Assignment 8 Ferguson

Brian Hobbie
Anthropology 105
December 5th, 2014
Racism Without Racists In recent news, there has been much talk about the Ferguson racial issues. Ferguson, Missouri has become infamous for its recent riots and protests. An African American teenager named Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white police officer. What happened on the night of August 1st is Officer Wilson was notified of a robbery and pursued Brown in his vehicle. Wilson came across Brown and was able to stop him with his car. There was a confrontation that Wilson allegedly fear for his safety and felt the need to discharge his firearm. After and foot chase, the police officer took down Brown with a fatal shot. The after math of this caused many protests and riot among the black community. Many people claim that the officer did not need to shoot the teen. The court decided that Officer Wilson was not guilty and caused an uproar within the Ferguson community. The author of the recent article attempts to explain the cultural differences between their white and black community and why these mistakes could be made. The main problem here is that the white and black communities simply do not understand each other. In the author attempt to prove this, he analyzed a series of tests to explain why many people can be confused in interracial issues. When people before the test claimed that they “do not see color”, it proved to be wrong. In fact, when a child is born, at about three months of age they understand the concept of race and they will prefer to be around their own race. This is means that there is still a form of racism. We cannot deny the facts that human beings have different cultures and unique trends within each race. Having said this, it also does not mean that noticing these things make certain people racist. The problem occurs here when a certain racial group tries to say that they are above another group. Profiling is the main way this is done in the instance like the shooting in the Ferguson. When an officer profiles a person, they are making judgments based on race. There are certain statistics that show a certain race is more likely to commit certain crimes, but the issue at hand is an unarmed teenager was shot because of it. The article poses of reasoning for the differences in culture including class and the living location. On average, the African American will make less money than a Caucasian. This means that the social status of the two groups will usually be different. They may not intermingle and have a good understanding of how one another acts and behaves. The other factor is many white people do not live near the majority of black people in the cities. Not being able to understand the lifestyle and culture makes it difficult for someone like a white police officer, who most likely does not live around or fully understand the African American community, to make judgments on the intentions of the suspect. In order to resolve these problems, a few things need to happen. First, the white and black communities need to be assimilated. By doing this, the communities will have to understand that they are different from one another but they need to work together to fix the issues. As for the police officer on duty, they need to be better educated in the field of cultures and the ways that other races may interact. If the police were able to take an African American that grew up in a predominantly black class and was able to change his class and become an officer of the law, he could then be a better officer for issues like these considering his experience. In the end, the person committing a crime will most likely not be willing to comply with an officer and if the officer does feel his life is threatened, he will need to take action. What our society needs to do is find a way through the study and understanding of these cultures to resolve these cross-cultural conflicts to live in unity. http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/26/us/ferguson-racism-or-racial-bias/index.html