By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The killing of an unarmed 18-year-old black man that sparked occasionally violent demonstrations in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson has laid bare the delicate state of race relations in the U.S.
“In too many communities around the country, a gulf of mistrust exists between local residents and law enforcement,” U.S. President Barack Obama said during televised remarks Monday at the White House. “In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear.”
Obama’s comments followed protests that are now in their 10th day after the shooting of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9.
Brown’s death echoes past flare ups of underlying racial tensions ignited by law enforcement brutality.
The 2012 shooting death of unarmed teen Trayvon Martin during a confrontation with George Zimmerman, an off-duty neighborhood watch captain, led to nationwide protests demanding justice for the 17-year-old. That case was one of several since the early 1990s involving the shooting or beating of black males by a white police officer that sparked unrest.
Most notably, Los Angeles police officers were caught on camera beating Rodney King, a black American, as he laid on the ground following a high-speed chase in 1991. The officers were subsequently acquitted of the charges in 1992, resulting in days of riots throughout America’s second most populous city that left ruin in their wake.
The details of Brown’s shooting remain disputed with police carefully guarding information related to the case, but a preliminary autopsy showed that the teen was shot at least six times, including at least twice in the head, during the fatal confrontation.
The National Bar Association filed a lawsuit Monday against the Ferguson Police Department and the city seeking the release of information related to the shooting.
Association President Pamela J. Meanes said that the police’s refusal to release vital information has further incited protesters.
“It’s further proof for them that they cannot trust the very people that they hired to protect them,” she said.
At least 31 people were arrested overnight Monday in clashes between predominantly black demonstrators and majority white law enforcement, according to police. US media outlet NBC News reported that it had documentation to suggest that at least 78 people were arrested.
Another round of protests had already begun early Tuesday evening.
A recently released survey by the Pew Research Center found that race figured prominently into whether or not an individual thinks Brown’s death “raises important issues about race that need to be discussed.”
The poll, conducted just days after Brown’s shooting, found that black Americans are about twice as likely as whites to agree that the case raises important questions about race, while white Americans were nearly three-times more likely to say that “race is getting more attention than it deserves.”
Black Americans were also nearly twice as likely to say that the police response to the shooting has gone too far.
Ernest Coverson, a regional field organizer with Amnesty International USA who has spent nearly five days in Ferguson, said that the U.S. must “be honest with itself, be honest with situations, listen to the various communities that are affected and have them at the table when conversations of inclusion are taking place.”
Still, in order to do that, the U.S. must confront an issue that has long proven tender.
“What race does is it takes you back to the place of the civil rights movement – it takes you back to a place of pain,” said Meanes. “This is an extension of what we’ve seen in the Rodney King era, and it tells you that although we’ve made progress, we still have a long way to go.”
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