BLACK LIVES MATTER

By Hanna DeMarte, April 20, 2015

Michael Brown’s death in August, the protests that followed and continue today, and the subsequent murders of black Americans by white police officers have sparked a lot of nation-wide discussions on racism, spanning from police brutality to misrepresentation in the media. In the wake of these recent events I want to break down the murder that started it all — it is important that we remember Mike Brown, that we remember other victims like Eric Garner and Tamir Rice, that we recognize the injustice and keep the conversation going even after it dies out in the media.

You’ve probably heard a lot about Ferguson these past couple of months, whether or not you keep up with current events. The case has sparked a heated debate in the US and elsewhere, and while many articles, blogs and reporters I see and read stand in solidarity with Michael Brown and the protesters, a lot of people I know personally support Officer Darren Wilson.

This week I want to talk about the facts that prove this case reeks of some pretty hardcore racism.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched an interview on CNN of Darren Wilson, who expressed no remorse for his actions. It’s common knowledge by now that Wilson fired an excessive amount of bullets, whether you believe Brown bum-rushed him or surrendered with his hands up. So don’t you think he’d be just a tiny bit regretful that he killed a kid who didn’t have to die? There are instances where cops have killed shooters — actual bad guys — and they were in a situation where they absolutely had to shoot to kill. And even then, even when they had no other choice, they were shaken up by what they had to do. Some cops have even taken several months off work to recover from the trauma of killing a human being. Something isn’t right about Wilson’s calm demeanor and total lack of regret. He said, in an interview, that he’d do it again, and described Brown as a demon. In addition to this, I believe it is clear that he’s lying. I don’t think this purely because I’m against him, but because of the way he spoke and his excessively wordy responses to questions that weren’t even asked. It all just looks bad.

Another issue with the case is that Darren Wilson was not indicted even though the perpetrator is almost always indicted in any given case, and for much less than the crime committed by Wilson. The prosecutor himself, Bob McCulloch, has deep family roots in the police, and his father was killed while responding to a call about a black suspect. This clearly indicates he was a bad choice for the prosecutor of this case. There’s a lot of information to take in about why it’s so absurd that Wilson was not indicted. Kyle Kulinski explains everything in depth.

People on social media have also been trying to criminalize Mike Brown in any way they can. This picture has been going around in an effort to show just how bad of a kid Brown was, when in reality the man in the image is not him.

The fact of the matter is that Mike Brown was two weeks away from starting school at Vaterott College, and his family and teachers spoke highly of him. Incriminating photos of him have been shared while this one has been left in the woodwork.

But regardless of whether he had pot in his system, whether he’d committed any petty crime, Michael Brown did not deserve to die.

Another thing people have been complaining about is the rioting and looting. While I don’t support either of those things, I understand where the riots are coming from. People are angry; they’ve seen black kids murdered by cops for ages and Mike Brown was the boiling point. Also keep in mind that white people have rioted just as much, but for completely idiotic reasons. As for the looting, many peaceful Ferguson protestors have contested that looters are opportunists coming from out of town. All they’re doing is making Ferguson protestors look bad and fueling media biases.
Something I’ve been hearing a lot of is “it’s not about race!” People claim this is an opinion, but racism is undeniably ingrained in this entire case. There are a few different accounts of what really happened between Darren Wilson and Mike Brown, but whichever way you look at it, Wilson didn’t have to kill an unarmed kid. It was a choice he made. In fact, the first thing he asked himself, as he relayed in his interview, was, “Can I legally kill this guy?” An overwhelming number of people believe Wilson is guilty, which is evidenced not only by protestors and articles and social media, but by the strong support Ferguson protestors have been receiving from other countries. Why would people from all over the world chime in on this tragedy if there wasn’t a glaring problem, a problem about race?

Additionally, the KKK has extended their support to Wilson. This fact doesn’t make Wilson himself racist, but when the KKK is supporting the death of a black teenager, racism cannot be removed from the conversation. The KKK has also had off-the-record contact with the Ferguson Police Department, something one of the leaders accidentally admitted in an interview on MSNBC.

There are piles upon piles of evidence I could dig up, like that fact that Mike Brown was 148 feet away from Darren Wilson when he was shot, or the NYTimes article detailing his autopsy, or the way another St. Louis officer has bragged about being a killer cop. It would take days to go over every detail, every little thing that I believe proves guilt on Darren Wilson’s part.

The point is that this entire case is proof that racism is an undying force in the United States and that our country does not actually provide liberty and justice for all. Our justice system is in need of extreme reform, as it has been since the Civil Rights Movement and the decades before it.