Another Round...

I was asked recently why the killing of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson in Ferguson, MO last summer is generating so much anger, demonstrations, rioting, violence, etc. "Why this case? There have been so many instances of police brutality lately, what made this case different that there is so much action?" I wish I knew exactly why this particular killing of an unarmed black kid has sparked such lasting anger and continuing action. I will offer a few historical observations and some conjecture that I hope can create some threads of understanding about race and our past that could bear on the events.

Missouri is a bit of an odd case, the compromise named for the state established the line between North and South but it was the exception as a "Northern" state with "Southern" values. Those values being mainly slavery and all the attending attitudes toward equality (bad), aristocracy (good), and white supremacy as the rest of the South. This was because it was mainly Southerners who settled the state, snapping up the best land and leaving a strong impression on the institutions of Missouri. They also brought lots of slaves with them, meaning that unlike most Northern States Missouri always had a significant African-American population. Significant but always a minority, slaves in Missouri were generally treated better than in other parts of the South. However, in the eyes of the law it was just as bad with no recognition of human rights or constitutional protections.

Therefore, two trends emerge. First is that unlike say African-Americans in Chicago or other Northern cities, the black community of St. Louis and its surrounding areas have roots there. Traditions and institutions in that community have a past, a history of many generations. It is possible that a black father could bring his son to see the tree where his father was hanged, or see the site where the slave market once existed that brought his family to that area. Macabre? Horrific? Apocryphal? Perhaps, but possible. Also possible is the persistence of attitudes towards law enforcement that were designed to treat African-Americans as property. After generations of progress, we have seen a real backlash against African-American dignity and rights. And the history of African-Americans in Missouri means they are less likely to submit to degradation and official violence because it has been home for many generations.

Crane Brinton once wrote that revolution becomes more of a possibility when people perceive that progress has been made but stymied or even reversed. After witnessing a black man become president, the African-American community in St. Louis and elsewhere has seen increasing brutality and disenfranchisement directed against it by the ole' massa' class. The law has been stacked against them in the past, and seems to be again. This second trend is simply that the rioting and protest are a reaction to a reaction, that unaffected members of the African-American community will not stand idly by through so much injustice to the victims. In effect, Michael Brown was unjustly killed for a minor infraction if anything, while his killer faces no punishment for his actions. The immediate response by police to the protests, in their body armor and militarized vehicles could also have reawakened cultural memories of slave patrols, bloodhounds, and lynchings as symbols of state repression by the white majority.

To reiterate, this is all conjecture on my part. It is impossible to know the minds of so many people, whether they share an attitude about the past even remotely similar to the hypothesis presented here. Only one thing is self-evident, race relations in the United States and especially Missouri are particularly tense in 2014.