The Ferguson post

This one quickly developed a multitude of layers of consideration, didn't it?  The NAACP denouncing the rioters.  Black Panthers and Communists getting involved.  A huge Times Square demonstration.  The FOP executive director saying "I would contend that discussing police tactics from Martha's Vineyard is not helpful to ultimately calming the situation."  

Eric Erickson at Red State plainly states a most squirm-inducing truth:

 What is undisputed is by the time you read this Mr. Brown, who worked his way through a bleak high school education in Ferguson, MO, would be in a college classroom. He defied the odds of many young black men, graduated from high school, and would have started college last week had he been alive. But he failed to beat the odds of young black men having bad encounters with police.

It is a painful discussion to have in the United States. Too many people profit from racial tension. The media profit by fanning flames and selling papers — often making themselves the story. Activists in the black community profit by fanning flames of racial unrest and grievance. Activists in liberal circles fan the flames of privilege, class warfare, etc. Conservative activists fan the flames of rhetoric and push back.

Meanwhile an eighteen year old is dead and everybody is yelling at each other. Facts become more and more disputed. It also becomes less likely that the real truth of what happened can be arrived at.

Megan McArdle is the first, as far as I know, to ask, how does such a disparity as that between the racial makeup of Ferguson's police department and city government and that of its general population arise?

Certain facts we’ve heard over and over about the situation are that the police force is nearly all white, as are the elected officials controlling its town government; the population is almost two-thirds black; and these realities have created a great deal of tension between the police and the black community. What I haven’t heard is an explanation -- they’re simply taken as natural.
But that’s not a natural institutional arrangement. It’s very odd for the majority of a town's residents to be one demographic group and most of the people controlling the city’s law enforcement to be almost entirely composed of a different group. Political bodies tend to at least roughly resemble the electorate. Of course, minorities may be very under-represented -- but it’s very unusual for majorities to be under-represented.

So what’s happening here? The answer, after digging into some census data, seems to be massive demographic change. In 1990, the city of Ferguson had 5,589 black citizens and 16,454 white citizens, making it about three-quarters white. By 2000, blacks were a slim majority of the population. And as of 2010, they made up 69 percent of the city, and it seems likely that trajectory has continued over the last four years. 

She points out that institutional catch-up takes a while:

Institutions do tend to reflect their electorates -- but with a lag. When the population tips to mostly black, you don’t start firing white police officers so you can replace them with someone more demographically appropriate. Even if you wanted to, that would make an open-and-shut lawsuit for racial discrimination. And if the police are protected by a union -- as Ferguson's police officers apparently are -- you can just forget it.
So you have to wait until there is an opening to begin to balance out the force. You also have to bypass the normal methods that small-city governments often use for recruitment, such as asking your current employees if they have any friends or family who would like to work for your department. That itself is often fraught, as no matter how sensible this is, your current officers are going to resent having something -- such as the ability to help friends find jobs -- taken away from them.

Demographic transition, combined with a long institutional lag, is a recipe for a yawning disconnect between the police and the community they serve. And occasionally, that disconnect turns violent.  

As for the fact that both McArdle and Erickson point out - that young black men disproportionately get into trouble with cops and courts - I defer to John McWhorter:

Deep breath: The black community cannot pretend that the stereotype of black men as violent comes out of nowhere.

[snip]

Let’s face it: If Korean boys regularly did things like this, we’d all be scared to death of them.

There are a number of other considerations at play in the Ferguson situation as well: Employment prospects, family breakdown, police skittishness about drug-related organized crime and even terrorism.

But I'll close with this question:  In an age when institutional racism / bigotry no longer exists in this country, why do incidents like this nearly always lead to huge, ugly race-fueled reactions?