I’m sat in bed and have been staring at a painfully blank page on Microsoft word for the best part of half an hour, knowing not what I want to write but just that I want to write something. I’m angry and tired and confused and upset and I have a whole load of reasons for this. Reasons which the oh-so articulate middle aged men will tell me are invalid due to the fact I am neither lawyer nor politician, nor crime scene investigator. Regardless of their comments, we need to talk about Ferguson.
“Oh Ferguson? I saw a tweet about that.” Yeah. Yeah, you probably did. In the early August of this year, unarmed 18 year old Mike Brown was shot down by police offic
er Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, St Louis. The reason behind the uproar and controversy lies with the circumstances of the shooting (if you can ever justify shooting down an unarmed man six times…). Some believe Mike Brown was in fact surrendering to Darren Wilson and the shooting was actually some means of justice for a petty robbery Brown had committed earlier. A robbery of cigarettes which, last time I checked, does not ever equate to the death penalty…but like I said I am no American lawyer.
It pains me that in 2014 I am actually writing a piece about such blatant racism, inequality and downright corruption. If I sound blasé or tired about the details of the shooting and what went on in the hours before Mike Brown’s death then maybe it is because I am. Why? Because they’re irrelevant. Because this is about so much more than an alleged stealing of cigars. It’s about the loss of life in a system that habitually criminalises and kills black people and I’m tired of the courts and the media trying to present us with pathetic information to try and justify/cover this. They just over complicate what really is a black and white matter. You don’t need a degree in law, a full report on Mike Brown’s past or eyes on the streets of Ferguson to know that shooting an unarmed boy six times is unnecessary, illegal and worthy of punishment.
I wasn’t there at the time and I don’t know Mike Brown. I don’t know the American legal system confidently or all the nitty gritty slimy footpaths I imagine Darren Wilson’s lawyers have taken. All I do know is that, in the eyes of the American legal system and inside the walls of the American court rooms, Darren Wilson has been an innocent man from the start and Mike Brown guilty from the moment he stole those cigarettes. Guilty of what though? Being black? Being there?
Mike Brown is a victim, and one of many. A victim of social and institutionalised racism. And now there is noise. There is noise because as humans on this planet, we know that shooting an innocent being is wrong. We know that discriminating against someone because of the colour of their skin is wrong and we aren’t happy. We want change, some even demand it, but for how long? How long will the tweets about Ferguson, about injustice, about racism and political inequality filter through the daily parade of Kylie Jenner’s lips and Beyonce’s new surprise video. How long before Mike Brown just becomes another name we bring up when a similar incident like this presents itself once more in the near future? How long before Mike Brown’s name is replaced by another black boy’s in a hashtag or the town of Ferguson becomes replaced by some other American suburb? Do we actually want change, or do we just want an opinion?
I’m so aware, so painfully aware, that writing this does not charge Darren Wilson. Nor does it bring back Mike Brown. Nor does it even scratch upon the surface of ending social discrimination or the blatant inequality that exists in every aspect of the world. So what does it do? Mike Brown’s parents made a speech, telling us all that we should keep our protests peaceful and aim to make a difference as opposed to just making noise. They propose that all police officers wear body cameras, a mechanism that would allow, should this ever happen again, sufficient evidence and truth in our court rooms. More than this, police body cameras would allow those that protest such deaths and shootings protection. The firing of tear gas, the arresting of protestors and the beating of those demanding change would all have to be to held account, something that we are denied of doing so at this moment in time.
I’d like to live in a world where I believe an incident like this won’t happen again, but unfortunately I don’t. So, whilst it may seem trivial and pointless or maybe even irrelevant to your life, it’s where we need to start.
I’d like to leave this post, which may be sketchy due to the fact my mind blurs and falters when it is angry, with a passage from Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mocking Bird. Wrote during the civil rights movement, it makes me realise just how far we have to go and perhaps how little we really have come. How can the words of someone living through lynch mobs and the Ku Klux Klan still be relevant in 2014 when a black president sits in the white house?
“In our courts when it’s a white mans word against a black mans, the white man always wins. Those are the facts of life”
“Doesn’t make it right,” said Jem stolidly, He beat his fist on his knee. “You can’t convict a man on evidence like that – you can’t.”
“You couldn’t, but they could and they did. The older you grow the more of it you’ll see.The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, he may be any colour of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it – whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.”
Words by Jess Readett