"The history of Saint Louis is burdened by a hyperconsciousness of dividing lines. The Dred Scott case of 1857 (that spark in the powder keg of the Civil War) began in St. Louis as a question of whether a man's freedom and human rights evaporated when he crossed the border into a slave state. In the decades since then few cities have taken a more systematic approach to racial separation. The shooting of unarmed African American teen Michael Brown and the violence that followed happened smack on one of those borders. And this phenomenon is, of course, not confined to Missouri. In 2012 Trayvon Martin was killed. Weeks ago Eric Garner, an unarmed black man died after an apparent police choke hold on him. It would be useful to know how often this happens. But that is data the United States declines to collect. The federal government can tell us how many pounds of boysenberries Americans harvest and how many hours per day the average American woman spends gardening. Yet no agency is tracking the number of people killed by police, [let alone the number of unarmed black people killed by them]" - Time Magazine.
The explosive flash of American slavery left the majority of our nation (with the exception of the victims themselves) blinded to the horrific evidence of slavery's continued consequences (in most cases consciously imposed by the white majority), and willfully ignorant about just how these consequences unfold on a daily basis, because America refuses to recognize, accept, and decisively overcome, the fact that almost one hundred and fifty years after slavery "ended", what should by now be normal, healthy vision is still woefully absent...blotted out by the dark after image of our sin.
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