Ferguson versus Whitopia

Aljazeera

In the wake of the death of Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager shot by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, on Aug. 9, the public has heard quite a bit about the town, its residents and their supposed violence.

But about half an hour drive west of Ferguson, along a highway straddling the Missouri River, you will come to what may seem a planet away: St. Charles County.

St. Charles is a “Whitopia” — a predominantly white county that has posted 6 percent population growth since 2000 and exhibits an ineffable charisma, as well as a pleasant look and feel. An outer-ring suburb of St. Louis, St. Charles is 91 percent non-Hispanic white, visibly whiter than its surroundings. Its metropolitan region is 77 percent non-Hispanic white in a state that is 81 percent Caucasian. Home to about 76,000 residents, St. Charles is the wealthiest and one of the fastest growing counties in Missouri.

Its quiet invisibility stands in stark contrast to the dramatic images we saw during the protests after Brown’s death. As the nation and world gawk at Ferguson, we need to train our eyes on St. Charles County too, for St. Charles’ economic and political realities contextualize the plight of Ferguson. It embodies the severe economic and racial segregation that harmed Brown long before Wilson ever fired a shot.

Distribution of resources

The ongoing debate about police misconduct sparked by Ferguson has highlighted the existence of deep-rooted structural racism in American society that erects barriers to opportunity and widens racial injustice and inequalities. Even when structural racism is recognized, its ambiguity and enormousness discourage the public from taking action. Consequently, the media focus instead on reported police transgressions, specific acts of overt discrimination and the dramatic images of Ferguson protests.

But structural racism is the deeper disease, and acts of police misconduct are merely a symptom of it. It concerns how we distribute public resources to strengthen or debilitate our communities. Unemployment, underemployment, foreclosure and destitution have become the hallmarks of America’s new multicultural poor, a group that negates conventional political and academic assumptions about aspiration and poverty in America’s suburbs. By contrast, rising property values, well-funded schools and segregation have become the markers of the affluent communities that have separated themselves from surrounding areas. This is why if we want to understand Ferguson, we must also study St. Charles.

Over the past 15 years, as people and jobs scatter across the country — because of the migration of industries, the economic displacement of the poor and the social flight of the privileged class — segregation and inequality have also dispersed and increased significantly. In 2005 the suburban poor in the United States outnumbered their city counterparts by more than 1 million people. Class and racial disparity have migrated to inner-ring suburbs, those closest to cities, such as Ferguson.

The median household income in Ferguson was $36,121 in 2012. By contrast, St. Charles County residents’ had a median income of $71,458 in 2010. Furthermore, in the past two decades, Ferguson has seen dramatic racial changes. In 1990 blacks made up 25 percent of Ferguson; today they make up roughly 70 percent. St. Louis County has seen residential flight by people of all races. But the concentration of long-time black residents in Ferguson and new black migrants heightens this segregation. Such are the new American suburbs. [MORE]