Ferguson Shooting

The shooting of Michael Brown and the subsequent rioting in the city of Ferguson last year is still a hotly debated and contested issue for everyone from average citizens to academics. Taking a look at how theorists and great minds of the past would view the shooting, the riots, and the reactions to both, gives an interesting overview of just how important and unavoidable the role of power is understanding the possible motives behind the behavior of all parties involved. The events in Ferguson, because of their complicated and, in many ways, unresolved nature can be endlessly analyzed as everyone attempts to find their own answers to the motives behind the riots.
Karl Marx would, unsurprisingly, view the Ferguson riots as a class issue and …show more content…
Marx would have also said that, prior to the riots, the citizens of Ferguson were experiencing a false consciousness about the inequality of class systems and that the unfair wage system they are living off of is exploiting them. The riots are the revolution that Marx believed was a good, necessary first step that would eventually lead to a socialist government. This which would finally lead to his final goal: a classless, stateless communist state with no economic inequality. Marx would believe that it was the economic status of the Ferguson citizens that was fueling the conflict between the citizens and the police force, and that they were discriminating against these people because of their lack of wealth and social status, rather than it being a racial …show more content…
Gramsci would likely believe that the citizens of Ferguson, prior to Michael Brown 's shooting, were consenting to the oppressive actions of the police force discriminating against them and racially profiling them, but not because they wanted to consent, but rather they were coerced out of fear. Gramsci would study how the police force and American legal system as a whole had been able to make the citizens of Ferguson had been able to consent to living a life where they did not believe that anything was truly wrong and unfair in the police vs.citizens dynamic, and it took until one of their citizens was shot dead with an unclear story on how the events transpired to have it occur to them that perhaps what they were thinking all along wasn 't truly consent, but coercion out of fear. Gramsci would argue that the citizens of Ferguson prior to the riots believed that they want to fully obey the law and the police force because it was just the right thing to do, but didn 't question why and didn 't question if they were doing that because it was truly the right thing or because through the law they were being coerced into an unjust system of