The killing of Mike Brown by police in Ferguson is an issue that has attracted a lot of attention on the social media, especially Twitter. The argument has been that the police in Ferguson are racists and against the Black Americans. From the twitter messages, there are people who feel that racism is a bad thing and the police in Ferguson should end their racist practices against the Blacks. A few of the messages however, show that the police in Ferguson are not racist in their treatment of the black Americans.
The issue of race in the police service is serious because it undermines public safety as the police target the Black Americans in their extra-judicial shootings. In addition, the police also arrest the people from the Black American race unfairly as there is the imagination or euphoria that most of the criminals are from the Black American race. Fergusson’s discussions about policing reveal the general public feeling that the police services in St, Louis (Ferguson) are racially inclined. The public feels that the police do not treat people from different races equally, and the most affected race is the Black American race.
In one of the tweets against Ferguson’s Department of justice, there is the public complaint that states: “Indict, convict, send that killer police to jail.” The tweet shows just how the public feels about policing. The public feels that there is the use of excessive force by the police in Ferguson. The force they use is lethal because it leads to death of their culprits. Secondly, they feel that the killings by police are not fair on the basis of race. They want the police who propagate racial shootings to be jailed for their mistakes, and this shows that the people in Ferguson are seeking justice for the police who commit the racial killings. Michael Brown’s shooting was the major factor behind the contemptuous tweeter messages. There was proof that Michael Brown was not armed. In fact, a video footage shows a white policeman planting a weapon on Michael Brown after shooting him dead. Such are the injustices that the people in the black American race undergo because of the issue of racism in the war against crime. The police cannot justify Brown’s killing if he was not armed. Even Brown was a criminal; it was bad for the policeman to shoot him if he was not armed. Such is misuse of deadly force, which calls for a legal punishment against the policeman as the public laments through the tweets.
The general public feeling in Ferguson is that the police officers are racists and they need to stop treating the blacks racially. A tweeter by Bipartisanism states: “Mugshot for the officer who killed Walter Scott while running away.” The message shows that Ferguson DOJ is not just handling the issue of Brown’s killing but also the killing of Walter Scott. This message shows that in Fergusson, the problem of racism in the police is persistent. Another twitter messages reads: “Secret video released of South Carolina police shooting a man while running away.” This shows that the problem of racism does not just affect Ferguson but it is present in other places too.
Foner (2010) discusses the idea of social construction of racism. Foner’s ideas can help in promoting the understanding of the current challenges that the police in Fergusson are facing; which have led to the public outcry about the need for justice against police who commit killings due to racism. According to Foner (2010), the social construction of racism is not just a factor that affects or determines the extra-judicial killings. The manner in which the police conduct their stops, seizures, and searches in public is also racially inclined as they target the Black Americans more than the white Americans. Foner’s argument is that racism or ethnicity in America is a social construction. The meaning of ethnicity or racism being a social construction means that racism is not a static reality. It changes according to the context of discourse (Foner, 2010). Within the discourse of Ferguson, the police are seen as racists when they discriminate the members of the public on the basis of their races. When the police are seen to arrest more blacks than whites, or when they are seen to target more blacks than whites in their shootings, the killings are termed as racially motivated. In the shooting of Brown, a Black American, the killing is considered racial because the police officer who shoots Brown is a white officer called Daren Wilson. Racism in the police service, therefore, depends on the context. If the officer who shot Brown was his fellow Black American, the community at Ferguson would not have reacted on the basis of racism. However, what strengthens the case as being a racial killing is the fact that there is strong evidence that shows Brown was not armed. It is, therefore, only possible to conclude that Daren targeted Brown on the basis of racial discrimination.
Foner explains that racism is a problem that is rooted in biology. People have biological differences, e.g. in skin color, and such differences make the people think of being different from each other. There is always the dominant racial ideology. In America, for instance, the dominant ideology is that the Black race is inferior to White race. The ideology is surrounded with some stereotypical thinking, e.g. that Blacks commit more crimes than Whites (Foner, 2010). The police in Ferguson tend to manipulate such stereotypes to commit the racial extra-judicial killings against the Blacks who are the perceived criminals. The police wish that they will use such stereotypes to defend themselves should the killings attract the judiciary’s attention.
In Fergusson, there is the feeling that the white race is superior and that it is stamping its authority over the black people in unjust ways. Susteren twitted the following message: “This was a cold-blooded killing of Walter Scott.” Another message from CNN on twitter reads: “Scott’s shooting brought back emotions at Ferguson felt after Michael Brown’s killing.” Duster (2010), while explaining the concept of whiteness, states that it is a social issue that may have little to do with the skin color. Although many people judge race using the aspect of skin color, race is more ideological and psychological (based on thinking) than it is based on the color of the skin (Duster, 2010). However, skin color is, unfortunately, the predominant factor used in racial categorization as it is evident in Ferguson. Some members of the public feel that it is unfair for the police to target the blacks in their arrests and killings. In a tweeter message, a Mr. Mike Rotondo notes: “Heating the beach all day … am gonna tan until I am so black that I belong on Ferguson police line up.” This tweeter message is a reaction to Brown’s killing. Rotondo imagines that the Ferguson police have a lineup of Black people they target in their killings, and he wants to become so black so that he is one of the targets in the police list. Rotondo does not suggest that he wants the police to shoot him. However, he expresses his disgust against the killing of Brown yet he is a member of the white race by his skin color. This tweet proves that racism depends more on the person’s thinking because despite Rotondo being a white, he sympathizes with the fact that the police at Ferguson are not racially fair in their killings that target the Blacks.
