Those biases manifest themselves in ways that matter—whom we offer help to in an emergency, whom we decide to hire, whom we give a warning to instead of a ticket, or whom we shoot at during a police encounter.
Indeed, it is the latter example—police shootings and their aftermath—that has been the most glaring evidence that we are not living in a postracial world. The police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in the summer of 2014 (just one of several highly publicized Black deaths at the hands of police since then) and the activism that followed, not just on the ground in Ferguson but around the nation and on college campuses, linked by the social-media–based movement Black Lives Matter, has awakened a new generation to the power of social protest.
Black Lives Matter and Millennials in Motion
When a Black seventeen-year-old named Trayvon Martin was headed to his father’s fiancée’s home on February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida, talking on his cell phone to a friend as he walked, carrying only snacks purchased from a local convenience store, he did not know that he would have a fatal encounter with one of the neighbors, George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer. Zimmerman, believing that Martin was an unwelcome intruder with criminal intentions, began following him in his car and called 911 to report his suspicions, saying, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something.” Though told by the 911 operator to stay in his vehicle and leave the matter to the police, Zimmerman disregarded that instruction, got out of his car, and confronted Martin. An altercation between the two ensued, and in the struggle, Zimmerman shot and killed the unarmed teen. When the police arrived on the scene, they took Zimmerman to the police station for questioning but accepted Zimmerman’s account that he had acted in self-defense and let him go. Though Martin was just a short walk away from where his father was staying, the police made no effort to determine if he was from the neighborhood, tagging his body as “John Doe.” It was not until his father filed a missing-person report with the police the next day that Trayvon Martin’s parents learned what had happened to their son.68
As the details of Trayvon Martin’s murder became known through social media, it became a national news story. The fact that this young Black man was minding his own business, simply walking home, yet ended up dead because of someone else’s unfounded suspicions was bad enough, but the fact that the killer had not yet been held accountable was cause for further outrage. Zimmerman is a Hispanic man. Certainly many felt that had the outcome of the altercation been different—if Martin had shot and killed Zimmerman in the struggle—the Black teenager would have been arrested immediately. Protests erupted across the country, with demands for Zimmerman’s arrest. Under public pressure, forty-five days after the deadly encounter, the Sanford police arrested George Zimmerman and he was charged with second-degree murder. During the trial, the Zimmerman defense team worked to present Trayvon Martin as a “thug” who deserved Zimmerman’s suspicions, and to portray Zimmerman as the innocent victim of Martin’s aggression.
When the trial concluded with a “not guilty” verdict, again there was outrage, so much so that President Obama felt compelled to speak about it, saying, “I know this case has elicited strong passions. And in the wake of the verdict, I know those passions may be running even higher. But we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken.… We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this. As citizens, that’s a job for all of us.”69 His words provided little comfort, particularly not to those young people of color who could easily imagine themselves in Trayvon Martin’s hooded sweatshirt, possibly meeting a similar fate, or to their parents who feared for their own children’s safety.
Indeed, the juxtaposition of the first Black president of the United States, arguably the most powerful man in the world, and the futility of his words to deliver justice for the young Black teen was salt in the wound for many young African Americans. Reflecting on that moment, Bree Newsome, a young Black activist explained, “To understand it, you have to go back to the election of Barack Obama in terms of what that symbolized in terms of the hope. We saw that as us turning a corner in the country.… And then what we saw through the Trayvon Martin case was that we haven’t actually turned that corner. Honestly, Trayvon was the turning point. Trayvon Martin just had so many echoes of Emmett Till. It felt like something out of 1955.”70
Expressing her own deep frustration in response to Zimmerman’s acquittal, Alicia Garza, a community organizer based in Oakland, California, posted this message on Facebook: “I continue to be surprised at how little black lives matter.… Black people, I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.” Garza’s friend, Patrisse Cullors, a Los Angeles–based activist, shared the Facebook post and added the hashtag, powerful in its simplicity, #BlackLivesMatter. Opal Tometi, a social-justice activist living in New York City, reached out to Garza and offered to help build a digital platform that could mobilize action for meaningful change. In 2016, reflecting back to that 2012 moment, Garza said, “We wanted to connect people who were already buzzing about all this stuff and get them to do something, not just retweet or like or share. We thought, ‘How do we get folks together and take that energy and create something awesome?’” The #BlackLivesMatter message resonated with many across the social media platforms of Facebook and Twitter, and with that amplification a rallying cry for the millennial generation was born.71
The importance of social media in spreading news and information about organizing cannot be overemphasized. As noted in a September 2016 Smithsonian magazine article appropriately titled “Black Tweets Matter,” the phrase “Black Lives Matter” has been tweeted thirty million times since that first posting in 2012, and Twitter has completely changed the speed with which information can be conveyed, how organizing can be done, and who can participate and how.72 The twenty-first-century omnipresence of cell phone cameras with video capacity has also had a tremendous impact. “No one knew who would be the next Trayvon Martin, but the increasing use of smartphone recording devices and social media seemed to quicken the pace at which incidents of police brutality became public.”73
