The 10th Anniversary of Michael Brown's Death in Ferguson

Hi all,

It’s hard to believe that it has been ten years since the news began breaking out of Ferguson, Missouri that a young black teen had been gunned down by a white officer. This story only continued to grow in power for months and I wanted to share a thread that I recently posted on X (Twitter). Also, I’m posting below some photos from our time in Ferguson and elsewhere during the filming.

But first, I wanted to share the link to a podcast that I did with Peter Boghossian, an excellent interviewer and conversationalist:

Here is the X thread:

It has been 10 years since Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown. Shelby Steele and I made “What Killed Michael Brown?” and I am often asked what the lasting impact has been.

My simple answer: What happened in Ferguson split America into two and we have not recovered.

One side believes that America is systemically racist and the other side believes that America has made much progress since the 1960s.

I remember watching the events of Ferguson unfold in real-time and was horrified that Brown’s body laid on the concrete for 4 1/2 hours. (When I filmed the 4th anniversary of his death, I could not keep my knee on the concrete for more than 30 seconds at a time.)

I watched how “Hands up, don’t shoot!” became the rallying cry, starting with Shahid and Dorian Johnson.

It was beyond powerful — on the twitter maps, Ferguson was trending all the way from St. Louis to the Palestinian Territories. Black Lives Matter, born after George Zimmerman was acquitted for killing Trayvon Martin, found the spotlight and never relinquished.

I did not rush to judgment and waited for the autopsy reports. When they came out two weeks later, there was much debate over them, but they showed that Michael Brown had been shot in the front. He was not executed in cold blood as the narrative went. I though that was that.

I could not have been more wrong. What my father calls the poetic truth — the narrative that Michael Brown was executed by a racist cop — refused to die. The violent protests on the streets increased — with most of national media’s support.

Obama and Holder did little to cool things down. Rather, things ratcheted up when Attorney General Holder announced that he was coming to Ferguson as “a black man.” Al Sharpton did his black power thing as usual.

It became clear that the poetic truth that Brown was a victim of racism would not be allowed to die out. “Systemic racism” soon became heard everywhere. “White privilege” and “white supremacy” had come into prominence during the George Zimmerman trial. Now: systemic racism.

Holder knew there was no evidence that Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown out of racial malice. But if he could argue that Ferguson and its police department was a systemically racist town, then he could keep the poetic truth of systemic racism alive.

And that is what he did with the second Department of Justice report — and on the very weak argument of racial disparities that we covered in “What Killed Michael Brown?”

It was that moment -- that corrupted victory that began with the “Hands up Don’t Shoot” gesture -- that solidified the split of America into two. You either believed America was a systemically racist nation or you remained committed to the pursuit of facts, due process...

Those who believe in the poetic truth of systemic racism exploited the tragedy of Michael Brown and others to the fullest extent. Everything became racial. America was guilty as hell and needed to be brought to her knees -- Obama said racism was in America's DNA.

Then came the antiracists like Ibram X. Kendi who reinforced this split by declaring we could only be antiracists or racists. The time had come to cure USA of systemic racism by racially engineering away racial disparities. They exploited dead black bodies for moral justification.

Since 2014, we have witnessed nothing less than the racial makeover of the United States from education to public policy and these efforts only exploded after the death of George Floyd. Welcome to the new racial order.

Whether Americans want to admit it or not, America’s reaction to the death of Michael Brown was the beginning of one of the most transformative movements in history and it affected everyone.

Lastly, I thought you might enjoy some shots from our time filming “What Killed Michael Brown?”

Setting up the very first shot. This camera sadly was stolen in the San Francisco robbery. Served me so well and never broke down.

Shelby Steele interviewing the subjects...

And this is us in front of the distillery location where my father's grandfather and uncles worked in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

I hope you all have a great and cool weekend,

Eli