What Killed Michael Brown?

Amazon's initial suppression of this deep and intelligent documentary speaks to the anxiety that surrounds any discussion of race in the modern age. Shelby Steele - who saw segregation and the civil rights movement with his own eyes - provides a detailed context for the poverty afflicting many African-American communities today. This should not be controversial, but in an era when any deviation from the "systemic racism" assertion is treated with book-burning horror, I guess it counts as brave. Ironically, Steele explains that there is indeed a systemic problem, and one which disproportionately affects black people. It's just not the problem the world thinks it is.

....rare truth. The quality of truth is not strained, but goodness knows it gives us a scare now and then. The measured voice in this extraordinary documentary projects hope against the despairing bonfire that is today's progressive grievance industry. Thanks to the Steele family for producing this film.

In this engrossing film, Shelby Steele sets out like a gumshoe detective to reconstruct the world in which Michael Brown found himself that day of August 2014, as a young member of the black underclass in Ferguson, Missouri. Beginning with the poor black urban communities of the 1940s, Steele traces their transformation through the programs of post-1960s Liberalism, and all its good intentions which culminated in Michael Brown's public housing project and the neighborhood which influenced many of the fateful choices he made. Steele approaches his subject from many angles, drawing from a variety of witnesses, community leaders, social historians, newsreels, and the accounts of beleaguered residents of Ferguson--black and white--who have survived in the chaotic aftermath of Michael Brown's death. Steele allows the people who were there to tell the story in their own words. Ultimately, this Film is a lesson on history, human nature and power politics. Steele offers no easy solutions, but a wise and rational way forward for a nation which remains engulfed in the flames of conflict over race.

Shelby Steele has pulled back the curtain on the charlatans who define race relations in childishly simplistic terms for their own benefit. He reveals a far more nuanced reality where presumably well-intentioned policies dating from President Johnson's Great Society have decimated the African American family unit and neighborhoods, while public schools in poor neighborhoods have deteriorated to the point where many young African Americans in these areas are not connected to America and its possibilities in a meaningful way. The antebellum slave owners would be astonished at how efficient "help" can be in subjugating a targeted group. Systemic racism indeed. At some point, and despite the phony narrative being peddled by the grievance industry, Americans of all skin colors will realize what Mr. Steele is saying is true. That's the day that all black lives will begin to matter and the country will begin to heal.

Original and well made piece. At times I found myself feeling this film is pushing me towards the 'wrong opinion'. That's to say it feels forbidden to think independently on this matter in this moment in time. I assume most people understand the feeling I'm describing. But Shelby Steele has what seems a robust case, certainly deserving of daylight. The case being that we're misdiagnosing a problem and that Black people are infantalised so that white people can receive absolution; and nothing much ever changes.