The United States City of St. Louis County in the State of Missouri and its grand jury’s decision not to indict the white police officer who on August 9, 2014, shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed African American teenager, would have generated widespread anger and disappointment around the world in any case.
Nevertheless the county white prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, who is widely viewed in the African American community as being in the pockets of the majority police department, made matters infinitely worse by handling this sensitive investigation in the worst possible way.
First, he refused to step aside in favor of a special prosecutor who could have been appointed by the white governor, Jay Nixon, of Missouri. He further undermined public confidence by taking a highly unorthodox approach, or to put it bluntly, a racially biased methodology, to the grand jury proceeding.
Instead of conducting an investigation and then presenting the case and a recommendation of charges to the grand jury, his office shifted its job to the grand jury which was made up of 9 white jurors and only three African Americans, in a community that is more than 65 percent Black. It made no recommendation on whether to indict the white officer, Darren Wilson, but left it to the jurors to wade through masses of evidence to determine whether there was probable cause to file charges against Officer Wilson for Mr. Brown’s killing.
Only 9 out of the 12 votes were needed to either indict or not indict the white police officer.
Under ordinary circumstances, grand jury hearings can be concluded within days. The proceeding in this case lasted an astonishing three months. And since grand jury proceedings are held in secret, the drawn-out process continued to fan suspicions that white prosecutor, Mr. McCulloch, was deliberately carrying on a trial out of public view, for the express purpose of exonerating white police officer Wilson.
If all this weren’t bad enough, Mr. McCulloch took a reckless approach to announcing the grand jury’s racially biased finding. After delaying the announcement all day, he finally made it late in the evening, when darkness had placed peaceful protesters and even law enforcement agencies at a serious disadvantage as they tried to control the justifiably angry crowds that had been drawn into the streets by news that the verdict was coming.
Mr. McCulloch’s announcement sounded more like a defense of Officer Wilson than a neutral summary of the facts that had led the majority white grand jury to its conclusion.
For the African American community of Ferguson, the killing of Michael Brown was the last straw in a long train of abuses that they have suffered daily at the hands of the local police. News accounts have strongly suggested, for example, that the police in St. Louis County’s many municipalities systematically target poor and minority citizens for street and traffic stops — partly to generate fines — which has the effect of both bankrupting and criminalizing whole communities.
In this context, white police officers are justifiably seen as an alien-occupying force that is synonymous with slavery and state-sponsored abuse.
The case resonated across the country — in New York City, Chicago and Oakland, especially in African American homes — because the killing of young Black men by white police is a common feature of African-American life and a source of dread for Black parents from coast to coast. This point was underscored last month in a grim report by ProPublica, showing that young Black males in recent years were at a far greater risk — 21 times greater — of being shot dead by police than young white men. These statistics reflect the fact that many white police officers see black men as expendable figures on the urban landscape, not quite human beings.
We get a flavor of this in white police officer Darren Wilson’s grand jury testimony, when he describes Michael Brown, as he was being shot, as a soulless behemoth who was “almost bulking up to run through the shots, like it was making him mad that I’m shooting at him.”
President Barack Obama, a member of the African American community himself, was on the mark on the night of McCulloch’s announcement when he said, “We need to recognize that this is not just an issue for Ferguson, this is an issue for America.”
The rioting that continues to scar the streets of St. Louis County — and the outrage that continues to reverberate across that country called the United States of America — underlines this inescapable point. It shows once again that African Americans cannot trust a majority white government, not at the Federal level, not at the State level and certainly not at the local level. The distrust of majority white law enforcement presents a grave danger, a white problem, to the civic fabric of the United States of America and her moral authority in the rest of the world.
The U.S. is a sham. It believes nothing but genocide. What has been happening in that country since its founding is the genocide it committed against the Natives Americans, the Slavery it visited upon Africans brought there through no fault of their ans the continued ans systematic genocide they, the U.S., on African Americans.
One day people will not say that was the greatest nation on the planet for 60 years! History is going to remember the U.S. as the most hideous nation the world had ever known.
It is that Bible they continue to use to deceive every one else. I hope Africans, African Americans will now stop hanging on their walls, pictures of a white Jesus. If he liked them at all, they wouldn’t be 400 years still deep in an American tradition of oppression.
That country called the USA is acting like back-in-the-day Israelites when the wiped out whole races of peoples (genocides). The USA is intent on wiping out African Americans, or keeping them at a constant population ratio.
The Bible tells us: 1 Samuel 15:3,8 –
Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’ ” … He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword.(NIV)
The USA calls itself a Christian nation right? Well…
This is what Christian nations like the USA are capable of doing:
Hosea 13:16
Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword, their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open. (NRSV)
The USA has now confirmed our worst sauspicions – it is a nation of hypocrites!
