While it is always a tragedy when a young man loses his life over what really amounts to nothing, the irony of the Michael Brown affair is this:
If a black street thug had killed another black cigar-stealing-strong-arm-robbing-merchant-bashing-bully in the exact location where Michael Brown died, there would be no protests, no marches, no barricades, no televised funeral, no looting, no fires, no tear gas canisters tossed into crowds, no rocks and bottles thrown at police, no National Guard, no armored vehicles, no news choppers and trucks, no international coverage, no mom-and-pop stores burned to the ground, no Al Sharptons...
And outside the boundaries of a place called Ferguson, Missouri, very few of us would even know the victim's name.
© 2014 Paul Howard Nicholas