By then, the video had gone viral.
JB: So, where does this leave us? I don't want to jump to conclusions but it certainly sounds as if these two cases, piling on top of all the other ones, indicate a "shoot first, verify [and cover up, if necessary] later" attitude. If I were a person of color, virtually anywhere in America, particularly a black or brown man, I would be very uneasy, indeed. Your thoughts?
CM: This leaves us in very troubling times because now the world is seeing what the minority communities have always experienced. But it is not just a Blue vs. Black or Brown issue either, although they tend to get harassed the most.
But police definitely have proven that they are more afraid of black people than anybody else. In fact, much of white America seems to be afraid of black folks, probably because they have had no real experience with black people. This country is still very segregated, mostly by economics, and poor black people tend to live in areas where there is concentrated poverty, which leads to increased crime rates because they are just trying to survive.
And because public schools are funded by property taxes, which tend to be lower in these areas, schools in black neighborhoods end up with less funded, which leads to inferior education.
And police have learned that they can arrest poor black people to help them meet their quotas because these people cannot afford adequate legal representation, which means they get caught up in an endless cycle in the legal system.
So, you have situations like what the United States Department of Justice uncovered in Ferguson where a majority-white police department routinely harassed a majority-black town in order to generate revenue.
And in Ferguson's case, this has been going on for years. Not just the ongoing harassment to generate revenue, but a routine pattern of police abuse as well. And this is the way it has always been in many parts of America.
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