How the Myth of Ferguson Changed America for the Better

[DonViejo]

John McWhorter

While many in this country refuse to accept the truth about what happened in Ferguson, it did at least start a much needed conversation about policing.

A year after Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown dead in Ferguson, Missouri, we can celebrate that this hideous incident has sparked the first genuine debate about black America’s relationship with the police.

However, there is a certain irony as well, in that our initial take on Ferguson has proven to be a myth.

Edison did not invent the lightbulb, Marie Antoinette never said “Let them eat cake,” Nero did not fiddle while Rome burned—and Darren Wilson did not shoot Mike Brown in the back with his hands up, and Brown did reach into Wilson’s car and try to take his gun. No reasonable person, even with the deepest concern about the cops and black America, can deny the findings of the Department of Justice’s report on the incident.

Yet a great many people don’t want to let the myth go. “Mike Brown,” as an utterance and as a meme, has become a totem for the role of racism in post-Civil Rights American life, and that totemic status requires a basic assumption that the main lesson of what happened between Wilson and Brown was that an innocent boy ran up against a white cop’s racist animus.

Black journalist Jonathan Capeheart was viciously flamed on Twitter for urging us to accept the Department of Justice report’s findings. I recently overheard a conversation between two working-class black men, one about 60 and the other about 40. One said “Now, anybody who says there’s no racism is just crazy. All they have to do is look around. Mike Brown, man, that was it right there.” The other man readily agreed. That exchange is hardly untypical. The New Yorker’s piece on Ferguson is committed to drawing a lesson about racism from the story despite the Department of Justice report--its title could be “But Still.”

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/08/how-the-myth-of-ferguson-changed-the-us.html

[Igel]

1. McWhorter.

Can't sort out what I think about him.


It goes like this. Lies we like and find suit our current purpose we often call "myths." Even if we know they are provably factually false.

Myths that may have been around for over a century that don't suit our purpose are "lies." Even if we can't prove them factually untrue, if they are not provably true and we don't like their purpose they are "lies."

That somebody can hold both views with a straight face is the essence of being human. That a scholar can hold both views with a straight face is the essence of demonstrating a firm command of motivated reasoning.

That was not a compliment.