Listen, Please.

What is happening in Ferguson MO absolutely breaks my heart, I suppose that's why I keep writing about it, because I just can't get away from it.  I don't really even know where to start, here's a list:
1. We have a race problem.  To which the two most common replies are: "Duh!" or "Nuh-uh."  I think the "Nuh-uh," crowd is the most problematic.  The, mostly white, portion of the population who think because of MLK we have magically gotten past the legacy of slavery and because of legally enforced de-segregation we are somehow on equal footing.  Being a young black man in this country is still treated like an illegal activity.  If you're white and you have black friends, which so many of us "not racist" white folk claim to have, ask them how it goes when they get pulled over by John Q. Law.  Ask them about their experiences of DWB, (driving while black), I can almost guarantee you they have some stories that will make your skin crawl. We have not solved anything, we are not living up to the ideal of liberty and justice for all, because of race certainly but also because:
2. We have a poverty problem.  We are one of the "richest" countries in the world by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), however, such reliable reports as this one by Stanford indicate that our economic system is not sharing the wealth anything like equally.  It is tied to the race problem that we have because the poverty rate for African Americans is twelve points higher than the general population (27% versus 15%) and it is similarly unbalanced for Hispanics (25.6%).  In truly understanding poverty, you need to look beyond the numbers though, because a poor person in this country would not be suffering the same way in many poorer countries.  We have rather exorbitant costs of living, at least for anything that resembles the "American Dream."  We're up there with European countries which have less space, less natural resources, and in most cases a tighter social safety net (some call it socialism).
We "need" two cars and a fairly good sized house in the suburbs (or a really big house in the country, or a ritzy apartment in the "right" part of the city) to really be living the "good life."  And the cost of that, in most urban metro areas, is nearly three times what an income well above the poverty line would provide.  Which means that even a two income household can still be poor.  Which means:
3. We have a security problem.  Economic insecurity leads to a whole host of social ills.  It leads to people walking a thin line of legality and thus having a somewhat antagonistic relationship with law enforcement.  When you feel like the system is rigged against you, you are rather more comfortable trying to get yours, whether that means trying to wring every last drop out of welfare, or actually crossing the line and selling drugs, or running scams, or outright theft, and other crime, it all starts with people who feel like they don't really have a shot at "making it" through the regular channels.  The reason that I think Breaking Bad, was such a cultural phenomenon is that it presented a very believable "middle class" family that was confronted with a believable scenario: cancer.  The insurance won't pay for the treatment and a high school chemistry teacher decides to cook methamphetamine to pay the bills.  It starts with an insecure situation and ends with a criminal empire, and would make no sense in most other developed nations, like, say Canada, where medical care is guaranteed.  But the biggest problem on the list is:
4. We have an empathy problem.  We have become insulated against the suffering of our neighbors.  You see this in the varied responses to what happened to Michael Brown.  You have people who want to believe that he was an unruly young black man who may have just robbed a convenience store while high on marijuana.  Their failure to be empathetic is obvious.  Then you have the people who want to believe that "Mike Mike" was a kid on the verge of finally breaking out of the badness of poverty through the golden gates of college education.  They believe his death was a tragedy because he was finally going to "make it."  But they're failing in empathy too, because they need a righteous victim rather than just a victim.  We have a problem blaming the victims for their own suffering.  Whether it's police brutality, profiling, rape, or what have you, we seem to only want to feel for people who seem righteous.  But you don't have to think that all prisoners are innocent to see that our penal system could use some reform.  You don't have to think that a girl is Polly Pureheart to think that she doesn't deserve to be raped.  You don't have to think that Mike Brown was a choirboy to think that he didn't deserve to get shot 6 times.
What we need to do is stop requiring that every injustice be illustrated by the tragic killing of an innocent before we decide that we can do better.  Does it always have to come down to a tragedy like the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama (1963)?  Does our national conscience always need four little black girls in their Sunday best to be the victims before we decide it's time to fix what is broken?  Can't we listen to Michael Brown's silent witness... to the protesters who are so angry they are willing to fight the power... to the protesters who want to get this done peacefully and non-violently?
We need to listen, or this is going to get even worse.