{"id":1120,"date":"2014-08-20T17:31:07","date_gmt":"2014-08-20T21:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1120"},"modified":"2014-08-20T17:31:07","modified_gmt":"2014-08-20T21:31:07","slug":"food-for-thought-on-ferguson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2014\/08\/food-for-thought-on-ferguson.html","title":{"rendered":"Food for Thought on Ferguson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To the proliferation of articles on the shooting death of black Missourian Michael Brown via white police officer, Darren Wilson, I register the following considerations.<\/p>\n<p>Firstly, at this time when black underclass thugs are ruining the quality of life in but another once- decent town while their black and white media spokespersons bellyache over the unrelenting racial oppression to which black Americans are supposedly subject, let us call to mind all of the rosy promises made six years ago when Barack Hussein Obama first set his sights on the presidency.<\/p>\n<p>Pundits both black and white, Democrat and Republican, assured us that the election of a black man with an Islamic-sounding name was sure to endear America to Muslims around the globe while ushering in a \u201cpost-racial\u201d era here at home.\u00a0 Remember that?<\/p>\n<p>The Islamic world, always a cauldron of violence, is even more violent, more emboldened now than it has been in the past.\u00a0 Something similar can be said for the world of black America, or at least black <em>urban <\/em>America\u2014as the current happenings in Ferguson, Missouri painfully reveal.<\/p>\n<p>Secondly, those \u201cconservative\u201d commentatorswho claim to be agnostic on whether Darren Wilson, in the absence of any provocation on the part of Michael Brown, killed the latter solely for thrills imply that they\u2019re open to the possibility that <em>this actually could have happened<\/em>.\u00a0 In other words, they <em>legitimize <\/em>the outrageous notion that white police officers routinely seek out unsuspecting, law-abiding black citizens to gun down.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll say it now: While, admittedly, I do not know the details of what actually transpired between Wilson and Brown, I most certainly <em>do<\/em> know\u2014and so, too, I\u2019m ready to bet, does every other commentator who isn\u2019t an anti-white, anti-police ideologue\u2014that Officer Wilson is <em>not <\/em>guilty of any of the charges that the black criminals in Ferguson and their apologists in Washington D.C. and the media are leveling against him.<\/p>\n<p>Wilson is a decorated police officer.\u00a0 Brown was a thug who just moments prior to his fatal encounter with Wilson had been captured on video surveillance engaging in a strong-arm robbery of a convenience store.<\/p>\n<p>This is one reason why my I\u2019m strongly disposed to sympathize with Wilson\u2019s and the Ferguson Police Department\u2019s account of events over that supplied by Dorian Johnson, the 22 year-old who was with Brown when he was killed\u2014and who served as his accomplice to the robbery and assault of a clerk.<\/p>\n<p>But there is another reason why I believe Wilson acted justifiably. And this brings me to my third piece of food for thought:<\/p>\n<p><em>We have heard this story before<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Last summer, it was the Trayvon Martin shooting death that had the agents of the \u201cRacism-Industrial-Complex\u201d (RIC) in the media in a tizzy.\u00a0 Presumably, genuinely <em>white<\/em> \u201cracists\u201d were slim pickings.\u00a0 Thus, they invented one by turning the clearly Latino-looking George Zimmerman into a \u201cwhite Hispanic.\u201d\u00a0 At the same time, these same activists substituted for the unflattering portrait of the real Trayvon Martin a disinfected one that was more friendly to their template of white oppression and black victimhood\u2014the same template through which they are now filtering the incident in Ferguson.<\/p>\n<p>And like in the case of Martin, RIC agents would have us rather see their sanitized depiction of Michael Brown\u2014the bright-eyed, college bound \u201cgentle giant\u201d\u2014than the hulking man whose audacity and recklessness were as large as his physical stature, the punk who thought nothing of either depriving another man of his hard earned property or assaulting him when his victim resisted.<\/p>\n<p>A bad actor is one who makes it obvious that he or she is <em>trying<\/em> to act.\u00a0 Similarly, in \u201cmiscasting\u201d the most unlikely types into the roles that they\u2019ve written, it\u2019s <em>obvious, <\/em>painfully obvious, that the Al Sharptons of the world are trying to sell us a bill of goods.<\/p>\n<p>Fourth, that the shameful violence and crime\u2014the \u201crioting\u201d\u2014that\u2019s occurring in Ferguson and the insidious rhetoric from which it arose have absolutely <em>nothing<\/em> to do with a desire for justice or interracial peace can be gotten all too easily from the deafening <em>silence<\/em> with which the shocking rate and nature of <em>black-on-white <\/em>violence is invariably met.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, just last month, in Iowa, a white 97 year-old veteran of World War II\u2014Rupert \u201cAndy\u201d Anderson\u2014and his 94 year-old wife of many years were bludgeoned with a pipe courtesy of a black Ethiopian immigrant.\u00a0 Mrs. Anderson, though bloodied, survived this attack that occurred in her home.\u00a0 Her husband, however, wasn\u2019t so fortunate.