There was\u00a0violence and unrest following the news that Darren Wilson would not be indicted. Some argued that this was proof that the people involved were bad people. Jay Smooth responds with a question: “How much do you think people can take?”<\/p>\n
Here is a partial transcript of his 5min discussion, embedded below:<\/p>\n
Riots are things that human beings do because human beings have limits.<\/p>\n
We don’t all have the same limits. For some of us, our human limit is when our favorite team loses a game. For some of us, it’s when our favorite team wins a game.<\/p>\n
The people\u00a0of Ferguson had a different limit than that. For the people of Ferguson, a lifetime of neglect and defacto segregation and incompetence and mistreatment by every level of government was not their limit.<\/p>\n
When that malign neglect set the stage for one of their children to be shot down and left in the street like a piece of trash… that was not their limit.<\/p>\n
For the people of Ferguson,\u00a0spending one hundred days almost entirely peacefully protesting for some measure of justice for that child \u00a0and having their desire for justice treated like a joke by every local authority… was not their limit.<\/p>\n
And then after those 100 days, when the\u00a0so-called prosecutor waited till the dead of night to twist that knife one last\u00a0time. When he came out and confirmed once and for all that Michael Brown’s life didn’t matter…<\/p>\n
Only then did the people of Ferguson reach their limit.<\/p>\n
So when you look at what happened Monday night, the question\u00a0you should be asking is how did these human beings last that long before they reached their human limit? How do black people\u00a0in America retain such a deep well of humanity that they can be pushed so far again and again without reaching their human limit?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Riots? Violence? Unrest?<\/p>\n
That is what happens when you treat human beings that way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Watch\u00a0to the whole thing:<\/p>\n