A City Cries For another Unjust Racial Killing

Social Media is my virtual psychiatrist. It’s here I’m able to lay on the worldwide web and utter so much, without fear, favor or judgment. But the very same medium that helps me to find some sense of sanity may be a part of a larger network of white elites and rednecks that are playing down or rather trying to silence an American city that has face another tragic and unjust killing of a young black man.

While the world rallied around the Trayvon’s Martins incident few years ago, one would have thought that the USA who is a leading advocate for civil rights around the world would have done more at home.

America’s racial wounds are still open and the progress on civil rights is not where we think it is. Ferguson, Missouri, has been plunged into turmoil over 12 days ago when Michael Brown, an African American teenager was shot dead by local authorities. Since then, things have escalated with a city wide curfew, looting, mass arrest and continuous confrontation between citizens and authorities. Though this city has had its fair share of trouble, this incident underscored that things may get worse before they get better.

When instances like these occur, we often ask: Really, Again…Here and now? The answers aren’t ever sufficient. Brown is simply the latest on a long list of victims, like Eric Garner, who died in New York last month after police got him in a chokehold, or Trayvon Martin, who was shot dead in Florida by a neighborhood-watch vigilante in 2012, back to the police shooting of 15-year-old James Powell in Harlem 50 years ago this summer, a killing that triggered a week of rioting. Such things do not happen, by and large, to unarmed young white men. Public attitudes to such events polarize along racial lines, as has happened at Ferguson.

Even though much has changed in American since 1964, race is still a fundamental factor today. Perhaps the only three things that can be said with total confidence about events in Ferguson are: one, that they are not over yet; two, that they will nevertheless end eventually; and three, that they will rightly generate much heart-searching in an America where racial injustice, even now and in spite of all the progress, remains the great enduring national wound.

Why aren’t we demanding more? Why aren’t we talking about the issue? More questions than answers. We all need to support Ferguson, Missouri, as they demand justice. Just as how we did in the past and even now how we support this ice bucket challenge. We ought to make the issue of even greater importance.

Media is changing…. Whats News Worthy?… Who are we? Whats our values?