An International Look at Ferguson
BY RUBY ARORA
The armored vehicles roll in, and tear gas fills the air. The officers stand still as stone, impassable, with their bulletproof vests, gas masks, and riot gear. The crowd is weary of the fight yet passionate for the cause. The smoke bombs and flash grenades and rubber bullets only temporarily deter the protesters. The tumult shows no sign of subsiding. This is Ferguson.
The shooting of Michael Brown rocked the small city of Ferguson, Missouri and precipitated an explosion of anger, criticism, and protest that consumed the community and country as a whole. The effects of the events in Ferguson were also felt far beyond our national borders. From France to China, the world and international media fixated on the issue of racial discrimination in the United States. Germany’s Zeit Online boldly declared that “the situation of African-Americans has hardly improved since Martin Luther King.” Iran’s PressTV also highlighted the “long history of police brutality against African- Americans.” Many of the United States’ long-term adversaries gleefully used the events in Ferguson to support claims of “American hypocrisy” and to emphasize the faults in the American social system. The official Xinhua news of China advised the United States “to concentrate on solving its own problems rather than pointing the finger at others” and went on to describe the racial divide in the U.S. as a “deeply-rooted chronic disease that keeps tearing U.S. society apart.”
However, criticism for the events in Ferguson came not only from America’s enemies but its allies as well. Much of the disapproval from the United Kingdom was rooted not in the death of Michael Brown (as London experienced a similar series of racial riots fueled by the death of Mark Duggan) but rather in the “dehumanizing treatment of citizens” exhibited by police toward protesters in Ferguson. The United Kingdom’s Metro argued that the events in Ferguson didn’t just affect Americans: “when the police dehumanize a community, it shames all of us.” The French Le Figaro agreed, saying, “more than the issue of race is ‘excessive militarization’ of policing that commands attention.” The Russian Foreign Ministry alleged that “serious violations of basic human rights and barbaric practices thrive” in the United States. Many articles brought up President Barack Obama’s impact, or lack thereof, on the Ferguson protests and racial discrimination in the United States more generally. Patrick Bahners’ harsh article in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung declared, “the first black man in the office of the president has done nothing for blacks after his election. It seems like a joke that he is still referred to as the most powerful man in the world.”
Ironically, many of same nations that reacted loudly to the Ferguson incident face similar issues back home. In the Xinjiang region of China, ethnic conflict between the Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese police resembles the turmoil in Ferguson. Josh Chin of the Wall Street Journal compared the “Chinese security forces using deadly force against civilians,” use of military-grade weaponry, and detention of media reporters to parallel occurrences in Ferguson.
Other reporters have begun to liken the Gezi Park protests in Turkey to Ferguson. The Gezi Park incident began as a protest against urban development and later morphed into a vast series of protests involving “police brutality,” including the use of tear gas and water cannons, and “the participation of young people,” both qualities mirrored in Ferguson.
The international backlash from the Ferguson protests reveals that this issue is no longer simply an American one. The events in Ferguson have affected how we Americans perceive our communities, our government, and ourselves, and they have also shaped how the rest of the world sees us. Racial discrimination is not exclusive to United States, but the world will now look to our approach to addressing racial tensions and discrimination, and either condemn or commend it. As the chaos in Ferguson dwindles down, we have a choice: change our social system for the better or to let these tensions continue to simmer. No matter what we choose, we must keep in mind that spotlight is now on us, and the entire world is watching.