The Ferguson Fallout Went National

It’s hard to find an uplifting angle on the events in Ferguson. Conservatives have drawn many familiar morals: that the media is ravenous for manufactured controversy, and will shamelessly exploit any tragedy to that end; that the Left will callously seize any opportunity to stoke racial tensions for political gain; that regrettable numbers of people prefer the satisfaction of rioting to the hard work of self-examination and community improvement.

Here is the point, in a nutshell. Minorities and impoverished Americans feel screwed by the system. They feel like pawns in the hands of a massive, incomprehensible, frighteningly invasive, and callously unfeeling bureaucratic system. This, surely, is something conservatives can understand. Middle-class conservatives are angry and frustrated because they feel screwed by “the system.” Guess what? The angry residents of Ferguson (and their sympathizers) feel the same way. We may have more common ground than we realize.

Rachel Lu has a PhD in philosophy from Cornell University and teaches at the University of St Thomas. Her non-academic work can be found in Touchstone Magazine, the Public Discourse and Crisis Magazine.