Systemic injustice

“It’s a shame that Michael Brown had to be killed before we decided to stand up and protest the racial oppression.” (Photo: Dan Drew)

The recently published U.S. Department of Justice report on the Ferguson, Mo. police department was shocking even to tough law and order conservatives. In a democratic government, the criminal justice system ideally treats all citizens equally. The converse approach is to use the power of prosecution to subjugate the underclass. The report clearly establishes that the white controlled government in Ferguson persecutes black citizens even though they are the majority population.

DOJ investigators discovered racially insulting e-mails circulated as jokes by government employees, and police records of arrests of blacks without warrants or probable cause. Nonetheless, the conclusions of the DOJ report were not based on anecdotal information. An analysis of statistical data confirmed that the Ferguson police and the courts have continually denied black citizens their constitutional rights.

While one-third of Ferguson residents are white, blacks accounted for 85 percent of traffic stops, 93 percent of arrests, 90 percent of tickets and 95 percent of those jailed for more than two days. Those charged by the police with jaywalking, a discretionary violation, were 95 percent likely to be black. A jaywalking violation was the reason for the confrontation between Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old black youth who was killed, and his assailant, the white police officer, Darren Wilson.

The 86-page report set forth sufficient evidence to sustain lawsuits against the police and other branches of government in Ferguson. Remedies are already underway to mitigate damages. The state appellate court has already assumed control of the town judicial system. It is anticipated that there will be a number of lawsuits for the violation of constitutional rights.

Damages that might be assessed could force the town and the county to disgorge the revenues they raised from persecuting blacks. The primary objective of this discrimination of blacks was to require them to contribute their funds to the general coffers. The system amounted to disguised taxation of poor blacks.

The DOJ report concluded that the police department and the courts operated to generate revenue rather than to secure public safety. From 2010 to 2014 the percentage of revenue funds from fines and forfeitures almost doubled, from 12 percent to 23 percent of the total. Once again it becomes clear that the motivation for the abuse of African Americans is the economic advantage of those in power. That is what slavery is all about.

One must wonder how blacks tolerated such oppression when they are 67 percent of the population. Is the political system structured to minimize the impact of the black vote, or is the conduct of blacks in Ferguson a classic case of slave mentality?

Critics of the report assert that the DOJ failed to include as part of the offending black population, residents from neighboring towns. However, the racial bias of law enforcement is indicated by the fact that black motorists are twice as likely to be stopped and searched even though searches of whites were more likely to discover contraband.

Racial discrimination in Ferguson is demeaning to blacks and is now a national embarrassment.