John McWhorter — If One Generation of Black Men Could Grow Up Not Experiencing Cops as the Enemy

Towns like Ferguson need to be fixed if we're ever to fix America

Previously in Time, I noted that the main question from the Ferguson debacle is: What is the situation that makes two young black men comfortable dismissing a police officer’s request to step aside? The Department of Justice’s report on the chilling degree of racism on the part of Ferguson’s police force answers that question. The Department of Justice report has shown us that black people in Ferguson have long experienced the police as a contemptuous occupying army. For someone of Brown’s age, a sense of the police as the enemy is ingrained as nothing less than a cultural heritage.

Read more at http://time.com/3739005/ferguson-michael-brown-shooting-police-racism/