Bill Press: All eyes on Ferguson

It ranks as one of the better-known lines penned by any English-language poet: the lesson Robert Burns draws about the proud upper-class church lady who doesn’t realize there’s a louse crawling on her bonnet. “O wad some Power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us!”

Last week I had an opportunity to see how others see us, while vacationing in Italy when news broke of the grand jury’s decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for killing teenager Michael Brown. Across Europe, the news coverage was nonstop. And it wasn’t pretty.

{mosads}For most Europeans, the failure of the grand jury to hold Wilson responsible, with resulting riots in Ferguson and other cities across America, was just further proof that a country that brags of its human rights record has a serious, continuing problem with racism. 

On German television, a special program on racism in America opened with the chilling observation: “For half a century, the land of the free has been trying to overcome racism and discrimination — with doubtful results.” 

French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira summed up her impressions on Twitter: “Racial profiling, social exclusion, territorial segregation, cultural marginalization, firearms, fear, fatal cocktail.”

And, of course, nobody enjoyed rubbing our nose in it more than Russia. After years of the U.S. condemning the Russian government for its denial of basic human rights, this was its chance to get even. Russia’s foreign ministry, which dubbed the unrest a “color revolution,” cited the riots as evidence of “systematic shortcomings of American democracy.” Konstantin Dolgov, Russia’s ambassador for human rights, said the protests “once again testify to the extreme neglect of the problems of the vestiges of racism and violations of the rights of ethnic minorities in the U.S.”   

As uncomfortable as it is for us to hear that criticism, especially from nations that are hardly paragons of virtue, we must admit: They are right! 

We do have a lingering problem with racism in this country. We might as well admit it, and we’d better start dealing with it. 

We saw it in Los Angeles with Rodney King. We saw it in Sanford, Fla., with Trayvon Martin. We saw it in Ferguson with Michael Brown. And, if we only open our eyes, we see it in never-reported cases in communities across America every day.

Yes, we’ve made a lot of progress since the days of Jim Crow. But the evidence of continuing racial discrimination is overwhelming: in racial profiling of young blacks by law enforcement, in the disproportionate number of blacks in prison, in lack of representation in elective office and executive suites, and in court decisions upholding restrictions on voting rights.

We can no longer accept a reality where an African-American is in the Oval Office yet young black males can’t drive through many cities without being stopped and questioned merely because they’re black. 

Bridging that gap won’t be easy, but we’ll never fix it if we continue to deny it. 

Press is host of “The Bill Press Show” on Free Speech TV and author of The Obama Hate Machine.