Ferguson Missouri

I grew up in a small, rural, Kansas town. A picture of diversity, we were not. It was not until I moved away and met people from different parts of the country that I realized this. People from places like Dade County, Florida and Gary, Indiana. Their faces gave humanity to places I'd seen in movies like Inglewood California and Crenshaw Boulevard. My new friends and acquaintances talked different, walked different and dressed different than anyone I'd ever met. It was then I realized how small my world was and how much about the rest of it I did not understand. Now my, like the nation's, attention is focused on Ferguson, Missouri. Some are outraged by the small number of looters and rioters but would the death of Mike Brown have caught the attention of the nation, the world, otherwise? There are people in Palestine tweeting suggestions on how to deal with being tear gassed to the demonstrators in Missouri. Palestine. As if they don't have enough on their plates. What is happening in Ferguson has sparked a national conversation and for every hillbilly blatantly using the N word, there are still more people whose bigotry is more subtle. You hear it and see it in comments like:

  "Don't those people have jobs?"

What if there are no jobs? What if the jobs that are available are low-wage positions? What if the jobs are in another town and reliable transportation is an issue and there aren't affordable public transportation options? What if their jobs were sent to places like China and India and Mexico?

 "They need good education."

Agreed, wholeheartedly. The schools in Ferguson are unaccredited and teachers, much like police officers, go to districts where the money is good. No jobs means no tax revenue means no money to pay decent salaries.

"They need to stop having babies they can't pay for."

A recent study came out that found that the price of raising a child in this country is nearly $250,000, before college. I have three so that is $750,000 and my youngest had nearly that much in medical bills before she even turned one. Most people can't afford to have kids and yet, if you are white, no one is going to tell you not too. And don't get me started on the irony of the fact that a lot of the folks saying things like that are the same one's who would deny "those" women an abortion, close Planned Parenthood and limit birth control options due to religious beliefs she may or may not hold.

The truth is, the complexities of the problems facing places like Ferguson go far beyond what those of us living in our subdivisioned, suburban houses can understand. We can't possibly have the answers and to presume to tell the people who are living it everyday makes us arrogant and foolish. What we can do is listen and we can support the people of Ferguson who are trying to make their voices heard. We can stop referring to the people who live there as "them" or "those people", as if they are apart from us. Though we may be different, we are still part of the human family.

As for Mike Brown and Officer Wilson, I hope that Officer Wilson is just a guy who was put in a situation where he had to choose between two awful things. I hope Mike Brown was not a thug but just a kid making some bad decisions, though it is of little consolation to his mother, as she lost her son to the street either way. I hope that Mike Brown's death becomes a marker in time for an ongoing conversation in this country about race, poverty and what it means to live in urban America.