Black man can’t wave a stick at white man

When the sniffing Hoover boys descend on Jessup County (modelled on Neshoba County), Mississippi, to investigate the brutal, close-range murders of three civil rights workers in Alan Parker’s 1988 crime thriller Mississippi Burning, they antagonise the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the sheriff’s office. The film was based on the J Edgar Hoover-headed Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe into the 1964 murders of James Earl Chaney (African-American) and Andrew Goodman and Michael "Mickey" Schwerner, both of Jewish ethnicity by the Klan and the sheriff’s office.

In the movie, when a relaxed Mayor Tilman (R Lee Ermey) asks the real badass “Hoover boy” Anderson (Gene Hackman), “Do you like baseball, do you, Anderson?” Anderson quips, “Yeah, I do. You know, it’s the only time when a black man can wave a stick at a white man and not start a riot,” and then winks in his trademark style zapping Tilman.

Well, neither 18-year-old Michael Brown waved a stick at cop Darren Wilson nor confronted him first on August 9, but he did start a riot in Ferguson (St Louis County), Missouri. Brown was unarmed and Wilson was armed.

Brown’s death sparked outrage in Ferguson and grand jury’s — nine Whites and three African-Americans — decision not to charge Wilson has stoked the flames of the riots. Besides Ferguson, protests rocked 12 other US cities, including Philadelphia, Seattle, Albuquerque, New York, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Oakland, on Tuesday night. After the verdict, an unremorseful Wilson said that he felt “like a five-year-old holding on to Hulk Hogan” when, according to him, Brown pushed him back into his police car, hit him and grabbed at his drawn gun.

St Louis County’s top prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s weak and diabolical defence of the decision mocks justice. “They put their hearts and souls into this process,” he told one reporter. The jurors had worked “tirelessly” to conduct “a full and fair” investigation!

While Brown’s devastated and “crushed” family will have to live with his untimely and cruel killing, Wilson, with a “clean conscience”, is back to his normal life — he will make love to his fellow cop-cum-wife, watch TV, dine with friends and maybe party hard for killing a "Black" but escaping the noose. Brown’s father Michael Brown Sr said that prosecutors had “crucified his [Brown] character”. “My son was a good guy, a quiet guy. So, in his name, I want to keep it on a positive note,” he said urging protesters to calm down. I salute the Browns — terribly shaken by the death and then the verdict, they could have easily fuelled the riots and inflamed passions of the African-American community further, but they preferred non-violence.

African-American President Barack Obama, who never cared to attend Brown’s funeral and sent three White House aides instead, was at his usual hypocritical best saying the jury’s decision should not be an “excuse” for destruction and rioting though “many communities of colour” sense that laws are not enforced “uniformly or fairly”. Now, African-American attorney general Eric Holder will see what can be done to build trust.

Obama’s slogan in the 2008 presidential campaign was “Change we can believe in” and the chant “Yes we can”. Well, neither the President has changed anything nor can make the "Black" community feel that "Yes, he can". "Blacks" are still despised, treated inferior and called — Niggers, Negros, black asses ... the list is endless. The racial mindset was recently witnessed in the October 22 Army Command Policy, known as regulation AR 600-20, which said that the category "Black or African-American" would include “A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. Terms such as "Haitian" or "Negro" can be used in addition to "Black" or "African-American"”. Later, the army changed the regulation issuing an apology.

There is not even an iota of change in the American mindset. Had there been any change towards non-Whites, Brown would not have been shot and Wilson would not have walked away free.