Ok I guess I talk about much more trivial things all the time, and it’s enough of an issue that I better say a thing on Ferguson, so the few who are not in my echo chamber (older relatives?) might get a taste of what their 28yo white male privileged Facebook Friend thinks.

The one thing we as a nation, and particularly the sub-nation of white privileged people, have to learn here from Ferguson is that racism is alive and well here in America.

But bear with me! The word “racist” (and “racism”) have become so toxic that you might have even written me off as an “angry liberal” even when I just said the word “racism”. Please don’t. I’m not trying to say that there are *bad people* being *purely evil*. It’s just that we’re dealing with a lot of broken systems, and the first step to fixing any problem is to acknowledge that it exists.

Here are some ways it is working:
- white cop shoots unarmed black teenager, gets not even indicted.
- said white cop gets $400k+ in “legal fund” donations - for what? he’s not even on trial. Google “darren wilson fund”.
- media coverage of teenager focuses on how he maybe smoked weed sometimes and might have stolen cigars, not the fact that he is an innocent human being whose life matters. Google “he was no angel”.
- media coverage of aftermath focuses on “rioting” and “looting”, while ignoring 3 things: 1. white “riots” are just as often called “celebrations”, 2. looting is not the same as murder, 3. the over-the-top terrifying police-military response.
- you might not be able to imagine anything from their perspective. Google “why it’s so hard for whites to understand ferguson.”
- some people get caught up in the particulars of the case. Particulars of this case don’t change the systemic issue. Getting caught up in the particulars is like saying “well, but look at that one game the Cavs won last year, see, they didn’t need Lebron.”
- there may be more but I should get back to work. Uh, I guess it may be good to google “respectability politics.”

edit: ok, so anyway, those who would quibble over particulars of the Mike Brown case, now there’s Eric Garner, so point is, institutional racism exists.