Images of rioting and demonstrations after the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, have provoked outrage across the world.
Yet just a 10-minute drive from where Michael Brown was killed on 9 August, signs of the unrest that has beset the poorer neighborhoods of this St. Louis suburb are strikingly absent.
The sometimes violent protests have had little visible impact on the quiet tree-lined streets of Ferguson’s historic district, where some of the city’s grandest houses are located and many of its white residents live.
It is in stark contrast to the daily disruptions to everyday life felt in poorer, mostly black areas just a few blocks away. ‘We have seen no difference. We are far away enough from the isolated parts of Ferguson and are virtually unaffected,’ said Ruth Brown, a 72-year-old white woman, sitting on a white couch in the spacious living room of her 130-year-old home.
Even so, ‘we are heartbroken, because we fear that the town will not recover this time,’ said Brown, whose grandparents came to Ferguson in 1885.Michael Brown’s death and the sometimes violent protests that followed have exposed racial tensions in the city and across the US and have prompted international condemnation of the clashes between police and demonstrators.
Yet just a 10-minute drive from where Michael Brown was killed on 9 August, signs of the unrest that has beset the poorer neighborhoods of this St. Louis suburb are strikingly absent.
The sometimes violent protests have had little visible impact on the quiet tree-lined streets of Ferguson’s historic district, where some of the city’s grandest houses are located and many of its white residents live.
It is in stark contrast to the daily disruptions to everyday life felt in poorer, mostly black areas just a few blocks away. ‘We have seen no difference. We are far away enough from the isolated parts of Ferguson and are virtually unaffected,’ said Ruth Brown, a 72-year-old white woman, sitting on a white couch in the spacious living room of her 130-year-old home.
Even so, ‘we are heartbroken, because we fear that the town will not recover this time,’ said Brown, whose grandparents came to Ferguson in 1885.Michael Brown’s death and the sometimes violent protests that followed have exposed racial tensions in the city and across the US and have prompted international condemnation of the clashes between police and demonstrators.