--- title: The Ferguson Report Reveals a Dark Truth About Police Racism description: Towns like Ferguson need to be fixed if we're ever to fix America. canonical: https://time.com/3739005/ferguson-michael-brown-shooting-police-racism/ author: John McWhorter article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-03-10T17:09:07.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:59:43.490Z article:section: Ideas og:title: If Black Men Could Grow Up Not Experiencing Cops as an Enemy og:description: Towns like Ferguson need to be fixed if we're ever to fix America. og:url: https://time.com/3739005/ferguson-michael-brown-shooting-police-racism/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt98770efd98da48e2/698782ff8e0601825545ab7e/ferguson-protest.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2100 og:image:height: 1181 og:image:alt: Justice Department Concludes Racially Biased Practices Prevalent Within Ferguson Police Dept. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: If Black Men Could Grow Up Not Experiencing Cops as an Enemy twitter:description: Towns like Ferguson need to be fixed if we're ever to fix America. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt98770efd98da48e2/698782ff8e0601825545ab7e/ferguson-protest.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # If One Generation of Black Men Could Grow Up Not Experiencing Cops as the Enemy > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: Mothers of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice Speak Out On CNN [Watch (HLS stream): Mothers of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice Speak Out On CNN](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Xf73WGsq.m3u8) (1:27)  _Published 2014-12-13. Mothers of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice Speak Out On CNN_ by [John McWhorter](https://time.com/author/john/) ## John McWhorter Mar 10, 2015 5:09 PM UTC  Protestors demonstrate outside the Ferguson Police Department in Ferguson, Mo. on March 4, 2015. Protestors demonstrate outside the Ferguson Police Department in Ferguson, Mo. on March 4, 2015. Michael B. Thomas—Getty Images by [John McWhorter](https://time.com/author/john/) ## John McWhorter Mar 10, 2015 5:09 PM UTC Previously in Time, I [noted](http://time.com/3594636/ferguson-is-the-wrong-tragedy-to-wake-america-up/) that the main question from the Ferguson debacle is: What is the situation that makes two young black men comfortable dismissing a police officer’s request to step aside? The Department of Justice’s [report](http://time.com/3732227/eric-holder-ferguson-law-enforcement/) on the chilling degree of racism on the part of Ferguson’s police force answers that question. The Department of Justice report has shown us that black people in Ferguson have long experienced the police as a contemptuous occupying army. For someone of Brown’s age, a sense of the police as the enemy is ingrained as nothing less than a cultural heritage. Sure, we can quibble with the idea that disparate outcomes always indicate discrimination. But this kind of reasoning only nibbles at the very plain indications of the Ferguson report. Anyone who reads the endless procession of stories of white cops being just plain evil to innocent black people for no real reason — and sees it as their just desserts — has no place in any reasonable conversation about race in America. The [Department of Justice report](http://time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/ferguson%5Fpolice%5Fdepartment%5Freport.pdf) is an invaluable portrait of the black experience of the police in countless locations across the United States. Typically illustrated by scattered anecdotes, and usually making headlines only when a person gets killed, this experience with the police is susceptible to being dismissed as a distortion. Whites can say that they, too, have had less than positive encounters with cops. They can also say that as far as white cops occasionally killing black boys, black people are usually murdered by other black people, and that’s what ought to bother them. And you know what? Neither of those points are without value, nor do they make their utterer racist. But the reason black America feels so besieged by the police goes beyond the occasional Mike Browns and Eric Garners or running into the occasional cop who is a little too happy to issue tickets. To be black in Ferguson has meant regular encounters with snarling authority figures with the power to detain, injure, and even kill if “necessary,” often for trumped up reasons, and not treating whites the same way nearly as often. Who thinks humble, ordinary little Ferguson is for some reason unique? There isn’t Racist Juice in the water along with the fluoride there. The only question is why we would think this kind of abuse is not common in a great many other places. Anyone who claims Ferguson is an isolated case has the burden of proof here. No, not every black person in Ferguson has been getting hurled about by the cops every week. Such things may never have happened to you at all; likely you only run up against it once. But it has also happened to your brother, your son, your cousin, that guy you know, that lady. It’s a community-wide experience. The cops, to you, mean something different than they do to somebody in Scarsdale. To read this DOJ report and still have no response but a harrumphing disapproval of Mike Brown’s distrust of authority is blinkered. Not racist, perhaps, but simplistic. And while we’re at it, the report also helps make sense of Brown at the convenience store. Does it excuse it? No—that convenience store video is lowly indeed; there’s no hero there. But again, how shocked are we that, in a neighborhood where the main representatives of authority are so often monsters, some kids would feel less compunction about nabbing some cigars than ones in Brookline, Massachusetts would? It is this treatment by the police that makes so many black people feel like racism is a key component of being black in America. Yes, some people exaggerate the issue. Black Americans do not live “under siege” and there is no “war on black men.” Plus, the resentment black men feel toward the cops can lead to a vicious cycle, where their disrespect conditions the same response in cops, and so on. But I can guarantee that if just one generation of black men grew up with no reason to think of the cops as the enemy rather than as public helpers, then black America would be much better prepared to approach racism the way so many other groups have, and do — as an inconvenience rather than as an obstacle. No self-regarding group of humans can be expected to brush off constant treatment like this as just “bad days” in an imperfect world. Towns like Ferguson need to be fixed — and, if they were, America would be fixed too. ## Transcript I think absolutely my son's race and the color of his skin had a lot to do why, with why he shot and killed. Turn the wheels around. Make the person that did the shooting a black man and the person that actually got killed was a white person. And you put that out there. And see what people's perceptions are. I remember that was done in your son's case. Yeah I can guarantee you that their ideas would be changed then they would say, oh, yes that was a chokehold. Oh, yes that was a toy gun he had. Oh, yes Michael Brown had his hands up. See all of these things would be changed. If. Eric Gardner was a white man in Suffolk County doing the same thing that he was doing, even if he would have been caught selling cigarettes that day, they would have gave, given him a summons, and he wouldn't have lost his life that day. I believe that 100 %. I don't really believe that people are just gonna change overnight. They're not. And, and, and it, it's a more deep rooted hatred that people have for African Americans. And if you're not a African American, a lot of people don't understand, they don't quite get it. They just think that we are complaining about something that doesn't really exist. And we're living this every day. 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