“A weak man with his strong weapons” who “feels himself in danger”
by digby
This piece by Colbert King about Ferguson and the history of “justice” in black communities is a must read. I won’t ruin it for you except to take this one piece and just put it out there for posterity:
Of course, the story of blacks not getting justice didn’t start with Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin. That history is long, thus the outrage. Sociologist Gunnar Myrdal, writing in the 1940s, described what communities such as Ferguson encounter: a “weak man with his strong weapons — backed by all the authority of white society — [who] is now sent to be the white law in the Negro neighborhood. There he is away from home.”
“The white policeman in the Negro community . . . feels himself in danger.”
He then excerpts some of Darren Wilson’s testimony about Ferguson. Very interesting, very insightful.
.