Can Ferguson Change the 'Ritual' of Black Deaths?

[gollygee]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/26/can-ferguson-change-the-r_n_5718487.html

He said Brown's death should increase voter registration, which would "put the right people in the right places" to change the way police deal with the black community. Soon after the unrest started, a voter registration booth went up on the corner of the hardest-hit street.

Phillip Atiba Goff, a UCLA psychology professor and president of the Center for Policing Equity, does believe Ferguson has brought us into a different moment, "but with a small window."

"While I think there will be a push for stronger accountability and data collection that comes from this, I worry that we will repeat the amnesia that followed Los Angeles, Newark, Watts, and so many other urban centers for the past 50-plus years," Goff said in an email.

"Whatever the immediate good that may come in the wake of the events of Ferguson," he said, "we fail to honor the legacy of Mr. Brown if our collective attention to these issues and collective memory lasts no longer than the month or two after peace returns to the streets of his hometown."

[tblue37]

1. KnR. nt