There institutions in the society have been composed in such a manner that they create racial bias so that they can maintain the racial inequalities (Howell, 2010). Furthermore, the media plays a vital role in the criminal justice system. According to Wasquant (2010), the role of media in crime is in two-fold. First, the media has the role of reporting crime. Secondly, the media can be the committers of crime, something that attracts the Criminal Justice System to punish the media so that it does its work within the required frameworks. The media can commit crime, for example, through slander or libel. Under these circumstances, the media presents untrue statements that affect the character of the people in the stories (Wasquant, 2010). In the Ferguson killings, it is important to consider that the media used the killing of Brown to expand the idea of race in Fergusson’s policing. The media moved from a specific case to generalize the notion that the police in Ferguson use racism as the determinant of their public service.
The media extended the notion that in Fergusson, the police are so racially inclined against the blacks to the extent that they can kill an innocent person and ‘plant’ fake evidence on him, e.g. a pistol to mislead the Department of Justice that the killing was not racial but based on Brown’s crime. In this perspective, the media played the role of whistle-blowing about the racial injustices in Fergusson’s police department. The racial composition of Fergusson’s police force could be one of the factors explaining such racial treatments. In a situation where the Fergusson police force is predominantly made of white people, it is possible for the police to fail demonstrating racial impartiality in their work by targeting one race more than the other. One of the ways to eliminate such racial treatment against the Blacks in Fergusson is by increasing the representation of the Blacks in both the police force and other agencies.
In a tweet from Ferguson, a tweeter user called Ebony commented that “The people of Ferguson, Mo have elected two more Black officials to their city council.” Another tweet states: “Change in Ferguson continues as election turnout records add two Blacks in the Council.” Such are the attempts that the people of Ferguson are making to deal with the problem of racism in their police force. Increasing diversity and racial equality in democratic representation can reduce the challenge of racial killings (Wasquant, 2010; & Howell, 2010). However, as the people of Ferguson grapple with the challenge of racial killings in the police force, some people try to distance Ferguson from the fact that the police are racially motivated and they target the Blacks in their shootings and arrests.
However, people in Ferguson do not share the same sentiments about the connection between the killings by the police in Ferguson and racism. Some people do not agree that there is racism is a factor in Ferguson’s killings. In a twitter message, a user called Realist states: “The Walter Scott shooting is nothing like Ferguson, no matter how hard DeRay McKesson tries to frame it.” According to Sared and Fernandopulle (2010), people react to racism differently depending on whether it favors their race or not. This why the Realist tries to distance Ferguson’s police from involvement in Walter Scott’s shooting by stating that the shooting di not occur within Ferguson.
From the Twitter message, the user’s disagreement with the association between Scott’s killing and Ferguson police shows that his or her race is one that is implicated. The White people in Ferguson feel that their race is being discriminated unfairly when the media reports that the killings are driven by racism. People always try to protect their race, according to Wasquant (2010). Crystal Fleming, a twitter user from the white race states: “The way NYT (New York Times) framed it, it appears Ferguson activism and calls for police reforms are themselves undermining public trust. Not so.” This twitter message shows how Fleming tries to protect Ferguson’s police and the fact that the calls for police reforms, according to her, do not undermine public trust in the police. The message shows the role that the media in Ferguson plays in formulating public agenda about police service and the need for reforms. From the tweet, the public debate is formulated around the notion that there is a diminishing public trust in Ferguson’s police, an idea that Fleming disagrees with.
In conclusion, racism is a factor that affects police service in Ferguson. There is a growing public opinion that the police in Ferguson are using racism negatively to cause extra-judicial killings against the Black Americans. The killing of Brown, a black person who was not armed, shows how the police in Ferguson are racial in their dealing with crime. Race not only causes the extra-judicial killing of innocent blacks. It also leads to unfair practices by the police while performing public inspections and arrests. Through Twitter, the killings and unfair practices by the police have attracted mixed reactions that are also racially inclined. Some members of the public feel that there is need for the Criminal Justice Department at Fergusson to intervene and commit the racial police to jail. Other, however, feel that some of the killings have nothing to do with racism or Fergusson’s police involvement in the killings. Also, there are members of the public who feel that the media is miss-representing the issue of racism in the police department. The reactions and messages on Twitter also show that the Black Americans in Ferguson have increased their representation in the City Council, and such interventions might solve the problem of race in police service. Ferguson can solve the problem of race in its police service by creating equal chances for Blacks and Whites in the police force. The police also need proper training against racism in their services.
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