Walk a mile in my shoes through a white police state in an impoverished, reviled community. If you want to see what the white underclass is capable of, see Gangs Of New York. Irish immigrants burned down a Black orphanage during the draft protests of the Civil War. Then tell us how fair and even-handed you are.

As anticipated, but this is still a parody even if it causes offense. As stated, I cover all sides. It is never right to use a badge to subjugate a community dominated by another race and kill under color of authority. However, social injustice mixed with poverty, poor education, lack of opportunities, and an environment of violence with missing parents does not give anyone the right to riot, loot, commit arson, and violence against the law nor the community they live in. How does hurting local merchants and fellow community members send a message to corrupt and misguided law enforcement and corrupt administrations at the local, city, and state levels? Officers can also reply to "Black lives matter" with "Comply and don't die." Everyone that died could have complied no matter how badly a police officer acted and then sued the city. It is better to face hardship and discrimination vs a mag full of 9mm to .40 cal rounds. If the dead could speak I'm sure all would have wanted to live. Btw, minority rights are guaranteed for the purposes of lawful assembly and protests that are peaceful. Waiting until dark to rape one's own community is vile and defeats the goal of ensuring justice. No one is justified in looting, committing violence, and arson. It plays into police tactics of stereotyping Blacks as thugs. It kills the peaceful message. It makes investment in that community depart.

Rob Arndt: you say some worthwhile things in your comment above. However, it seems like you're saying "Violence causes discrimination," when it's really the other way around--just like people think that "Scarcity causes Greed", when it's really that "Greed causes Scarcity." I will not rate your parody, at least not for now.

I didn't say that and besides, if one knows right from wrong violence in any form is never right. There have been generations of people who were discriminated against who never resorted to looting, arson, and assault. Many rose above adversity and environment and achieved much. Most cops are good, some are bad. What I said about compliance is 100% correct. Compliance in even the worst abuse of power is a lot better than being killed needlessly. Black communities plagued by drugs, violence, and lack of opportunities need to break the cycle of black on black violence, get a good education, and try to get investment in their community. Despair (and a feeling of hopelessness) doesn't have to lead to self-destructive violence.

I never understood the concept of looting as a form of social/political protest.

Give you a ride on the clue train, people: people of any race naturally have a tendency to discriminate against thugs. If you don't want people to discriminate against you, it helps not to be a thug who deserves to have people discriminate against you. Automatically accusing anyone who points this out to you of discriminating against skin colors means *you* are a racist bigot, and it's the shrill race-tur-bators who do that, such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan, who are wrecking race relations and screwing up this nation, not the rest of us.

Nobody in my family complained when a black family moved into the house next door to ours in our pleasant suburban neighborhood because these people (who just happened to have black skin) didn't act like thugs and respected their neighbors and therefore we respected them and didn't treat them like thugs. If more black people would behave like that family and stop stirring up more bigotry and racism by making race-baiting excuses for the thuggery of thugs who just happen to have black skin, we'd have some real racial healing in this country.

"A riot is, at bottom, the language of the unheard." -- Martin Luther King. The true thugs are the ones who hide behind badges and desks.

Crime causes poverty. People will not invest in neighborhoods with a history of violence. I've seen shopping centers in Kansas City abandoned and destroyed just for having a reputation of being unsafe. KCK has lost a third of its population in the last 20 years, mostly from fear of crime and the deterioration and loss of property value it brings. If Michael Brown had been shot by another street thug, no one, even in St Louis, would have heard of him. And, from what I have heard and seen of his behavior, that was the fate he had chosen for himself. The issues involved are very complicated, and government is not going to solve them. As usual, the ones in the front lines get heart while the political class gets wealth and power.

Don't you understand that you don't have to be a thug to be discriminated against? I'm really discouraged by the people here and their unwillingness to understand what it's like to struggle against racism that has piled on for over 400 years and still, too often, continues today. I think the "thug" argument here is an excuse not to look at the day-to-day discrimination that still goes on against basically decent people. Also, most decent people get angry if they are picked upon, or threatened with loss of opportunity, loss of freedom, and even loss of life, time and time again. You Irish out there, you Jews, you Armenians, you Gypsies/Romany, heck, even you Italians--have you forgotten?

The struggle for justice does not justify violence against other people who are in the same situation as you. Jean Valjean stole a loaf of bread to feed a starving child, but what of the baker's child who needed his income from honest labor to survive? Michael Brown stole a box of cigars. Just a slow way of doing to himself what the cop did more quickly. And he struck a much smaller man in order to get them. Is that what social justice means? How would the world view it if the next time a Caucasian man was shot by a cop, even if unjustified, and I decided it was my time to smash a Wal-Mart window and make off with a TV set. Where is the logic in any of this.

Melanie lives in a fantasy world of politically correct liberalism. She was proven wrong last night with Ferguson with black thugs shooting at police, other black protesters, and throwing bottles and bricks. Another black thug elsewhere went to a car dealership and was caught jumping on cars, smashing windows, and driving a car through a showroom window! He was a thug as well and was shot dead. These people are animals.

There's something wrong with how the police handled it, but I'm afraid those who participated in the rioting are making a negative stereotype of themselves, as what point to point put it. With all due respect to blacks, as I myself have friends who are black, but my beef is that some would play the race card and use their skin colour as an excuse, rather than come up with a way that would benefit both sides of the equation, e.g. police fellow blacks who engage in immature rioting, and at the same time call for reasonable treatment regardless of ethnicity. Black Lives Matter? More like Everyone's Lives Matter, not just blacks.