Racism in Ferguson and beyond

A Justice Department report released this week documented abuses in the Ferguson, Mo., Police Department. African-Americans make up two-thirds of the city’s population, but they’re 85 percent of the traffic stops and more than 90 percent of the arrests. Blacks are twice as likely as whites to be searched by police, but less likely to be found to possess drugs or weapons. And 88 percent of the time Ferguson police have used force, they’ve used it against African-American suspects.

The report also noted several emails circulated among Ferguson police that included racist comments or jokes. That same report, though, found no basis for civil rights charges against Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown.

John Stonestreet of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview has said before that white Christians need to be more diligent to listen to the concerns of African-American Christians.

“I think many white Christians get themselves off the hook because we see some of those who really are guilty of race baiting, and then we pretend like every concern comes from those individuals,” Stonestreet said. “There are many African-American Christians … that still see that there are, systemically, problems of race in their cities, and I think it’s something that we need to at least listen to and work arm-in-arm to address it and unroot it any place that it exists. And, clearly, it still exists.”

One of the emails circulated in the Ferguson Police Department and cited in the report had to do with abortion as a crime-fighting strategy:

An African-American woman in New Orleans was admitted into the hospital for a pregnancy termination. Two weeks later she received a check for $5,000. She phoned the hospital to ask who it was from. The hospital said, ‘Crimestoppers.’

“There are probably folks listening right now who have allowed those sorts of jokes to come through their emails, maybe were even guilty of forwarding it,” Stonestreet said. “Anytime that we have not stood up for human dignity, we’re guilty.”

He said that particular email also underscored the racist origins of the abortion movement.

“Margaret Sanger, who was the founder of Planned Parenthood and who drove the pragmatic eugenics movement in America was a flat-out racist. … The idea of abortion was specifically, early on targeted not for so called ‘women’s rights’— that was certainly part of it, but there was also a part of it which was, essentially, finding ways to curb the population of those that were largely considered to be ‘unfit.’”

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