After Ferguson, we don't need another dialogue on race

Instead, we need whites to try to imagine how our country appears to an African-American

Ferguson
(Image credit: (Joshua Lott/Getty Images))

The prolonged spasm of fury that followed the shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old African-American, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., appears to have subsided. The actions of the Ferguson police department — allowing Brown's body to remain in the street for four hours after his death, withholding for days the name of the officer accused of shooting him, deploying military weaponry and strong-arm tactics against protesters and journalists — helped to keep the unrest at a rolling boil for nearly two weeks.

But the protests were initially sparked by outrage at the shooting itself — at the death of yet another African-American man at the hands of yet another white cop, but also at the knowledge that most white Americans would respond to the news with a shrug of indifference.

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.