Pubdate: Tue, 26 Aug 2014
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2014 The Washington Post Company
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/mUgeOPdZ
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Eugene Robinson
Page: A13
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/racial.htm (Racial Issues)

NO MISTAKES ALLOWED

To be young, male and black in America means not being allowed to 
make mistakes. Forgetting this, as we've seen so many times, can be fatal.

The case of Michael Brown, who was laid to rest Monday, is anomalous 
only in that it is so extreme: an unarmed black teenager riddled with 
bullets by a white police officer in a community plagued by racial tension.

African Americans make up 67 percent of the population of Ferguson, 
Mo., but there are just three black officers on the 53-member police 
force - which responded to peaceful demonstrations by rolling out 
military-surplus armored vehicles and firing tear gas. It is easy to 
understand how Brown and his peers might see the police not as public 
servants but as troops in an army of occupation.

And yes, Brown made mistakes. He was walking in the middle of the 
street rather than on the sidewalk, according to witnesses, and he 
was carrying a box of cigars that he apparently took from a 
convenience store. Neither is a capital offense.

When Officer Darren Wilson stopped him, did Brown respond with 
puffed-up attitude? For a young black man, that is a transgression 
punishable by death.

Fatal encounters such as the one between Brown and Wilson 
understandably draw the nation's attention. But such tragedies are 
just the visible manifestation of a much larger reality. Most, if not 
all, young men go through a period between adolescence and adulthood 
when they are likely to engage in risky behavior of various kinds 
without fully grasping the consequences of their actions. If they are 
white - well, boys will be boys. But if they are black, they are 
treated as men and assumed to have malicious intent.

What else explains the shameful disparities in the application of 
justice? As I have pointed out before, blacks and whites are equally 
likely to smoke marijuana; if anything, blacks are slightly less 
likely to toke up. Yet African Americans - and Hispanics - are about 
four times more likely to be arrested on marijuana charges than whites.

To compound this inequality, studies also indicate that, among people 
who are arrested for using or selling marijuana, black defendants are 
much more likely than white defendants to serve prison time. For 
young white men, smoking a joint is no big deal. For young black men, 
it can ruin your life.

Similarly, blacks and whites are equally likely to use cocaine. But a 
person convicted of selling crack cocaine will serve a far longer 
prison term than one convicted of selling the same quantity of powder 
cocaine, even though these are just two forms of the same drug. Crack 
is the way cocaine is usually sold in the inner cities, while powder 
is more popular in the suburbs - which is one big reason there are so 
many African American and Hispanic men filling our prisons.

One arrest - even for a minor offense - can be enough to send a 
promising young life reeling in the wrong direction. Police officers 
understand this and exercise discretion. But evidence suggests they 
are much more willing to give young white men a break than young 
black or brown men.

Why would this be? In Ferguson, I would argue, one obvious factor is 
the near-total lack of diversity among police officers. What year is 
this, anyway?

But there is disparate treatment even in communities where the racial 
makeup of the police force more closely resembles that of the 
population. I believe the central problem is that a young black man 
who encounters a police officer is assumed to have done something 
wrong and to be capable of violence. These assumptions make the 
officer more prepared than he otherwise might be to use force - even 
deadly force.

The real tragedy is that racist assumptions are self-perpetuating and 
self-reinforcing. If young black men are treated unfairly by the 
justice system, they are indeed more likely to have arrest records - 
and, perhaps, to harbor resentment against police authority. They may 
indeed feel they have nothing to lose by exhibiting defiance. In some 
circumstances - and these may include the streets of Ferguson - they 
may feel that standing up to the police is a matter of self-respect.

Michael Brown had no police record. By all accounts, he had no 
history of violence. He had finished high school and was going to 
continue his education. All of this was hidden, apparently, by the 
color of his skin.
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