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N.Y. TIMES
A poll taken since a white police officer in Missouri shot dead an unarmed black teenager shows blacks and whites sharply divided on how fairly the police deal with each group, along with a rising feeling, especially among whites, that race relations in the country are troubled. But when asked about their own communities, members of each race say their relations with the other are good.
The latest New York Times/CBS News nationwide poll shows most whites reserving judgment on whether the fatal shooting of the teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo., was justified. Most blacks say it was not.
“Whether they robbed a store, pushed a man or whatever the case may be, there are other strategies and tactics the police officer should use before excessive force and brutally killing someone in cold blood,” Felicia Irving, 28, a high-school English teacher in Hampton, Ga., who is black, said in a follow-up interview.
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The issue at the heart of the unrest in Ferguson — the suspicion among some that a white policeman was trigger-happy when faced with a young black man — is also at the heart of what divides black and white Americans. An overwhelming majority of blacks say they think that, generally, the police are more likely to use deadly force against a black person; a majority of whites say race is not a factor in a police officer’s decision to use force. Forty-five percent of blacks say they have experienced racial discrimination by the police at some point in their lives; virtually no whites say they have.
WASHINGTON POST
Jeff Smith, a former Democratic state senator from Missouri, wrote a piece for the Times outlining the recent electoral tension in St. Louis County, the area just northwest of the city of St. Louis that is home to Ferguson. As we noted last week, Smith argues that the rapid shift in Ferguson's demographics from majority white to majority black outpaced the ability of the political infrastructure to represent the community.
Frustrations around police activity pre-date the Brown shooting. There are numerous anecdotal examples of incidents in which Ferguson residents complained of being targeted by the police. But there's also direct evidence of it.
Smith, in the Times, explains why police stops are important to local law enforcement.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist David Nicklaus notes another point of tension.
The unemployment and poverty rates for blacks in St. Louis County are consistently higher than those rates for white residents. Only one time between 2007 and 2012 has the poverty rate for blacks been less than three times that of whites, according to Census data (which is only available through the latter year). The unemployment rate is two-to-three times higher, and, as of 2012, had grown worse while it grew better for whites.
What's more, those figures disproportionately affect younger residents. Nicklaus pulls out a subset of Census data: "47 percent of the metro area’s African-American men between ages 16 and 24 are unemployed. The comparable figure for young white men is 16 percent."
THE GUARDIAN
Vickie Place is a row of single family homes built in the 1950s. They are modest but spacious, with gardens front and back, plenty of squirrels and a constant buzz from cicadas. The family of Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old African American gunned down by police last Saturday, occupies a cream-coloured house with a peeling door, a broken bell and a tattered chair on the porch.
The teargas and screams from West Florissant Avenue, where mainly white police used military might to cow black protesters, did not reach Vickie Place, just a few blocks away. But a simple fact about the street, and those around it, sheds light on the police mindset: one by one, carload by carload, year by year, decade by decade, in an inexorable, remorseless exodus, white faces, faces like theirs, have vanished. The legacy, for the white officers supposed to police it, appears to be a forbidding, alien, territory. A land of the other. It might as well be Falluja.
The spectacle of American police acting like an occupying army in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson has shocked and baffled outsiders, but there was an explanation, of sorts, in a sleepy, tree-lined street just five minutes' walk from the mayhem.
Vickie Place is a row of single family homes built in the 1950s. They are modest but spacious, with gardens front and back, plenty of squirrels and a constant buzz from cicadas. The family of Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old African American gunned down by police last Saturday, occupies a cream-coloured house with a peeling door, a broken bell and a tattered chair on the porch.
The teargas and screams from West Florissant Avenue, where mainly white police used military might to cow black protesters, did not reach Vickie Place, just a few blocks away. But a simple fact about the street, and those around it, sheds light on the police mindset: one by one, carload by carload, year by year, decade by decade, in an inexorable, remorseless exodus, white faces, faces like theirs, have vanished. The legacy, for the white officers supposed to police it, appears to be a forbidding, alien, territory. A land of the other. It might as well be Falluja.
"The police don't like coming here," said Don Williams, 52, who moved to Vickie Place with his family in 2001. "It was majority white then. Now, almost all black." The absence of street lighting made everything pitch dark after sunset, intimidating patrols, he said. "We have break-ins but the police barely investigate. They're not worth nothing."
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WASHINGTON POST
Jeff Smith, a former Democratic state senator from Missouri, wrote a piece for the Times outlining the recent electoral tension in St. Louis County, the area just northwest of the city of St. Louis that is home to Ferguson. As we noted last week, Smith argues that the rapid shift in Ferguson's demographics from majority white to majority black outpaced the ability of the political infrastructure to represent the community.
Frustrations around police activity pre-date the Brown shooting. There are numerous anecdotal examples of incidents in which Ferguson residents complained of being targeted by the police. But there's also direct evidence of it.
Smith, in the Times, explains why police stops are important to local law enforcement.