Though Martin’s death was at the hands of a private citizen, the repeated capture of police violence against unarmed Black citizens on cell phone video compounded the anger and frustration of many. The death of Eric Garner on July 17, 2014, at the hands of Daniel Pantaleo, a White police officer who used a chokehold to restrain him on a New York sidewalk—allegedly because he was selling loose cigarettes—gained national attention when cell phone video of his death was captured by a bystander. Garner could be heard gasping “I can’t breathe” eleven times as he was held down by several officers. Demonstrators across the nation, celebrity athletes among them, adopted the phrase “I can’t breathe” as a slogan of protest.74 Less than three weeks later, on August 5, 2014, a young African American man, John Crawford III, twenty-two, was shot and killed by a police officer at a Walmart store in Beavercreek, Ohio, after a White male shopper called 911, reporting there was a Black man walking around the store with a gun, pointing it at people. When the police arrived on the scene, they opened fire on the unsuspecting Crawford, who, as captured on store video, appeared to be alone in the store aisle talking on his cell phone, casually carrying by his side an unloaded air rifle he had taken from a store shelf, presumably with the intent of purchasing it. Within seconds, Crawford was dead. The officers involved in the shooting, Sean Williams and David Darkow, were not charged.75
Just four days later, on August 9, 2014, the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, became an especially powerful catalytic moment for the Black Lives Matter movement. Though the circumstances of the shooting by White police officer Darren Wilson remain in dispute—were Brown’s hands up in surrender when Wilson shot the unarmed youth, as some witnesses reported, or was Brown lunging toward Wilson to attack, as the officer claimed?—what is indisputable is the inhumane treatment of Michael Brown’s body, left to lie uncovere
d in the street where he was slain for four hours, lifelessly baking in the hot summer sun, his parents kept away at gunpoint and with police dogs. The disrespect continued. When residents spontaneously created a memorial of teddy bears and other mementos at the site of the shooting, a police officer with a canine unit allowed one of the dogs to urinate on it, and later a police cruiser drove by, crushing it and scattering the rose petals Lezley McSpadden, Michael Brown’s mother, had arranged at the site. When she returned the next day, placing a dozen roses at the memorial, a police cruiser again came through and destroyed it. It was later that night that the Ferguson protest began.76 “For reasons that may never be clear, Brown’s death was a breaking point for the African Americans of Ferguson—but also for hundreds of thousands of Black people across the United States.”77
The day after the shooting, what began as a peaceful protest march on a Sunday afternoon, led by local pastors with their congregations, quickly turned into a heated confrontation with the local police. “Night was close. The crowd continued shouting at the officers, who were shouting back. And as the church groups began to leave, young men emerged who seemed angrier and more determined to extract revenge for Mike Brown’s death.”78 Under the cover of the nighttime protests, some vandals started looting a corner QuikTrip gas station, eventually setting it on fire. A riot was underway. Washington Post journalist Wesley Lowery notes that it was not the death of another unarmed Black man that drew national attention; rather, it was the destruction of property that brought the national media, including reporters like him, to Ferguson. “Yet another police shooting in a working-class black neighborhood, even the breaking of a young black body left on public display, didn’t catch the gaze of the national media. It was the community’s enraged response—broken windows and shattered storefronts—that drew the eyes of the nation.”79
When the Michael Brown case did hit the headlines, the Black Lives Matter founders took action through social media. Darnell Moore, a Brooklyn-based writer, activist, and acquaintance of Patrisse Cullors, coordinated twenty-first-century “freedom rides” to Ferguson, bringing hundreds of people—multiracial groups from cities across the nation—to the St. Louis suburb to protest in solidarity with the local residents.80 The response of the Ferguson Police Department to the protests was marked by its militarization, equipped with tanks and machine guns as well as tear gas and rubber bullets. Repeatedly the police used the tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd; repeatedly the protesters returned, determined to exercise their constitutional right to protest.81 One of those protesters, Kayla Reed, a Ferguson resident turned activist, said, “What kept bringing me out was that the police were just not letting people hold space—gather in the street and on the sidewalks—for a young man who had just lost his life.… People were being teargassed, and people were running. There was that fear, and then also the determination not to back down. To show back up the next night. That was really inspiring for me.”82 The police arrested many, including journalists. Of the 172 people arrested over the period of twelve days following Brown’s death, most (132) were arrested only because they refused to disperse.83
The oppressive relationship between the Ferguson police and the Black residents became increasingly visible on the nightly news. And indeed it had a long history, as was documented by the investigation done by the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) following the Michael Brown shooting. The DOJ investigation opened on September 4, 2014, and on March 4, 2015, the 102-page report of its findings, Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department, was issued. Known as “the Ferguson Report,” it is comprehensive in its scope, grounded in objective data analysis of police records, and damning in its conclusions. The report “illuminates a municipality that is dependent on practices and policies that criminalize its majority Black populations through traffic violations, municipal ordinances, false arrests, charging practices, and impositions of penalties for petty violations and charges that lead to debt and imprisonment.”84 The Department of Justice concluded that “this investigation has revealed a pattern or practice of unlawful conduct within the Ferguson Police Department that violates the First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and federal statutory law.… Ferguson’s police and municipal court practices both reflect and exacerbate existing racial bias, including racial stereotypes. Ferguson’s own data establish clear racial disparities that adversely impact African Americans. The evidence shows that discriminatory intent is part of the reason for these disparities.”85
