The US town of Ferguson has seen rioting and looting after a jury decided not to bring charges over the killing of a black teenager. Michael Brown was shot by a white police officer, Darren Wilson, on 9 August, sparking protests. The protests have been violent with vandalism and looting and while Ferguson might have dealt with the decision the wrong way, the rest of America is up in arms over the decision. This decision sets a clear legal precedent for police brutality and rashness to trump considerations of humane treatment. It will become a controversial ruling, and may further aggravate race and crime cases.
The outrage over racism aside, American society has a deep seeded problem. On Sunday, a 12-year-old boy, who was shot in the stomach by the police while playing with a toy gun “resembling” a real pistol, died in a Cleveland hospital. His is just the latest in a series of fatal police shootings of black civilians. The FBI and Justice Department don’t require local police departments to keep track of how many people they shoot or the race or ethnicity of those who are killed. For the 40 million black population, it is like living in a police state. The police departments are not made accountable and none of the cops go to jail. By some estimations, a black man is killed by the police approximately every 28 hours in the United States. There is no reason for the black community to have confidence in the judicial system.
What some researchers call “rampage violence”, like the shootings at Columbine High and Virginia Tech, play a prominent role in the national consciousness, but there has been no real control of gun ownership, any shift in law or culture or regulation of violent media, particularly video games, or a rehabilitation of police forces. The Ferguson shoot was nothing new, it happens in America all the time. The core of the issue might be the American right to bear arms. It has lead to countess school shootings, and mass murders. The political debate over gun rights has made it appear impossible to regulate firearms without sacrificing the Second Amendment.
White supremacists groups exists today, and are organized and dangerous. The Christian right is a force to be reckoned with and neo-Nazi groups are abound. In fact Anonymous hacktivists are trying to prove a link between Darren Wilson and the infamous Ku Klux Klan. Racism cannot stop as it is institutionalised and exercised by the authority. Groups like KKK just add to this and might be less of a threat than the armed and unaccountable executive.