At Xavier University’s Black Lives Matter conference this weekend, the mother of Michael Brown said that her son “will never be able to attend college” due to his having been shot and killed by Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri two years ago.
That “was his dream,” according to Lezley McSpadden.
“After she heard her son had been shot near his grandmother’s house,” according to the New Orleans Advocate, “she left work, and a co-worker drove her as close to the crime scene as they could get in a car.
“Then she opened the car door and sprinted, she said: ‘I ran down that long road, looking for one face, and I never saw it.’”
Brown’s death was the catalyst for the Black Lives Matter movement.
That day’s events put McSpadden on another long road that she’d never imagined, one that led to a lengthy U.S. Department of Justice investigation of discriminatory practices within the Ferguson Police Department and a flurry of research analyzing racial inequities in other police departments, courthouses and schools nationwide. …
The hope is that all of this research and discussion will lead to change. “We are all searching for that one resolution for justice so that we can have some peace,” McSpadden said.
This weekend’s conference at Xavier, sponsored by the school’s Institute of Black Catholic Studies, is part of that broader discussion about bias and inequity. As Xavier President C. Reynold Verret summed it up: “Bias is American. There’s a tinting in our glasses that affects how we see things.”
Titled “Urban Education Matters,” the conference also criticized “disparate” suspension and expulsion rates for black students. The University of South Florida’s Brenda Townsend Walker claims (black) student misbehavior is due to feeling “disconnected from the black culture of their homes and neighborhoods” while at school:
“Many students feel like they don’t belong,” she said. “Misbehavior is a byproduct of them feeling invisible, of having to check their culture at the door.”
Ms. McSpadden followed up on that premise with regards to her son: “He threw his pencil down and pushed away from the table,” she wrote in her book “Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil.”
“She asked him what was wrong and if he was stressed out. He nodded. ‘And Mama, that teacher don’t like me,’ he said.”
McSpadden adds that her son’s death is part of God’s “larger plans,” some of which is “to wake people up to some things in the world that need changing.”
Perhaps. But, among other things, was Michael robbing a store and intimidating its owner, followed by struggling with Officer Wilson for his gun were the result of … his teacher not liking him? Of feeling “invisible” at school? Does Ms. McSpadden bear no responsibility whatsoever?
Although the article mentions that the US Department of Justice found “discriminatory practices” at the Ferguson Police Department, what is not noted is that it also cleared Officer Wilson of any wrongdoing in Michael’s death.
MORE: Teacher suspended for classroom ‘reenactment’ of Michael Brown shooting
MORE: College students set to walk out of class for Michael Brown
MORE: Retrospective: How college newspapers smeared Officer Darren Wilson
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