RUTHFULLY YOURS

JUAN WILLIAMS ON FERGUSON

Posted By Ruth King on August 20th, 2014

http://online.wsj.com/articles/juan-williams-ferguson-and-americas-racial-fears-1408490310

Ten years ago Bill Cosby gave a speech that fits today’s racial troubles in Ferguson, Mo. “People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of poundcake,” the now 77-year-old black comedian said at an NAACP event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision. “And then we all run out and we’re outraged—’The cops shouldn’t have shot him!’ What the hell was he doing with the poundcake in his hand?”

The 18-year-old shot and killed on Aug. 9 by Ferguson police was not caught with poundcake. Michael Brown had shoplifted cigars from a convenience store. On Aug. 15, the police released a video of the theft and the 6-foot-4-inch, nearly 300-pound teen violently shoving, shaking and threatening the store clerk.

Mr. Cosby is not the only black person to ask about the troubling excuses that so many civil-rights leaders are making for criminal behavior. In 1993, Jesse Jackson told organizers in Chicago: “There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

Black people all over the nation fear the violent, dysfunctional behavior that has made murder the No. 1 cause of death for black males between the ages of 15 and 34. Last week outside Washington, D.C., a 3-year-old girl was killed when a 25-year-old black man, upset about an argument over borrowed clothes, got a gun and started firing at the outside of the house. One of the bullets hit her.

More than 90% of the young black men killed by gunfire today are not killed by police but by other black men. About half of the nation’s murder victims are black even though blacks account for only 13% of the U.S. population.

Yes, the death of Michael Brown is a tragedy. Yes, the use of excessive and in this case lethal force by police must be fully investigated. And yes, the increased use of military equipment by local police forces is a frightening threat to American democracy and the constitutionally protected right to peaceful protest. Fear cannot justify police in tanks and carrying military weapons facing down people who want to protest the shooting of an unarmed man.

But please, let’s hit pause on the political spin and bitter exchange of racial fears. If we are to stop angry clashes between police and poor black men, it is time to admit that thuggish behavior creates legitimate fear in every community. Close to half of black men drop out of high school. High unemployment and high rates of out-of-wedlock birth leave too many of them without guidance. Given this reality, the violent behavior of young black men and the police response have become a window on racial fears.

The imbalance in economic and political power among racial groups as well as the long and difficult history of racism in the U.S. amplifies these fears on all sides. After Hurricane Katrina there was black fear that a conservative administration did not respond quickly because most of those in need were black. And white police responded by shutting off escape routes out of fear of black looters. History tells us it was government ineptitude, not racism, that led to the slow response, and the reports of looting were overblown by white paranoia. Despite today’s increased racial diversity, these racial fears persist across America.

The Ferguson Police Department released its video in an apparent attempt to play to those fears. It shows that the dead man was no gentle giant but a threatening presence to the public and police. But the police also admitted that the officer who shot him did not know the young man had stolen the cigars. He was simply trying to get him to stop walking in the middle of a busy street. That led to the confrontation and possibly a struggle that ended with the policeman incredibly firing his gun six times, killing an unarmed teenager.

The release of the video is the most telling aftermath of the shooting death because it spoke to the racial fears at the heart of this case and so many others. Twenty years ago those playing to fears included California lawyers for police charged with assaulting Rodney King, who did not stop his car as he was chased down a highway. Lawyers for the police told the jury that the “thin blue line” of police “separates the law abiding and the not law abiding.” King was black, and a convicted robber.

More recently in New York, racial fear seemed to show its face when white police used a choke hold on a black man, 6-foot-3-inch and weighing more than 300 pounds, who was selling cigarettes on the street.

In Ferguson the overwhelmingly white police apparently feel justified in their fear of a belligerent black teen. The video released to the public was a message to Ferguson’s white minority that the shooting was a rational response to protect them as the law abiding from the lawless.

Meanwhile, too many poor black people fear white police as a threatening group that is not protecting them so much as intimidating, punishing and jailing them. In Ferguson, poor blacks are locked out of jobs on the police force, locked out of political power and union jobs, and badly served by the public schools.

I would suggest that all the protest groups in Ferguson stay on the case and peacefully demand justice. Then they should drive to big cities like Chicago and Baltimore. There they should hold protests against the forces feeding the racial fear of young black men among white people, black people and everyone else—the drug dealers, the gang bangers, the corrupt unions defending bad schools, and the musicians and actors who glorify criminal behavior among black men.

Mr. Williams is a political analyst for Fox News and a columnist for the Hill. He is the author of “Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years 1954-1965” (Viking, 1987).

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