The USA can come clean and say, ‘we just hate Black people’. They can stop fooling the world now. We are not fooled anymore.
Is this the Christian nation, the USA, they keep telling us about? What a mess really? Ashamed to be Christian myself.
America must first remove the log in its eyes before they gallivant around the world trying to remove the speck in other peoples’ eyes.
Here is a scripture for African Americans and why they should start protecting themselves against law enforcement before it is too late.
Exodus 32:27-29 –
Then he said to them, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’ “The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the LORD today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.”(NIV)
For every quotation in the Bible about exceptionalism, which the United States of American tends to preach everywhere they go – there is another about killing and violence. The scripture is a bad precedent, they have used it to enslave a whole people and continue to quote this scripture while they launch a War on Drugs/Blacks.
You mean the Old Testament right? I agree it should be dropped from the African Bible.
Do you also remember this Scripture which stokes American exceptionalism and ‘righteousness’?
Deuteronomy 3:3-6
So the LORD our God delivered Og also, king of Bashan,with all his people into our hand, and we smote them until no survivor was left. We captured all his cities at that time; there was not a city which we did not take from them: sixty cities, all the region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan. All these were cities fortified with high walls, gates and bars, besides a great many unwalled towns. We utterly destroyed them, as we did to Sihon king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, women and children of every city. (NASB)
Then they want to call other people barbaric? They want to smote all African Americans until no survivor is left like they have already done with Native American tribes. This people have always been destroyers and History will remember them as such!
No doubt!
Here’s another verse for fellow Christians in Africa who think they can find peace with evangelists from America:
Judges 12:5-6
Then the Gileadites took the fords of the Jordan against the Ephraimites. Whenever one of the fugitives of Ephraim said, “Let me go over,” the men of Gilead would say to him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” When he said, “No” they said to him, “Then say Shibboleth” and he said, “Sibboleth,” for he could not pronounce it right. Then they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand of the Ephraimites fell at that time. (NRSV).
This kind of Christianity is the foundation of the United States of America. And then we wonder why young Black men are forced into
prison and killed on the streets for absolutely no reason? You really wonder why?
Here is a piece of Scripture the KKK in the USA would love:
Joshua 8:24-26
When the Israelite army finished chasing and killing all the men of Ai in the open fields, they went back and finished off everyone inside. So the entire population of Ai, including men and women, was wiped out that day—12,000 in all. For Joshua kept holding out his spear until everyone who had lived in Ai was completely destroyed. (NLT)
These white cops don’t look over and see people who are of African descent. All they see is people to kill, slaughter and wipe out. That is who they are! That is who they shall forever be.
I think they will adore this one too:
2 Chronicles 25:12
The sons of Judah also captured 10,000 alive and brought them to the top of the cliff and threw them down from the top of the cliff, so that they were all dashed to pieces.(NASB)
Tell white people in America that they have brothers and sisters in Africa. If we were animals like they are over there in the US we too will be shooting white boys down here. The Bible is not enough for a foundation of a nation built on slavery and genocide. In fact, the Bible endorses such practices and that’s why American cannot fully recover and find a new path to nation building that is inclusive of African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans.
“My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by
growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the
nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on
American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what
makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is
extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as
exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small
countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and
those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too.
We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must
not forget that God created us equal.” ~ Vladimir V. Putin, the president of Russia.
That’s all I can say about a nation that likes to call itself exceptional while its police officers run around killing innocent Black men. Very twisted. I guess like the people of Moses, once you believe you are the Chosen Ones then everybody else is toast!
Ferguson has definitely exposed America. The USA of all places has a white problem. It just seems difficult to put together in the same picture, a nation that calls itself civilized, notwithstanding its lynching history of Black people, and now it is making history, not for anything good, not for any humane record, not for even humanitarian reasons, but for the mass incarceration of Black men and the shooting and killing of Black men!
The picture America is painting in this era will be looked back and used to explain why a Nation that had so much potential in its diverse peoples, failed, and failed. It is a sad sight to see really, the grotesque maltreatment of people of African descent in America.
To say that even on Staten Island and Ferguson in the US are not troubling will be tantamount to hiding an elephant in a 12′ by 12′ box.
Giant steps needed to be taken in the USA. I just don’t see the US being any influential power in the world anymore.
A most deplorable situation ongoing in a country that definitely goes around the world with the talk of freedom. But freedom itself is terribly amiss in America itself. Its eye opening. Ferguson is eye opening. Staten Island is eye shuttering. Both are debased treatment of African Americans and the government of America didn’t do anything about it.
Just horrible! Really.