Who is accountable for the death of Michael Brown?

For the past week, the town of Ferguson, Missouri has been racked with a continuous stream of protests and riots following the Grand Jury’s decision to not indict Officer Darren Wilson in the case of the shooting of Michael Brown. The outcome of the investigation has attracted widespread criticism from many individuals within the United States and elsewhere in the world.

For many however, the dubious circumstances surrounding Brown’s death exonerate Wilson and undermine the credibility of the protestors. At the core of many critics’ arguments is an attempt to turn any debate on its head by accusing supporters of the protest of ‘playing the race card’. The argument has been articulated in hundreds of ways, but the underlying message is generally the same: the greatest barriers to a post-racial society are ‘liberals’, who constantly inject race into every issue. As one Fox News pundit put it: “The only people who talk about race are racists!”

The argument is as asinine as it is out of touch: race is a fundamental tenet of American politics and will remain so for a long time. The abolition of the ‘Jim Crow Laws’ – which mandated enforced segregation between the white and black communities – has not yet reached its fiftieth anniversary. There are still individuals alive today who remember being unable to eat in the same restaurants, ride the same buses, or even use the same toilets as other ethnicities. For numerous others, the times when white police officers would turn a blind eye to crimes committed against ethnic minorities, or when police would stop and arrest people from certain ethnic groups simply because they could, are within living memory. The expectation that ethnic minorities should simply ignore this history because it is now in the past, is utterly absurd and supremely arrogant. Understanding our history and the effect it has on our society is the first step to avoiding similar events in the future.

The harsh reality is that although the racist behaviours of Jim Crow America have truly died out, the brazen bigotry of previous decades now insidiously manifests itself in a mode of policing which targets ethnic minorities – particularly African- and Latin-Americans – far more aggressively than other communities. In New York City, black and Hispanic people are the targets of more than 80% of all stop-and-frisks carried out by the NYPD, despite comprising less than half of the population. Other statistics are equally damning: African-Americans are typically struck off from juries by the prosecution in cases involving those of the same ethnicity, and can expect to serve longer prison sentences should they be convicted of a crime. In 2010, the United States Sentencing Commission reported that, on average, a black man will receive a prison sentence 10% longer than what a white man would receive for the same crime. In Alabama, a 2010 report by the Equal Justice Initiative found that eight out of ten African-Americans who qualified to serve on juries were struck off by the prosecution in death-penalty cases. In light of these facts: is it surprising that trust in the justice and law enforcement systems is lowest amongst ethnic minorities?

Ferguson is exemplary in this regard: a city in which two-thirds of the population are black, but 94% of the civil service and police force are white. If you are rich and white, middle-class and white, or even poor and white, then you almost certainly have had little first-hand experience of this aggressive profiling, and therefore no real understanding of why such deep-seated animosity towards police exists among minorities; you are out of touch from the very start. We lambast our politicians for being ‘out of touch’ with the people they are appointed to govern, yet give our law enforcement a free pass when they are equally removed from the people they seek to protect and serve.

This vitriolic, institutionalised racism is also compounded by a culture of opacity and self-interest which ultimately jeopardises the role of police officers as impartial enforcers of the law. Officers may act with impunity, knowing full well that they will enjoy the full backing of their municipality, regardless of the nature of their actions.

The negative results of this imbalance are synergic: a law enforcement system which is out of touch with, and openly aggressive towards minorities, and a justice system which precludes meaningful investigation into the actions of their officers. The results are shocking: In 2010, police officers in Ferguson beat and hospitalised an innocent man, Henry Davis, before proceeding to fine him $1,500 in in property damage for “bleeding on their shoes”. Davis promptly filed a suit against the police department, and lost.

Brown’s shooting is an indirect result of these manifold problems. Brown most likely grew up harassed by law enforcement, under the impression that the police are not there to help him. His distrust in the police would be solidified through incidents such as those experienced by Henry Davis. When Brown was apprehended, his options were seemingly clear: to confront Wilson, or to surrender. Surrendering would give little chance at any semblance of fairness: the balance of probability states that he would be arrested and processed by white police officers, tried by a white judge (and most likely a white jury), and would be thrown into prison for far longer than was his due. To confront the police officer may have deadly consequences, but carried the slight chance of escaping. It is the epitome of a no-win situation.

We may never know the choice he made. Ultimately it is inconsequential; Michael Brown was shot dead. No matter what his choice was, the police and government of Ferguson must be held accountable for their role in this tragedy.