The day of reckoning has arrived not just in Ferguson, Missouri, but also across America. For some, the grand jury proceedings to determine whether the shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer was justified was never about seeking justice. As widely anticipated in the media, the jury of nine whites and three blacks elected not to indict based on the evidence before them. Sadly, hundreds if not thousands of individuals descended upon this small St. Louis suburb to agitate for an outcome based on their ideology rather than the facts under consideration by the grand jury.
Even though the grand jury elected not to find Officer Darren Wilson responsible for the shooting death of teenager Michael Brown, sadly, I never believed that the gathering protesters gathered in Ferguson were seeking justice or a peaceful resolution to the case, which has roiled race relations in America to levels I haven’t seen in decades.
How else to explain those chanting “No Justice, No Peace” in the days leading up to the grand jury’s determination? The only justice sought by those folks involved a conviction against Wilson for killing the “gentle giant” teen. Evidence that favored Wilson’s account—that he tragically shot the teen in self-defense—was conveniently ignored, as doing so neatly fit into the narrative that whites are racist, white police officers assassinate blacks at their leisure, and America is as prejudiced toward people of color as it was in Selma, Alabama, in 1965.
