Jason Purnell, associate professor at the Brown School
I first sat down to write a piece like this three years ago, when my city, St. Louis, was wracked with the initial convulsions of what would later be known simply as “Ferguson.”
I didn’t submit it for publication then. I wasn’t sure it would make a useful contribution. I didn’t know if it would jeopardize other important work I was involved in. I wasn’t confident that people would understand my meaning.
Three years later, as my city now confronts a new set of convulsions in response to a not-guilty verdict in another police shooting that left a young black man named Anthony Lamar Smith dead, I’ve returned to what I wrote back in 2014. It was true to me then, and I think it’s still true now.
Read the full piece at CNN.