<\/p>\n<p>Whether it\u2019s this case or any other number of grisly instances of black-on-white violence, when the media decides to cover it at all, they invariably either avoid or deny the racial dynamic.\u00a0 In writing about the Anderson murder, journalist Nicholas Stix refers to this phenomenon as the \u201cpreemptive MSM [Main Stream Media] propaganda template [.]\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finally, while it is verboten to raise this question in \u201crespectable\u201d (i.e. Politically Correct) company, raise it we must: If things are really as terrible\u2014as \u201cracist\u201d\u2014in America as so many blacks in Ferguson and elsewhere would have us believe, then why aren\u2019t these same blacks demanding\u2014not <em>requesting, <\/em>but <em>demanding\u2014<\/em>that blacks be granted their own separate homeland?\u00a0 We\u2019re not necessarily talking about a \u201cback-to-Africa\u201d movement, but perhaps a country carved out of American land?<\/p>\n<p>After all, today, when blacks demand something, anything\u2014or when they\u2019re demanding it from <em>whites\u2014<\/em>they usually get it.\u00a0 At any rate, blacks, or at least black \u201cleaders,\u201d have zero reluctance about expressing their demands<em>. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>And wouldn\u2019t it be infinitely better for everyone to peacefully go our separate ways rather than perpetually be at each other\u2019s throats?<\/p>\n<p>That not a single black \u201cleader,\u201d or anyone else, for that matter, has so much as suggested this as a possibility, much less demanded it, speaks volumes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To the proliferation of articles on the shooting death of black Missourian Michael Brown via white police officer, Darren Wilson, I register the following considerations. Firstly, at this time when black underclass thugs are ruining the quality of life in but another once- decent town while their black and white media spokespersons bellyache over the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Food for Thought on Ferguson<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2014\/08\/food-for-thought-on-ferguson.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Food for Thought on Ferguson\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"To the proliferation of articles on the shooting death of black Missourian Michael Brown via white police officer, Darren Wilson, I register the following considerations. Firstly, at this time when black underclass thugs are ruining the quality of life in but another once- decent town while their black and white media spokespersons bellyache over the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2014\/08\/food-for-thought-on-ferguson.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-08-20T21:31:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jack Kerwick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Food for Thought on Ferguson","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2014\/08\/food-for-thought-on-ferguson.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Food for Thought on Ferguson","og_description":"To the proliferation of articles on the shooting death of black Missourian Michael Brown via white police officer, Darren Wilson, I register the following considerations. Firstly, at this time when black underclass thugs are ruining the quality of life in but another once- decent town while their black and white media spokespersons bellyache over the&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2014\/08\/food-for-thought-on-ferguson.html","og_site_name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","article_published_time":"2014-08-20T21:31:07+00:00","author":"Jack Kerwick","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2014\/08\/food-for-thought-on-ferguson.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2014\/08\/food-for-thought-on-ferguson.html","name":"Food for Thought on Ferguson","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website"},"datePublished":"2014-08-20T21:31:07+00:00","dateModified":"2014-08-20T21:31:07+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/6832222998cc14717ded1849531201c5"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2014\/08\/food-for-thought-on-ferguson.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2014\/08\/food-for-thought-on-ferguson.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2014\/08\/food-for-thought-on-ferguson.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Food for Thought on Ferguson"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/","name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Jack Kerwick","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/6832222998cc14717ded1849531201c5","name":"Jack Kerwick","description":"I have a Ph.D. in philosophy from Temple University, a master's degree in philosophy from Baylor University, and a bachelor's degree in philosophy and religious studies from Wingate University. I teach philosophy at several colleges in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania areas.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jackkerwick.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/author\/jkerwick"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/399"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1121,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions\/1121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}