The U.S. is steeped in a history of diversity and conflict. We love to tell ourselves that we have a national epic of coming together to resolve our differences and become stronger for it.
In a glorious moment a few years ago, with the election of an African-American to the White House, the world was convinced that the work of repairing that broken fabric of the collective American spirit was beginning to be sewn together.
On August 9th, that momentum disappeared.
The events unfurling in Ferguson are symptoms of an ill system, not an accidental flash point in an encounter gone wrong.
The tide of American racial politics seems to swing from one “riot” to the next, the last major one being the 1980 McDuffie riots in Miami. As we are seeing again, the politics of the U.S. are defined by the politics of race, shown every day in statistics of racial advantage and disadvantage — so much so that these ideas become our national identity and landscape.
What do you see when you look in the mirror every morning? Do you see a human being? A woman? A transgender black woman? The fewer identifiers you have to qualify yourself with, the more privilege you have.
When you are not forced to confront your own identity, you do not have to think that perhaps you don’t belong in a society that only portrays older white males as the heroes. This is the politics of race: when your rights are defined and delineated by the socially constructed groups to which you are assigned.
There is a large community of Americans who wish to believe that the ideas of race have nothing to do with what is going on in Ferguson, or with our national politics in general, but beyond the impenetrable veil of white, suburban, Republican American exceptionalism, there is a world that understands that the politics of race in the U.S. is powerful, pervasive and dangerous.
This world includes Palestinians,tweeting Americans tips about how to treat tear gas victims, and the Amnesty International observers who were deployed for the first time on American soil.
We are used to seeing this kind of sectarian violence in the war-torn ravages of the Middle East, but not in our own home. This proximity is causing us to view our own problems with muted distaste, but if this were happening elsewhere we would be invading the country and taking over the local government.
The entire point of the Ferguson protests began as a vigil — a peaceful way to remember a life lost in a senseless murder. These protesters did not incite violence, because that would be a slight to the memory of the “gentle giant” spirit of Michael Brown.
However, the politics of race took over in Missouri.
Like New York with stop-and-frisk, or New Orleans, or Miami in the 1980s, the almost-completely White police force saw a group of African-Americans gathering together and saw a threat. Instead of engaging with the community they are sworn to protect, they fired weapons of war into the crowd. These military-armed—but not trained—police showered the crowd not with protection and security, but with tear gas and rubber bullets.
There is no evidence that suggests that these crowds have done anything to deserve the violence incited against them.
There comes a point in events like Ferguson where the lines become very clearly drawn. With the image of the man in the American Flag T-shirt hurling a tear gas canister back over the front line of police riot shields, we began to see these markings. This weekend, the lines became even clearer, as a Holocaust survivor was arrested and the Ku Klux Klan rejoiced that the police were doing the infamous hate group’s bidding.
We bicker back and forth about what the causes of the situation are, but the facts remain the same. There are innocent people being harassed and killed by the police, who are claiming no responsibility for actions that foreign observers are likening to all-out war. So what can be done?
First of all, the police do not need to be armed as though they are preparing to invade Fallujah. The Taliban is not awaiting the Ferguson Police Department, but rather a group of unarmed civilians.
This difference between military and police is best exemplified in South Carolina, where it takes twice as many hours of training to become a licensed beautician than a licensed police officer.
Places like Ferguson also are faced with gross misrepresentation. Ferguson is a 67 percent African-American town with a 94 percent White police force and a school board with only one non-white member, a Hispanic. Voter registration efforts in Ferguson (with 12 percent voter participation in the last election) are being ridiculed by members of the Republican Party, including the Missouri GOP executive director, who claimed that such efforts were “disgusting” and “fanning the political flames.” These communities need adequate and proportionate representation.
In the end, this will come down to image. At present, we are a nation embroiled in war at home and abroad. This means we are presented with a chance to solve these conflicts, but that work is both dangerous and painful.
If we want to solve the underlying problems of Ferguson, we must be willing to begin that dialogue.