newyorker | The Justice Department also released a broader
assessment of the police and the courts in Ferguson, and it was
scathing. The town, it concluded, was characterized by deep-seated
racism. Local authorities targeted black residents, arresting them
disproportionately and fining them excessively. Together, the two
reports frustrated attempts to arrive at a clean moral conclusion.
Wilson had violated no protocol in his deadly interaction with Brown,
yet he was part of a corrupt and racist system.
The
federal government’s findings did little to soothe the raw emotions
stirred by Brown’s death. Many Americans believe that Wilson need not
have killed Brown in order to protect himself, and might not have
resorted to lethal force had Brown been white. Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his
new book, “Between the World and Me,” writing of the psychological
impact of incidents like the Brown shooting, says, “It does not matter
if the destruction is the result of an unfortunate overreaction. It does
not matter if it originates in a misunderstanding.” Coates also notes,
“There is nothing uniquely evil in these destroyers or even in this
moment. The destroyers are merely men enforcing the whims of our
country.”
Many police officers have defended
Wilson, pointing out that cops patrolling violent neighborhoods risk
their lives. Some right-wing publications have lionized him. In The American Thinker,
David Whitley wrote that Wilson “should be thanked and treated as a
hero!” Supporters raised nearly half a million dollars on behalf of the
Wilsons, allowing them to move, buy the new house, and pay their legal
expenses. But, as Wilson knows, such support has only deepened the
resentment of people who feel that he deserves punishment or, at the
very least, reprimand.
