Re-envisioning Ferguson, Missouri: On the Killing of Michael Brown
Halford H. Fairchild, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Africana Studies at Pitzer College. He is a Past President of The Association of Black Psychologists and editor of Black Lives Matter: Lifespan Perspectives (Indo American Books, 2017).
By Halford H. Fairchild, Ph.D.
On August 9, 2014, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. According to eyewitnesses the unarmed Brown was standing relatively close to Wilson; some even noted that Brown had his arms up, as if in surrender. Nevertheless, Officer Wilson shot the unarmed Michael Brown 12 times. Sadly, it was only the final of those 12 shots that was lethal. Since that shot entered the top of Michael Brown’s head, it suggests that he was facing the ground when Wilson fired it. Brown’s dead body was then left in the street – in full view – for more than four hours.
Charges were eventually filed against Officer Wilson and the matter adjudicated, if one could call it that. The shooting of Michael Brown was deemed lawful, and the community, perhaps not surprisingly, erupted in more than 10 days of riotous protests. Businesses were also looted and burned, and dozens were arrested. The case then garnered international attention.
In the aftermath of the riots, I asked my students, “What do you think caused the riots in Ferguson, Missouri?”
Students identified the “thugs and hooligans” who wanted to “loot and burn” and destroy their own communities. Some students identified the hurt, anger, and even rage that people felt at what they perceived as yet another unpunished murder of an innocent youth. Some students felt that the prosecutor, Robert P. McCulloch, deliberately delayed the announcement of the unpopular grand jury decision until the evening hours in the hope that a riot would grab attention away from the controversial ruling. The news media even proclaimed that Michael Brown’s stepfather, Louis Head, incited the riot.
But the causes of the Ferguson disasters were much more endemic.
The killing of Michael Brown was but one of hundreds of unarmed Black men murdered by police or a Neighborhood Watch. These killings point to the systemic issues that continue to fester in thousands of communities like Ferguson, Missouri.
Although the failure to indict Darren Wilson lit the fuse to the Ferguson conflagration, the combustible mixture itself was fueled by centuries of racial animus.
In too many inner cities throughout the U.S., African Americans live in nearly segregated neighborhoods with caretaker schools, menial (or no) jobs, and immersion in informal underground economies. Without a high school diploma and/or functionally illiterate, millions of inner city youth are left to lives of hustling — selling untaxed cigarettes or drugs, shop lifting — that necessarily bring them into more frequent contact with law enforcement. That contact too often has lethal consequences. We see these conditions of disenfranchised youth in virtually all urban areas in the U.S., U.K., Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and South America. The problem is global.
Segregation and discrimination emanate from ideologies tied to race and class. Perhaps these longstanding problems will never be fully redressed. But we must recognize that these ideologies provided justification for the Might Makes Right machinations of Manifest Destiny. The history of global conquest and racial exploitation produced the current racial gaps in virtually every indicator of well-being around the world.
If these historical forces were the distal causes of the fires that erupted in Ferguson, what can be done to counter their effects?
Fixing urban schools is paramount. Those who advocate “school choice” do so because they, in fact, have choices. But for the majority of inner city residents — in Missouri and beyond — school choices are limited or non-existent. “Caretaker schools” in urban areas are failing to graduate half or more of their students from high school — remanding the drop-outs to lives of not-so-quiet desperation. From Ferguson to New York to Los Angeles, the state of inner city schools is unforgiveable in a society that feigns equal opportunity.
Equality of educational opportunity has long been a myth in American society. The history of White flight left inner city schools bereft of funding and fully depreciated; decades of indifference have left them dilapidated. Too many inner city schools have neither books nor teachers; the attitude of school boards and administrators seems to be, “Why bother?” Sadly, the students, too often, could not agree more.
It is time to demand equality in educational outcomes: well-equipped schools that ignite the imaginations of their students and graduate them with real opportunities to pursue higher education and careers.
The dilapidated living conditions in inner cities must be repaired. Local and federal governments have long neglected such communities. It is now, more than ever, essential that these communities demand reparative funding for urban renewal. It’s also not unreasonable to expect that young and older residents might then find meaningful jobs in restoring their community’s infrastructures. Currently disaffected youth — alienated by mis-education — could be recruited as partners in this community revitalization.
The killing of Michael Brown would not have happened if U.S. law enforcement was modeled after the United Kingdom, where even police officers do not carry guns. Perhaps all of us should strive for a future without weapons of personal or mass destruction. Our lives depend upon it.
These programmatic changes can spur ideological ones. We must transform our images of urban youths from educational failures with lives steeped in violence — to visions of well- educated citizens with meaningful roles to play in their families, community and broader society.
Author Note. This essay is a revised version of a chapter previously published in a book titled Black Lives Matter: Lifespan Perspectives, edited by the author and published by Indo American Books in 2016. The book is available for free as a PDF download at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309735910_Black_Lives_Matter_Lifespan_Perspectives