Sadly, despite being given its very own 15 minutes, like most celebrities, Ferguson isn't really special. It is simply a particularly glaring reflection of an affliction that blankets most of America, far and wide and deeply. The problem is the inability of a large segment of the White population to accept Black people and other people of color without the taint of racial prejudice. Many of these people are easy to find. They often loudly proclaim they are not racist and spout similar nonsense on the subject.
Drug laws were originally created as a tool for White people to deal with what was then still sometimes called the Negro Problem. In every corner of the U.S. restrictive real estate covenants and other legal means were used to segregate housing by race, until the Courts outlawed the practices, which then simply became de facto instead of de jure. Segregated housing leads to segregated schools and a great deal else. All over America, a large part of the White population remains very satisfied with this.
Just ten years after LBJ signed the last great Civil Rights Act in 1964, singer-songwriter, Randy Newman, wrote a song that took a snapshot of racism in America as it then existed. That song used the name, Rednecks, for the Southern component of the "large part of the White population" under discussion and observed that no place in America is much better or worse on that score; this is not a regional problem, but a national problem. Newman reputedly wrote the song after seeing racist, asshole Governor of Georgia, Lester Maddox, ridiculed on a TV talk show, not for being a racist asshole, but for being so archetypically Southern.
While standing up for the right of people to be Southern, or rural, or whatever, Newman's lyric (found out in the tall grass) recognized and condemned the racism that he saw all over the America of his time. Regrettably, despite the African-American in the White House, improvement in controlling racist power in America still seems elusive today. Michael Brown's tragic and senseless killing in Ferguson, sadly, simply provides another high profile example of the problem.
The song, Rednecks:
When Nixon campaigned on it in the Sixties and Seventies, like myriad Republicans and many Democrats since, Law and Order wasn't a TV show, it was a dog whistle for racism and racial oppression. Little evidence exists that this has changed much, alas.
Step out into the tall grass for the full lyric.
The lyric:
Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a TV show
With some smart ass New York Jew
And the Jew laughed at Lester Maddox
And the audience laughed at Lester Maddox too
Well he may be a fool but he's our fool
If they think they're better than him they're wrong
So I went to the park and I took some paper along
And that's where I made this song
We talk real funny down here
We drink too much and we laugh too loud
We're too dumb to make it in no Northern town
And we're keepin' the niggers down
We got no-necked oilmen from Texas
And good ol' boys from Tennessee
And colleges men from LSU
Went in dumb. Come out dumb too
Hustlin' 'round Atlanta in their alligator shoes
Gettin' drunk every weekend at the barbecues
And they're keepin' the niggers down
CHORUS
We're rednecks, rednecks
And we don't know our ass from a hole in the ground
We're rednecks, we're rednecks
And we're keeping the niggers down
Now your northern nigger's a Negro
You see he's got his dignity
Down here we're too ignorant to realize
That the North has set the nigger free
Yes he's free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City
And he's free to be put in a cage on the South-Side of Chicago
And the West-Side
And he's free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland
And he's free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis
And he's free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco
And he's free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston
They're gatherin' 'em up from miles around
Keepin' the niggers down
CHORUS