselves out via abortion, drugs, mayhem, thuggery, and murder.
Only because idiots like Obama, the media, and other leftist trolls are constantly beating that drum. Of course blacks are angry. People who have homosexual sex are getting to an almost black level of anger too because they're constantly being told that everyone hates them and is out to get them. The solution is simple. Stop trying to make a buck and win political points off of fomenting rage.
If they’d done that, they wouldn’t have been plantation owners.
They would, at best, have been yeoman farmers.
The economics of the plantation was inherently based on stealing a very large chunk of the value of the labor of the enslaved people and diverting it into the plantation owner’s pockets.
If that is true, they are insane.
“Ferguson Too Complicated For Easy Allegory”
Yup.
It requires brilliant, intellectual, really-really smart, intensely intelligent analysis by a brilliant, intellectual, really-really smart, intensely intelligent Progressive Democrat who turns the incident into an allegory while saying, at the same time, that it’s too complicated for a simple allegory making it into a simple allegory.
(The dialectic at it’s best, or worst, depending on one’s point of view.)ti
(How about it’s just a story about someone who committed a crime who was apprehended by a policeman?)
IMHO
Too late. Abortion on demand has already gotten the ball rolling on this one.
I disagree. In my opinion, the ones who tend to riot and loot do not simply want fair and equal treatment under the law, but rather, special treatment under the law.
They want the right to riot and loot without consequence.
They want the right to ignore legal instructions from LEOs.
They want to behave any way they want and then to not be treated by society as though they are behaving differently from the socially acceptable manner.
How many black teenagers skipping merrily down the street have been killed by trigger happy white cops in Ferguson?
I guess Jonah thinks since the normally reasonable (black) John McWhorter says it, then it is true. It is not. Millions of people throughout history have believed in, and committed evil. That does not make it right, or something we should cater to.
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