By Hailey Franklin, staff writer
On Aug. 9, an unarmed African American teen by the name of Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, Missouri. Since then, protestors and demonstrators have been taking to the street and to social media, pleading for the arrest of the police officer that shot him, Darren Wilson.
Brown was suspected of theft, and he’s been accused of assaulting Wilson, too. There’s been a lot of debate about whether he committed either of those crimes, how- ever, that should not be the focus of debate.
Rather, the media should be focusing on whether something as minor as stolen goods is worth killing someone over. Not even in medieval times was theft punish- able by death.
The problem with what’s happening in Ferguson is not just the extreme militariza- tion, or the brutality, and it’s definitely not some stolen cigarillos. The root of the issue is racism, and everything beyond that is a symptom.
Reverend Doctor Heber Brown III, in an interview with The Real News Network, a non- profit, viewer-supported video news and documentary service, gave insight to the root of the Ferguson debacle.
“What it stems from? My point of view is it stems from not just decades but hundreds of years. I mean, the relationship between black people in this country and law enforcement goes back to slavery. You can draw a line from the 1600s, you could draw a line through the- -you can draw a line of the controlling black bodies, controlling, defining, owning, selling, describing, having full power over black bodies. That goes back for as long as we been here.”
Shooting cases like Brown’s are not uncommon in America, and African Americans are often the targets of police discrimination.
Police are being just as brutal with protest- ers as they were in the 1960s, in the prime of the civil right’s movement. Pictures coming out of Ferguson echo those from the tumultuous era in history. Now that’s the issue.