White Denial and Apathy Constitute Racism — an Illustration of Ethically Rotten Culture Taken from Michael Brown’s Apparent Murder at Police Hands in Ferguson, Missouri

© 2014 Peter Free

 

20 August 2014

 

 

Theme

 

Ignoring or denying institutionalized racial oppression constitutes approval of it.

 

 

Background — Michael Brown’s apparent murder in Ferguson, Missouri

 

See, for example:

 

Lauren Raab, Story So Far Turmoil in Ferguson, Mo., intensifies: What you need to know, Los Angeles Times (19 August 2014)

 

 

Being oblivious to facts is a popular American pastime, which eats away the fabric of our society

 

Consider the following public opinion data from Pew Research Center:

 

 

By about four-to-one (80% to 18%), African Americans say the shooting in Ferguson raises important issues about race that merit discussion.

 

By contrast, whites, by 47% to 37%, say the issue of race is getting more attention than it deserves.

 

Fully 65% of African Americans say the police have gone too far in responding to the shooting’s aftermath.

 

Whites are divided: 33% say the police have gone too far, 32% say the police response has been about right, while 35% offer no response.

 

Whites also are nearly three times as likely as blacks to express at least a fair amount of confidence in the investigations into the shooting. About half of whites (52%) say they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in the investigations, compared with just 18% of blacks.

 

Majorities of Republicans think that in both the Brown (61%) and Trayvon Martin (68%) cases, the issue of race receives too much attention.

 

Majorities of Democrats say both cases raise important issues of race that need to be discussed (68% Brown, 62% Martin).

 

© 2014 Pew Research Center, Stark Racial Divisions in Reactions to Ferguson Police Shooting, Pew Research Center for the People & the Press (18 August 2014) (extracts)

 

 

Intractable ignorance matters in a democracy

 

It is obviously difficult to make society free for everyone, when so comparatively few of us pay attention to what is going on in the opposite direction.

 

Evidence of institutionalized racial oppression in the United States has been everywhere for centuries. Yet, we still get a very high proportion of white Americans denying (or not caring) that it exists.

 

Meanwhile, every day, African-Americans bear the intolerable brunt of the repression that goes with this racially biased apathy.

 

Jamelle Bouie accurately put it this way:

 

 

It’s possible that [Officer] Darren Wilson will also be arrested and go to trial. But even if he’s convicted—even if the Brown family finds a measure of procedural justice—we will still be left with an unequal, segregated Ferguson in an unequal, segregated St. Louis County.

 

The underlying problems of white flight, discrimination, and disinvestment will remain, and—absent a dramatic and unexpected change—they’ll persist into the next generation.

 

Soon enough, demonstrators will be chanting the name of another young black man killed by another agent of the state charged with containing blacks, not protecting them.

 

We want it to be one way—a world where the police are here to serve us all—but it’s the other way, a world where black bodies are the chief targets of American fear.

 

© 2014 Jamelle Bouie, Why the Fires in Ferguson Won’t End Soon, Slate (19 August 2014) (extracts)

 

The last line is insightful.

 

 

The moral? — America’s hidden, amorphous cowardice is destroying us

 

Avarice and fear are Repression’s always hidden justifications:

 

(i) Professional incompetence and uncontrolled fear — perhaps combined with rage — probably led Officer Wilson to shoot Michael Brown.

 

(ii) Institutional cowardice justifies the militarization of American police in an occupation that is:

 

(a) physically much safer than many

 

and

 

(b) almost by definition in a democracy, requires law enforcement to be among the people, rather than against them.

 

(iii) Reflexive cultural cowardice unjustifiably excuses our public’s apathy in the face of the self-imposed evils that surround us.

 

A majority of Americans are so afraid of Life’s erratic tumult that we wage wars on people with dissimilar skins.

 

Where America once was (arguably) an example of a courageous attempt at self-governance, we have devolved into a self-excusing manifestation of the evils that go with letting fear, greed and apathy determine our every move.

 

Pertinent to this, I wrote last year that:

 

 

Autocrats thrive on the public’s need to feel safe from all manner of easily exaggerated threats. Liberty is not for cowards.  And power corrupts.

 

I quote Pastor Martin Niemöller’s (1892-1984) famous World War II line:

 

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--

Because I was not a Socialist.

 

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

 

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--

Because I was not a Jew.

 

Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.

 

Martin Niemöller, Martin Niemöller : First they came for the socialists . . .”, Holocaust Encyclopedia (11 May 2012) (reformatted)

 

With whom will you stand?