Joe Scarborough questions Ferguson protestors

By COLEMAN HOPKINS

One half of the duo on the MSNBC show “Morning Joe,” the very moderate Joe Scarborough, took an aggressive approach to the ongoing Ferguson situation, comparing Michael Brown to George Zimmerman and calling both of them “thugs.”

The ex-GOP congressman went on a long-winded tirade against what he saw as an effort to make “Michael Brown…the face of black oppression.”

He followed up his first comments by calling out the “B.S. being spewed” on his own network, MSNBC.

Referring to the fact that grand jury evidence went against claims that Brown had his hands up and that he was shot in the back, Scarborough entered into the next segment of his argument, saying that if anybody, white or black, “knocked over a store” and proceeded to curse at a cop before trying to take their gun they would be shot, “even [his] kids.”

Taking his rant further, Scarborough said that the people on the left who are making a hero out of Brown are no different than those on the right who tried to make George Zimmerman into a 21st century John Wayne.

“There are so many great people to embrace as heroes in the black community,” Scarborough said. He further posed this question: “Deciding you’re going to embrace a guy that knocked over a convenience store and then, according to grand jury testimony, acted in ways that would get my children shot…that’s your hero?”

Scarborough also asked what sense it makes to burn down and loot black business and to hold up black men and women from getting to work.

Scarborough then recommended that Roger Goodell, the embattled commissioner of the NFL, speak to the St. Louis Rams’ players who walked out onto the field yesterday with their hands up to the rage of the St. Louis Police Department. Pointing out that the department had a real reason to be outraged by the players’ actions, Scarborough expressed disgust with the ongoing misrepresentation of the encounter between Brown and Wilson that likely never involved anybody’s hands being held up.

One point that Scarborough brought up is the distinction between Trayvon Martin’s death and Michael Brown’s; he sees the two cases to be entirely different, with one ending in justice and the other with racist murder.

In the Brown incident, Scarborough says, Brown was the aggressor who brought about his demise by breaking the law, disrespecting a police officer and then attacking said police officer. In contrast, Trayvon Martin was stalked through his own neighborhood by a man with a gun and a distaste for blacks living in his gated community and who brought about an inherently unbalanced fight.

In light of this, I believe that it is important to realize two things. Firstly that, based on the evidence, the legitimately egregious shooting was Martin’s, not Brown’s. Secondly, the looting and rioting are doing nothing to highlight the issues between the black community and the police, in Missouri and elsewhere; the rioting is only justifying the use of more force and is prolonging an uncomfortable tension

Another key takeaway from Scarborough’s rant was his assertion that the media’s narrative that police are “just going around looking to shoot and kill black people” is doing a disservice to the police and the black community alike.

I believe that there are things to be gained out of the Ferguson incident because clearly there are some issues that fall along racial lines.

Brown’s body should not have been left in a street for four and a half hours. It is never a good thing for a young person to lose their life, which is why it is imperative that steps are taken in Ferguson and elsewhere to educate young people on how to deal with police, who at the end of the day are not out to kill those people, but to protect them.