The popular rhetoric surrounding race suggests that we live in an America that Martin Luther King, Jr. only dreamed of: a colorblind nation with a black president to prove it. Yet the recent shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, illustrates how pervasive structural racial inequality truly is. This shooting has led to police violence, riots and a state of emergency in Ferguson, Missouri. Further, it has incited nationwide debate surrounding race, excessive use of police force and inequality. While the rhetoric of such debates has been largely sanitized of overtly racist language as a result of post-racial ideology, the turmoil in Ferguson reveals that American “colorblindness” is only an illusion.
The divergent narratives that have emerged from the shooting evoke two entirely different understandings of the event. Those calling for justice for Brown do so with a clear understanding that what occurred was racially motivated, or at least reflects a pervasive racial bias. Those defending Wilson have largely done so without any explicit racism. These supporters instead cite the fact that Brown was allegedly seen on video committing a “strong-arm” robbery of a convenience store earlier that night. This footage — released by the Ferguson police department coincidentally on the same day that they revealed Wilson’s identity — allows those defending Wilson to claim that what matters was not the color of Brown’s skin so much as the fact that he was dangerous, a criminal.
This language, despite being sanitized of overtly racial connotations, bears undertones of an all-too-familiar dialogue surrounding race and crime. Since President Ronald Reagan declared a “War on Drugs,” the rhetoric of “law and order” has successfully masked lingering racial anxiety. Casting blacks as criminals has created an America in which the unwritten police policy of racial profiling, which should be seen as outrageous or deplorable, is considered rational and efficent. Supporters say Wilson was simply doing his job as Brown was a criminal who posed a threat — no racial profiling, no crime. But the few undisputed facts of the case directly contradict this line of reasoning. First, Wilson initially stopped Brown for jaywalking, not for connection to the robbery. Second, Brown was unarmed. Third, Wilson shot Brown multiple times, none of which were at close range. Regardless of Brown’s connection to the robbery — which was unarmed and only resulted in the loss of about $48 worth of cigars — the shooting was beyond excessive punishment.
Beyond the facts of the shooting, its significance is clear. The incident raises decades-old questions about the role that racial profiling plays in law enforcement and, in turn, the role that law enforcement plays in the reinforcement of racial inequality. The police and local government of Ferguson may claim that the city has no history of racial profiling, but the numbers tell a different story. According to the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, Ferguson’s population is 63 percent black. However, an overwhelming 86 percent of police stops, 92 percent of police searches and 93 percent of arrests are of black citizens.
As Charles Blow noted in The New York Times, Mike Brown’s death justifies blacks’ beliefs that they are treated unfairly by the criminal justice system. He cites a poll that indicates 70 percent of blacks believe that police treated black people unfairly, compared to only 37 percent of whites who believed the same. Coverage of the shooting, then, has tapped into a broader — and conflicted — history of racial discrimination and injustice. White citizens, for whom racial profiling is not an immediate concern, are more easily swayed by colorblind ideology than blacks, who suffer from the immediate consequences of racial bias.
At the end of the day, both condemning Brown and defending Wilson fail to change the fact that a young, unarmed man was shot and killed. Brown did not deserve to die. His death calls for an examination of the systems that characterize African-Americans as criminals. But knee-jerk reactions to any coverage that discusses racial inequality in American law enforcement represents a reversion to the myth of colorblindness. We, as a nation, have failed to appropriately respond to Mike Brown’s shooting, and we are unlikely to do so until we stop relying on the illusive language of post-racialism. It’s time to call a spade a spade and dismiss the myth of colorblindness altogether.
