Jerome Marinho
Nikki Khanna
Soc 119
03/12/14

THE CURRENT CRISIS IN FERGUSON Racism is one of the biggest threats to the human society. It has led to various acts of violence, deaths and near extinction of certain communities if we go back to times of King Leopold ,may i even add pyramids with corpses of Congolese people. In recent times racism and discrimination have been used as an excuse to discredit people from getting jobs, leading to the arrests of innocent individuals amongst other things. Black people and Hispanics have always been subject to harassment by law enforcement officials due to prejudice based on the high levels of violence caused by people from these backgrounds.Prejudice is a positive or negative cultural attitude directed toward members of a group or social category. It joins beliefs and value judgments with positive or negative emotional predispositions. Prejudice is a thought of racial or other form of inequality, not to be mixed up with discrimination, which is the action, or practice, of inequality based on prejudice.However that doesn't justify the victimization of innocent individuals who have ended up dead or in jail due to this stereotypical view. Therefore there is a need to constantly educate people about how detrimental these stereotypes are to the community is very important. this paper intend to discuss the current crisis in Ferguson which stemmed from the killing of Michael Brown and explore the elements of racial profiling and discrimination surrounding the event. In recent times there have been high levels of gun violence but the death of Michael Brown is one of the few exceptional cases. The killing of Michael Brown sparked up wide outrage within the black community in Ferguson due to the failure of the grand jury for the indictment of Darren Wilson the police officer who was responsible for the murder. It opens old wounds following the acquittal of George Zimmerman who was acquitted after killing Trayvon Martin a black male about a year ago. The cases are similar as both black men have been said by many witnesses to have been doing nothing wrong and also defenseless. Michael Brown was shot by the officer 6 times, the officer claimed he tried to take his gun and said he looked like a demon. This has sparked massive outrage amongst the black community leading to nationwide riots of which the most violent have been in Ferguson.The people believe the justice system is broken, they argue that both the killing and verdict show racial profiling at its peak.Racial profiling is a form of discrimination by which law enforcement uses a person’s race or cultural background as the primary reason to suspect that the individual has broken the law. One of the first actions taken by the police after the incident was to release a footage of Michael
Brown allegedly stealing from. a corner store and they claimed that the incident with the officer had nothing to do with it. Why then did they release the video? It could be argued that the video was released by the police to play on stereotypes and demonize the victim. Black people are usually believed to be violent and involved in criminal activity so it could have easily been believed that the victim was involved in a petty robbery in a store down the road. The video could be argued to have been used to state that Michael Brown is not an innocent victim as his family members and most of the community seem to believe. This could have also been argued to help back up the officers story which was heard after the video was released, people could now see that it was possible for the victim to have been violent after what they have just seen. The members of the community saw this as insensitive and also doubted the credibility of the footage.If a lot of us live in various areas and attend segregated institutions, how do we come to learn about other racial groups? Not surprisingly, many of our thoughts