The Importance Of Hypersegregation In The Shooting Of Michael Brown

Over the course of this week our lessons began to transition from the explicit discrimination of the past to the current state of segregation and racial tensions, particularly in the St. Louis region. Two of the major issues discussed were hypersegregation and the role it played in the protest movement sparked by the shooting of Michael Brown. Hypersegregation is the extreme sequestration of a racial group into specific areas, measured by five dimensions: evenness, exposure, concentration, centralization, and clustering. The distinction between segregation and hypersegregation is a matter of degree – all forms of segregation include at least a few of these dimensions, but hypersegregation occurs when four or five are present. One of the

African Americans throughout the nation watched on social media as police responded to the initial peaceful protests with armored vehicles, riot gear, and the threat rubber bullets, dogs, and guns. These vicarious police experiences impacted them as though they had been confronted with the same treatment, spurring a national outcry against police brutality and the frequent police shootings of unarmed African American men. As social media spread awareness, national and international news organizations began reporting on the events in Ferguson, displaying images of protestors being treated as enemy combatants by police. The images and videos emerging led to an influx of support from many seemingly-unrelated groups who chose to stand in solidarity with the protestors. International media and Amnesty International scrutinized police actions while celebrities and individuals associated with many other oppressed and disadvantaged groups flocked to the region to join in the protest. As in the Civil Rights Movement, images of protestors confronting lines of police in riot gear and being teargassed focused the world on injustices faced by African Americans and forced the nation to take

It would be comfortable for me to continue believing that the Civil Rights Movement forced an end of de jure segregation and routine discrimination, ignoring the continuing de facto segregation and injustices faced by African Americans, viewing incidents such as Michael Brown’s shooting as isolated incidents. I could continue to shake my head and say that these events are tragedies, but surely they do not justify nation-wide protests. If there is no systematic pattern of disadvantage and abuse, then I am not morally obliged to take action. In this class it is impossible for me to simply brush off the complaints of groups like Black Lives Matters as overreactions. Like the rest of the nation, I now have to engage in the serious work of examining reality, acknowledging that racism is alive and well in America, and begin actively working to correct