Racism in Ferguson, Missouri and the media's role--fanning the flames of hate.

In a small suburb of St. Louis, Missouri on August 9th, Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, responded to a dispatch call to a convenience store.  He could not have known that his life would be so profoundly changed that night.  By now the turmoil in Ferguson, Missouri is well known, but important pieces are still missing.

The events since August 9th unfolded predictably--rioting, looting, destruction and mayhem--as has each previous episode of this kind.  But it was actually the “facts” as reported by the local and national television “news networks” that caused the open season on private property and the incitement of rage.  The New York Times along with Reuters, USA Today, CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS each reported that unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white police officer.  That is all many people needed to hear, and it’s all they did hear.

On the evening of Monday, November 24, 2014 Barack Obama took to the air to announce that the Grand Jury that heard the case of Officer Wilson, had decided that the officer was not at fault in the shooting.  Mr. Obama stated that the violence in the streets serves no one, but sadly, he stopped short of condemning the acts of burglary, looting and vandalism that were continuing in Missouri.  Rather than attempt to quell the violence, Obama persisted in promoting the false perception that Ferguson police officers are partly to blame, and that they need to become “more sensitive” to the residents of the black neighborhoods that they serve.  

On the evening of Tuesday, November 25, ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos interviewed the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson.  Officer Darren Wilson explained the events that led to the death of Michael Brown.  Officer Wilson said that Brown attempted to grab the officer’s gun.  The two struggled over the weapon and Brown managed to get his finger inside the trigger guard of Wilson’s service pistol.  Wilson said that he knew that if he failed to wrest the weapon from Brown, Brown would have killed him.  The claim repeated by the left-wing media, that Brown was unarmed, was a lie intended only to incite rage.  In fact, it could be said that Michael Brown committed suicide by cop--an action in which someone forces the hand of a police officer knowing that the result will be his own death.

Stephanopoulos then asked Officer Wilson if he would have done anything differently.  When Wilson said that he would not, Stephanopoulos reacted with incredulity asking, “Really?”  This illustrates the widespread ignorance and arrogance of the left.
  
Former radio talk show host, and former police officer, Ken Hamblin once told a caller on his show, “You have to understand one thing.  A cop cannot lose a street fight.  If he does, he’s dead.”  Hamblin grew up in one of the worst parts of Harlem, and was known to his radio audience as “The Black Avenger.”  

There exists on the left, an almost universal fallacy that says that the simple fact that America’s prison populations have higher percentages of black men than the general populace of the country, then injustice, racial profiling, prejudice and racism must be the cause.  Never does anyone in the left-wing media dare to ask why an 18-year-old black man gets the idea that grabbing a police officer’s service weapon is a wise move.  Never does anyone ask where young black men acquire the false belief that American society is stacked against them in such a way that their failure to achieve success is all but certain. 

Fanning the flames of racism is nothing new for the left.  NBC’s Brian Williams beat the same drum every evening in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in an attempt to smear President Bush.  Of course, Williams refused to mention that prior to Katrina making landfall, President George W. Bush, pleaded with Louisiana’s Governor, Kathleen Blanco to declare a state of emergency in order to mobilize National Guard troops in advance of the storm.  As a former governor himself, President Bush knew that this action would be helpful, but the Democrat governor refused to heed the advice of a Republican, causing the debacle we are now all familiar with. 

NBC was not alone in its smear campaign.  ABC, CBS, CNN, and other media outlets joined them.  And none of them bothered to mention President Bush’s rebuffed pleas to the governor either.  When people are fed a steady diet of left-wing lies about the motivations of the police, the facts in these cases becomes irrelevant. 

As a teenager growing up in Columbus, Ohio in the 1960’s, I was naïve enough to believe that the tenets of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech were achievable in my lifetime.  Now, nearly 50 years later I have come to realize that neither dream is likely to come to pass. 

Ironically, the Democrat politicians that most minority voters support, are not the people who do the heavy-lifting of improving race relations in the United States.  On the contrary, they are Republicans and the so-called “Religious Right.”  After all, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was supported by far more Republicans than Democrats.  Republicans were crucial to getting the bill passed over vehement opposition from southern Democrats.  Ohio Republican Representative, William McCulloch led the charge to pass the bill.  LBJ signed the act into law, seeing it as a way to win the support of blacks for the Democrat party.  Despite the fact that LBJ habitually referred to blacks by the “n-word,” he is not remembered by most Democrats for the racist that he was.

Former Senator Robert Byrd had been a Grand Wizard in the KKK, but he got a pass from the media and blacks, despite his active role in promoting racial violence.  And who can forget Obama’s racist former pastor, Jeremiah Wright?  Sadly, white voters who believed that electing Obama would translate into better race relations in America were as naïve as was a liberal pro-integration teen from Ohio in the 1960s. 

It’s worth considering that protest organizers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, Democrats and the media may not be interested in improving racial harmony because it’s an issue that gives them the power and visibility that they would otherwise not have.  Unless and until the parents of young blacks in America, stop teaching their children that the police should be resisted and treated contemptuously, more deaths in towns like Ferguson, Missouri are likely to occur.  And until our media stops lying about the facts in these cases, many more towns will burn with fires set ablaze by the racial hatred of the left.