The region’s fragmentation isn’t limited to the odd case of a city shedding its county. St. Louis County contains 90 municipalities, most with their own city hall and police force. Many rely on revenue generated from traffic tickets and related fines. According to a study by the St. Louis nonprofit Better Together, Ferguson receives nearly one-quarter of its revenue from court fees; for some surrounding towns it approaches 50 percent.In Ferguson, according to data from the Missouri state attorney general, traffic stops have been on an upward trend, though the number dropped last year. Any perception that the application of the traffic stops is uneven is justified. Blacks are far more likely to get stopped, which makes sense in part since they are a larger percentage of the population. (Though, as we noted last week, they are overrepresented in those stops. Over 80 percent of stops in the past five years have been of black drivers, despite blacks only comprising about two-thirds of the population.) But once stopped, blacks are more likely to be searched -- and less likely to be found carrying anything illegal.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist David Nicklaus notes another point of tension.
The unemployment and poverty rates for blacks in St. Louis County are consistently higher than those rates for white residents. Only one time between 2007 and 2012 has the poverty rate for blacks been less than three times that of whites, according to Census data (which is only available through the latter year). The unemployment rate is two-to-three times higher, and, as of 2012, had grown worse while it grew better for whites.
What's more, those figures disproportionately affect younger residents. Nicklaus pulls out a subset of Census data: "47 percent of the metro area’s African-American men between ages 16 and 24 are unemployed. The comparable figure for young white men is 16 percent."
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| Is this Gaza or Ferguson Mo? Tactical officers advance east on Chambers Road through clouds of tear gas as they try to clear protesters early on Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014. Photo by Chris Lee, clee@post-dispatch.com |
THE GUARDIAN
Vickie Place is a row of single family homes built in the 1950s. They are modest but spacious, with gardens front and back, plenty of squirrels and a constant buzz from cicadas. The family of Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old African American gunned down by police last Saturday, occupies a cream-coloured house with a peeling door, a broken bell and a tattered chair on the porch.
The teargas and screams from West Florissant Avenue, where mainly white police used military might to cow black protesters, did not reach Vickie Place, just a few blocks away. But a simple fact about the street, and those around it, sheds light on the police mindset: one by one, carload by carload, year by year, decade by decade, in an inexorable, remorseless exodus, white faces, faces like theirs, have vanished. The legacy, for the white officers supposed to police it, appears to be a forbidding, alien, territory. A land of the other. It might as well be Falluja.
The spectacle of American police acting like an occupying army in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson has shocked and baffled outsiders, but there was an explanation, of sorts, in a sleepy, tree-lined street just five minutes' walk from the mayhem.
Vickie Place is a row of single family homes built in the 1950s. They are modest but spacious, with gardens front and back, plenty of squirrels and a constant buzz from cicadas. The family of Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old African American gunned down by police last Saturday, occupies a cream-coloured house with a peeling door, a broken bell and a tattered chair on the porch.
The teargas and screams from West Florissant Avenue, where mainly white police used military might to cow black protesters, did not reach Vickie Place, just a few blocks away. But a simple fact about the street, and those around it, sheds light on the police mindset: one by one, carload by carload, year by year, decade by decade, in an inexorable, remorseless exodus, white faces, faces like theirs, have vanished. The legacy, for the white officers supposed to police it, appears to be a forbidding, alien, territory. A land of the other. It might as well be Falluja.
"The police don't like coming here," said Don Williams, 52, who moved to Vickie Place with his family in 2001. "It was majority white then. Now, almost all black." The absence of street lighting made everything pitch dark after sunset, intimidating patrols, he said. "We have break-ins but the police barely investigate. They're not worth nothing."
White flight is a familiar phenomenon in many countries but the use of armoured vehicles and sniper nests in the height of a Missouri summer has exposed the extent and consequences of segregation in America's heartland.For
five nights, Saturday to Wednesday, the Ferguson city and St Louis
county police departments betrayed hostility, incomprehension and fear
as they confronted protesters, heedless that the militarised response
had stoked anger and radicalism over Brown's death.
Another factor was racial imbalance: only three of Ferguson's 53 officers are black (94% white, in other words) and only one of six city councillors is black – a product of disenfranchisement and anaemic political mobilisation in a city where two-thirds of the population is black.
The separation of races should in theory be a fading anachronism given that a black man occupies the White House and black artists suffuse mainstream culture. But half a century after the civil rights movement triumphed, the dream of an integrated multiracial society in this sprawl by the Mississippi is largely dead. As black families moved to nicer areas, exploiting newfound freedom, white neighbours fled.
Another factor was racial imbalance: only three of Ferguson's 53 officers are black (94% white, in other words) and only one of six city councillors is black – a product of disenfranchisement and anaemic political mobilisation in a city where two-thirds of the population is black.
The separation of races should in theory be a fading anachronism given that a black man occupies the White House and black artists suffuse mainstream culture. But half a century after the civil rights movement triumphed, the dream of an integrated multiracial society in this sprawl by the Mississippi is largely dead. As black families moved to nicer areas, exploiting newfound freedom, white neighbours fled.