A community of only twenty-one thousand residents, Ferguson’s population had shifted dramatically in the last quarter of the twentieth century. It was 99 percent White in 1970; by 1990 the population was 25 percent Black, and by 2000 it had become a majority (52 percent) Black suburb.86 By 2014, when the Department of Justice launched its investigation, the population was 67 percent Black, but the Ferguson Police Department (FPD) was still almost entirely White, as was the city council. As a matter of policy, the FPD was instructed to raise revenue for the city by generating fines and fees, mostly for traffic violations, so many that fines and fees became the second largest source of town revenue. Most of that money was being collected from Black residents, who were much more likely than White residents to be given several citations at one time. According to the DOJ report, “It is common for a single traffic stop or other encounter with FPD to give rise to fines in amounts that a person living in poverty is unable to immediately pay. This fact is attributable to FPD’s practice of issuing multiple citations—frequently three or more—on a single stop.”87 While 67 percent of the town’s population, African Americans represented 85 percent of the traffic stops and 92 percent of the arrests associated with traffic stops, whereas Whites were 29 percent of the population but only 15 percent of the stops. Once stopped, more than 50 percent of all African Americans received multiple citations while only 26 percent of the non–African American drivers did.88
The investigators found many instances of excessive fees, well above average compared to other municipalities. For example, a single “Manner of Walking” violation could result in a $302 fine; a single “Peace Disturbance” violation, $427; a “High Grass and Weeds” violation could cost $531; $375 for “Failing to Provide Proof of Insurance,” $777 for “Resisting Arrest,” $792 for “Failure to Obey,” and $527 for “Failure to Comply.”89 It is easy to see that someone who received multiple citations at one time might find it difficult to pay these seemingly exorbitant fines. Unpaid fines led to arrest warrants, so rampant that “on the day Mike Brown was killed, Ferguson had almost as many active warrants as it did residents.”90
Particularly striking in the Ferguson Report is the data regarding disproportionate use of force on Black residents of Ferguson. The DOJ concluded that “FPD engages in a pattern of excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment.… They have come to rely on ECWs [Electronic Control Weapons], specifically Tasers, where less force—or no force at all—would do. They also release canines on unarmed subjects unreasonably and before attempting to use force less likely to cause injury. Some incidents of excessive force result from stops or arrests that have no basis in law. Others are punitive or retaliatory.… The overwhelming majority of force—almost 90%—is used against African Americans.”91 In every canine bite incident, the person bitten was African American.92
Lest one think the differential pattern of enforcement is the result of different rates of criminal behavior, the DOJ report addresses that point directly. For example, in the two-year period from October 2012 to October 2014, only 5 percent of White drivers were searched after a traffic stop, while more than double that number (11 percent) of stopped Black drivers were searched. Yet FPD officers were more likely to find illegal substances when searching the vehicles of White drivers (30 percent of the time) than when searching African Americans (24 percent of the time).93 The report concludes, “Our investigation indicates that this disproportionate burden on Africa
n Americans cannot be explained by any difference in the rate at which people of different races violate the law. Rather, our investigation has revealed that these disparities occur, at least in part, because of unlawful biases against and stereotypes about African Americans.”94
The pattern of policing that was spotlighted in Ferguson has been documented in many other municipalities around the country. “When it comes to racially lopsided arrests, the most remarkable thing about Ferguson, Missouri, might be just how ordinary it is.”95 An investigation by USA Today found that 1,581 other police departments, including those of major cities like Baltimore, Chicago, and San Francisco, arrested Black people at rates even higher than in Ferguson. Each of the three cities mentioned has also been investigated by the Department of Justice for racially discriminatory policing.96
The Ferguson Report makes clear that the seeds of the Ferguson rebellion had been sown years before the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, but its eruption highlighted something new—the leadership of Black millennials, a new generation of activists who were prepared to stand their ground in the face of police power. One of those activists, Johnetta Elzie, described her own changing attitude:
This was the first time I had ever seen police dogs ready for attack in real life. I felt as if time was rewinding back and showing me scenes from Selma, Alabama in the 1960’s instead of Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. I never imagined that this would be my reality as a young adult in America in the 21st century. I tried to remain as calm as possible in such a volatile situation but seeing those police dogs snarling at young Black children filled me with anger and rage. I became less of a peaceful protestor and more of an active one. Using my voice to chant loudly along with other protestors seemed to be enough but it wasn’t. Instead, I decided to yell directly at the police. I decided to dare the police to look at the faces of the babies and children their dogs were so ready to chase down. As more people began to look directly at the police and yell their grievances, the more aggravated they became.97
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Page 4
