The Ferguson Effect

Bad choices bring bad results

Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and George Floyd have three things in common. They were male, they were African-American, and they were thugs. Unfortunately, their deaths caused unwarranted protests and unrest around the country. Those led to riots and looting. These have come to be known as “The Ferguson Effect” after the town were Michael Brown was shot and killed after he attacked a white Ferguson, MO police officer while resisting arrest, and attempting to grab his service handgun.

In the case of Martin, much of the damage done was due to comments made by then President Barack Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder. Obama famously said that if he had a son, he might look just like Trayvon. He had already made disparaging remarks about the Cambridge, MA police, saying they had “acted stupidly” by arresting a black college professor who himself was refusing to cooperate with them during an investigation. Then, the Obama DOJ instantly bought off on the fiction that Michael Brown had been shot in cold blood by the white officer, while Brown was holding his hands up shouting “Don’t Shoot, don’t shoot!”  A scenario which was refuted by many eyewitnesses, all African-American themselves.

Trayvon Martin was portrayed as a sweet child, with photos showing him years younger than the man who confronted and attacked George Zimmerman, who despite his Anglo sounding name was in fact a Hispanic American, with a Mexican mother and a white American father. The death of Martin, Brown and others were part of the reasons that the “Black Lives Matter” movement was formed, and which instigated devastating riots and looting in the summer of 2020 after the death of Floyd at the end of May in Minneapolis. Although the “I can’t breath” statement led to the assumption the Floyd died of asphyxiation caused by a policeman kneeling on his neck, it is far more likely that he instead died from a fentanyl overdose, a fatal amount of which was found in his bloodstream.

Now, nine years after his death, Michael Brown is being memorialized in Ferguson and other cities around the country as an innocent victim of police brutality and white supremacy. Crime, already out of control in many American cities, is increasing at rates unimaginable only a few years ago. High end stores are being systematically looted by large bands of criminals, mainly composed of young blacks, with hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise being stolen in a single incident. Who must be held accountable for all this? Well, a bunch of phony Democrat politicians of many races for sure, but more.

With very few exceptions we must give partial blame to the African-American community as a whole. The vast majority of them are surely non-violent, hard working members of society. Why then are they buying off on the concept that the actions of the looters are somehow justified? Why do they continue to support a political party which has been the source of much of their trials and tribulations over the years? To me that is baffling.

Equally puzzling is their choice of heroes. There are many worthy ones from their history to choose from. I can name a handful off the top of my head. Instead they frequently pick instead people like, Martin, Brown and Floyd.