The Black Bottom Line: Reflections on Ferguson, Black Lives Matter, and White Male Violence in America

Abstract

During recent decades and especially in recent weeks and days, all walks of life seem to read out in violent terms. Politics, gender, sexuality, entertainment, race, religion, and academics have morphed into venues of violence and cultural mayhem. Journalism still salutes the canard “If it bleeds, it leads!” In present-day reportage, there scarcely seems any other lead. This forum addresses the bound-to-violence conjunctures of everyday life in the US and their entailments in and for the academy. Framing the issue in the context of the police shooting of Michael Brown seems prescient after Orlando and the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. The violence of these scenes allies and signifies along an indisputably violent trajectory of our nation’s founding and its specific gravity of white male privilege and accord. I will return to this point later. Michael Brown was 18 years old and a recent high school graduate. On 9 August 2014, he and a companion entered a convenience store in their hometown of Ferguson. Brown stole two packages of cigarillos, and they shoved the storeowner away from the door, fleeing into the street. A police dispatcher reported the theft. White police officer Darren Wilson, on patrol in his squad car, spotted Brown walking down the street with his friend. He attempted to detain them for questioning. A scuffle ensued: Wilson’s gun fired; Brown and his companion ran; Wilson gave chase, stopped and exited his squad car, and commenced firing his semiautomatic pistol at the fleeing boys; Brown turned to face Wilson. In an instant a bullet crashed through the young man’s skull. Deadly force was the Ferguson police response to two stolen packages of cigarillos.