Riots in Ferguson: årsager og socioøkonomiske faktorer

When talking about riots, we have to know the root of the problem in order to find a solution. In this case, the motive was clear; a young unarmed black teenager Michael Brown was killed in cold blood. However, Michael Brown’s death was simply just the last straw. Killings of colored people especially black people had been overflowing on the news and affecting high-populated black communities for ages. America has continued to isolate poor black people in economically depressed neighborhoods under increasingly oppressive police tactics that breed distrust and hostility. Instead of helping these poverty-affected communities, authorities would rather heavily guard these towns and communities to surveil them.

What happens when you send strongly equipped police officers to a community that is highly poverty-affected with a high crime rate? There is bound to clashes between the police and the citizens, the once predominantly white suburb is now 65 percent black. Which means that the vast majority are black, as one can imagine this was quickly called a “race thing” by the black community.

The local community took offence, and police officers started harassing normal black pedestrians in the name of the “broken windows theory”. The broken windows theory, holds that where there is urban disarray, there is crime. The theory argued that cleaning up trash and fixing broken windows but also policing deviants and miscreants for even small-scale crimes would lessen crime overall. The thinking was that by taking care of the small stuff, you won’t face as much big stuff. The theory caught on, and authorities began to use it all over the country. This theory was also employed in New York City, and it seemed to reduce crime. However, it increased the “stop-and-frisk” incidents which allow officers routinely stop law abiding citizens in search of illegal drugs, firearms or other criminal possessions this resulted in ever greater tension between communities of color and police. The strong police presence in poor black communities gives a negative association in residents from a young age. These experiences teaches black men that police officers exist not to protect them, but to criminalize and humiliate them.