Mike Brown was eighteen years old and unarmed when he was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.
Details are emerging about Mike Brown allegedly stealing a few cigars and pushing a convenience store clerk.
After that, the specifics are still less clear. Some eyewitnesses say there was a struggle between the police officer and Mike. What we do know is that Mike is dead.
Now, most rational people are able to put this incident in its proper racial and historical context. Ferguson is more than 70% black but 50 of the 53 police officers are white. Not only that, the police department has a well documented history of racism towards blacks.
Statistics regarding the proportion of black men killed by police in relation to whites are scant, but you don't need statistics to know that in this country, black men are repeatedly racially profiled, harassed, and killed by police for the most insignificant offenses and often for having committed no offense at all.
Which is why the conservative reaction is mind boggling, to them, race is not a factor. To conservatives, this is just another black criminal who could have lived had he just done as he was told.
To conservatives, it's too early to tell if race played a role, wait for the facts to come out they say. But you and I know that we've seen this movie before, the facts that will come out will be the testimony of the white cop against the dead black teen whose character will be smeared, posthumously, by the time a trial gets under way.
Conservatives live in a world where racism doesn't exist anymore, only reverse racism. Because we all know that if it's about white aggrievement, then conservatives are in an uproar. Black men get killed for stealing cigarettes and of you bring up racism, then you're just stoking the fire.
I don't get conservatives anymore.
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