White & Black Responses To Ferguson Not The Same

(This photo is from a tweet shown of the Facebook page called Our Time.)

Is it bad enough that an unarmed youth was shot (six times!) in Ferguson, and that the police response was a military one that treated American civilians exercising their constitutional rights as enemies. But recent polls are showing something that may even be worse for the country as a whole. The reaction to the shooting and the police response in Ferguson are vastly different when viewed from a White perspective than from a Black perspective.

Why is that important? Because it shows that this country still has some very serious racial problems, and those problems are not being sufficiently addressed. Blacks understand this because they have to live with it in their daily lives -- both in the society at large and in their dealings with the police departments across this country. Whites don't have to live with this continuing racism, and that makes it far too easy to ignore it (and fool themselves into thinking the problem doesn't exist).

And many of them do just that -- ignore it. And since there are far more Whites than Blacks in this country, and in most of the country's communities, that White indifference means the problem is not being addressed. Blacks and Whites are still treated differently by many police departments, but those police are just representative of the people as a whole in this country. The problem still exists in the workplace, in schools, in government, in the courts, and in society in general.

Not all police are racist, but some are -- and not all Americans are racist, but too many are. Police departments, like all other societal entities, just reflect the views of their community -- and too often those views are racist.

It is time for decent people across this country, especially Whites, to stand up and say "Enough". We are falling far short of the constitutional guarantee of equal rights for everyone under the law, and of the common decency of knowing that every life is equally precious (regardless of race, ethnicity, age, sex, or sexual preference) -- and we must act to correct this.

The charts below starkly illustrate this problem with race in the United States. They were made from a Pew Research Center survey (done between August 14th and 17th of a random national sample of 1,000 adults, with a margin of error of 3.6 points) and a YouGov Poll (done between August 14th and 17th of a random national sample of 1,000 adults, with a margin of error of about 4 points).