27. OBAMA SEEKS TO "CHANGE" AMERICA

THE CULTURAL SPLIT DEEPENS

On Saturday afternoon, August 2014, after returning from a store where he had seized a package of cigars and threatened the owner of the store when confronted about the theft, Michael Brown and a friend were walking down the middle of the street when patrolman Darren Wilson ordered them to move to the sidewalk. Brown was in no mood to obey and when Brown came up to the squad car, a scuffle resulted and Wilson's gun went off inside the squad car.  Brown's friend with him at the time reported that Brown had been grabbed by Wilson, who tried to pull him into the car (??? Brown was about twice the size of Officer Wilson!), Wilson then shot Brown in the back as he was retreating, then Brown turned and held his hands in the air saying "don't shoot," but Wilson shot and killed him anyway.

Hearing this story, over the next days, Ferguson Blacks (visited by the "Reverend" Al Sharpton, who always knows how to show up for just such events) began to protest, then pillage, then burn, as riot police gathered to try to protect property from the rioters.  Amazingly no one was killed in the riots.

But protests immediately spread to other cities, not only as Blacks turned out to protest "police brutality" (chanting the now-famous words "hands up, don't shoot") but as university students (such as those at nearby St. Louis University) found a new cause to demonstrate for racial justice and the end to poverty.

President Obama could not resist weighing in on the event and sent his Attorney General Eric Holder, who arrived in Missouri to comfort the Blacks who suffered under police prejudice, explaining that he himself experienced such racism and thus could feel their pain.  Anyway, that was the proclaimed theme of Holder's presence there.  Holder also promised that the Department of Justice would conduct its own investigation into the matter, knowing of course that the local police would be required to do so as well – adding to the impression that typical police racism would most likely simply sweep the matter under the rug.

Subsequently a police investigation was conducted, and autopsy results indicated that Brown was functioning at the time under the influence of marijuana, and also that Brown's friend had fabricated the story considerably – when other witnesses to the event came forward to tell a quite different story … namely, that the frenzied Brown did not have his hands up in surrender but instead was shot charging the policeman.  Forensics would substantiate this second version completely.

When a grand jury went over the evidence, the officer was found (in November's report) to have acted properly within the line of duty.

This was not the verdict that Ferguson Blacks wanted, and riots again broke out. "Hands up Don't shoot" appeared in signs and on t-shirts everywhere, despite the evidence that no such thing had been a part of the incident itself.  Eventually, and slowly (over a ten-day period) the riots would burn themselves out.

In the meantime, the Department of Justice investigation went forward as Holder had promised.  In the end, try as he might, even Holder had to admit finally (March 2015) that the Justice Department could find no basis for charges against Wilson (who meanwhile had left Ferguson under death threats).  But in his report, while admitting to the correctness of these findings, Holder could not resist delivering a long sermon on the deeper injustices that governed American society and how he could feel the pain of America's minorities.  In short, Holder was inviting America to pursue its cultural animosities, rather than find higher ground to come together over.

But this was quite in line with the White House's approach to rising racial tensions brought on by Obama's promise of "Change."

A government report which came out that same year cited figures for 2011, (the most recent year for which statistics were then fully available) that murder was the No. 1 killer of Black males of the age 15-34, running at 40 percent of the deaths in that age range (compared to 3.8 percent for White males of that same age). However, the report also pointed out that more Whites than Blacks are killed by police, almost on a 2 to 1 ratio, although Whites make up five times the number of Blacks, so therefore the percentage figure for Blacks is higher.

But in any case, there is not enough here to suggest what "Black Lives Matter" supposes: that somehow Blacks are subject to some especially high rate of killing by cops.  It is always important to remember the high murder rate of the violent neighborhoods that patrolmen are expected to police.  Also the supposition that victims of police shootings were themselves innocent victims of police brutality is refuted by the fact that more than half of the police shootings involved armed adversaries, and that nearly all other shootings were justified (and cleared by careful investigations which must accompany all police shootings) under the circumstances that they occurred, such as the Michael Brown shooting by police officer Darren Wilson.

And of course, Black Lives Matter.  The murder rate of young Blacks is a national tragedy.  The frustration of Blacks concerning the dangerous conditions they frequently live under is understandable.  But blaming the police is a horrible distraction from the real causes, which are: little moral training in manhood by missing fathers, poor educational motivation, high unemployment, and gang membership as the only option that many young Blacks find as their path to manhood.¹  All of this serves to create a very violent environment in which both police and civilians are expected to function in a civilized fashion.