'We're Like Animals To Them': An American City's Daily Racism

[xchrom]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/residents-of-ferguson-struggle-with-daily-racism-a-987986.html



As they pull up to the place where Michael Brown was killed, shot six times by a policeman, they sink to the ground and stare at a cross bearing his name.

"I don't get it," says Jurmael, 22. He and Tyler, 21, live in the neighborhood. Like Brown, they are African Americans and are close to his age. "I do get one thing though," Tyler says. "The name on the cross could just as well be one of ours."

Michael Brown was stopped on Canfield Drive by a white officer for the same reason that people are stopped everyday by the police. Roberts and Greer even have a name for the "offense" -- a common one in Ferguson, Missouri: "WWB," "Walking while black." Every black person living in Ferguson knows the meaning of the abbreviation because it is a constant part of their lives.

Persistent Racism

It took the shooting of 18-year-old Brown on August 9, a young man who was unarmed, before anyone took an interest in the everyday reality of the city's African-American population and their demoralizing harassment by the police. It also took this tragedy before people began to ask an important question: Why does a city whose population of 21,000 is two-thirds African American have a police force that is 95 percent white? And why, a half-century after Martin Luther King, Jr. launched the civil rights campaign and the end of segregation, are African-Americans still complaining today about persistent racism?

[Octafish]

1. WWB

Walking While Black

[intaglio]

2. This article needs reading n/t

[Rex]

3. Wow, the cop aiming the shotgun looks like he is about to shit his pants.

Out of control assholes.

[gollygee]

4. Holy crap

This is a powerful article.

[heaven05]

5. great, powerful and revealing article, amerikkka 21st century

like the 20th century, like the 19th century, like................. "why are you with him? You shouldn't be with him" said the white police officer to the the young white woman with her black boyfriend who had just gotten stopped for DWB.......... Won't see an in-depth personal look at amerikkkan racism like this in amerikkkan media.

[ReRe]

6. K&R

I think that's about the best article I've read yet on what life is like there for the black residents of Ferguson. And it's a foreign newspaper. That's the way it is, isn't it. DerSpiegel. And The Guardian in London does a good job of covering incidents here in the USA.

Amy Goodman (DemocracyNow.org) had a good report today, with Aaron Mate' on the ground with a cameraman. He interviewed allot of people coming out of the church when the service was over.

Thanks, xchrom. Excellent report posting.