by Cathy Young 

The tragedy and turmoil in Ferguson, Missouri—the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, followed by sometimes violent protests and a heavy-handed police crackdown—have once again brought the national spotlight on race relations in America. It has also revealed unusual political alignments, with libertarian-leaning Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and some other libertarians and conservatives joining liberals and leftists to denounce abusive police behavior, particularly toward young African-American males. Others on the right—not only Rush Limbaugh but black commentators such as Jason Riley—are taking a more traditional conservative view which sees the black community’s worst woes as due not to racism but to its own cultural problems, aggravated by the welfare state and liberal paternalism.

Each of these narratives—“racial injustice” and “cultural dysfunction”—has its truths and its blinders. Each, by itself, is overly simplistic and (as it were) black and white, both with regard to the situation in Ferguson and with regard to the larger picture.

What are the facts in Ferguson? For starters, we can all agree that the Ferguson police department couldn’t have done a worse job of handling the crisis from the start. Leaving Michael Brown’s body lying in the street for hours, treating protesters and journalists like the enemy in a war zone, stonewalling on the identity of the officer who shot Brown and then releasing it together with information about Brown’s involvement in a convenience store robbery—it seems as if, every time the cops had to make a decision, they made the one most likely to inflame anger.

Pending a full independent investigation, we don’t know the exact circumstances of Brown’s death at the hands of Officer Darren Wilson—an army of armchair experts notwithstanding. We don’t know how relevant the robbery, captured on a security camera video, may be. Its disclosure, denounced as a “smear,” was certainly poorly timed—and further bungled by contradictory police statements on whether Wilson knew Brown was a suspect. Still, George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf, no right-winger, argues that the video may be valid evidence: if Brown had just committed a crime, that makes it more plausible that he could have been aggressive in his encounter with the police. Given that early reports portrayed Brown as quiet and non-confrontational, withholding this information seems hard to justify from an accuracy-in-reporting standpoint. Had officials kept it from the media, there would have been a strong chance of a leak followed by claims of a politically correct cover-up.

Actual smears of Brown as a “violent gun-toting gang-banger”—based on nothing more than photos of hand gestures said to be “gang signs,” most likely the posturing of a teen who wanted to be a rap artist—have appeared on some far-right websites. These and other posts in the right-wing blogosphere are a sobering reminder of how easily the “cultural dysfunction” narrative can cross the line into racism—which is thick, overt, and vile in the reader comments. Yet Brown’s defenders have shown biases of their own, however well-meaning—for instance, dismissing the store robbery as “petty theft” or “shoplifting,” even though the assault on the clerk who tried to stop Brown clearly raises the level of the offense to “strong-arm robbery.” Left-wing activist and blogger Olivia Cole dismisses as a troll anyone who talks about waiting for the evidence and deplores (seriously!) “riot-shaming.”

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SOURCE: RealClearPolitics

Cathy Young writes a weekly column for RealClearPolitics and is also a contributing editor at Reason magazine. She blogs at http://cathyyoung.wordpress.com/ and you can follow her on Twitter at@CathyYoung63. She can be reached by email at CathyYoung63@gmail.com.