On August 8, 2014, an 18-year old Black teenager, Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white policeman, Darren Wilson, in Ferguson, Missouri.

Several days later protests started and continued almost daily for months. Violence erupted, with looting of local stores with large-scale property damage, not to mention confrontation between police and protesters, resulting in multiple arrests, playing out on national, international and social media.

What should have been a local matter played out in the courts, the shooting of Michael Brown became a wide spread issue of long-simmering community racial hatred with tentacles reaching all the way to the White House.

Professional outside agitators descended on Ferguson, the most well-known being the Rev. Al Sharpton, who had recently been anointed as the consultant on race relations to President Barack Hussein Obama.

Some call it his “remarkable rise to national prominence from community organizer to President Obama’s consultant” (Joseph Weber, FOX News, November 19, 2014, Sharpton’s debt issues resurface amid his political rise). Others call him a “washed-up TV personality and professional race baiter” (Hanna Bleau, BizPac Review, November 8, 2014 He’s Obama’s ‘boy’; Sharpton invited to counsel Obama after election loss).

Whatever you call him, he’s always in the middle of the race war between blacks and whites. In fact, he stirs it up instead of calming it down. He already declared that regardless of the outcome, when the Ferguson grand jury’s verdict was announced, he would initiate protests in various cities across the country.

But there are several questions one should want asked and answered about the Ferguson “war.” It’s a war because the police donned military gear and rode around in tanks. Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson called for a curfew and Missouri Governor Jay Nixon called out the National Guard.

Dr. Ben Carson, professor emeritus of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University and author of the book, One Nation: What We Can All Do to Save America’s Future writes in the August 29th issue of Black Community News, A Problem Bigger than Ferguson,

“Last year, 100 black males were killed by police in the United States. In the same year, 5,000 blacks were killed by other blacks, the vast majority being males. Could it be that we are erroneously being manipulated into making this incident a racial issue, when, in fact, it is a component of a much larger social issue?”
So we ask ourselves,

Why is Ferguson up in arms over the shooting of one young Black man?

Why a community outcry in a working class neighborhood in the suburbs of St. Louis?

Why did Sharpton go to Ferguson immediately after the shooting to organize a protest against the police department before a grand jury had even been convened to determine the guilt or innocence of Officer Wilson?

Why did America’s “Top Cop.”

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, threaten a federal civil rights investigation if the Ferguson Grand Jury failed to indict Officer Wilson and why did he tell the protesters to “hold the course”?

Why did President Obama lament “we’ve lost a young man in heartbreaking and tragic circumstances” in the shooting of Michael Brown and “there is no excuse for police to use excessive force during peaceful protests.”

Where was the President’s concern about the “heartbreaking and tragic circumstances” in the 2,571 shootings in his home town of Chicago last year? How about the crime spree the weekend of January 20, 2014, that left 9 dead and 36 wounded, including 6 children? (http://crimeinchicago.blogspot.com/ )

You see, the race baiters have no use for the violence throughout the cities where both the victims and the perpetrators are Black. But Ferguson is a prime boiling pot for community organizers and race baiters like Sharpton.

Reverend Dr. Walter T. Richardson, Chairman, Miami-Dade County Community Relations Board, warns that “Ferguson is a community with serious disparities in services and the outcry was a cry for attention, but Miami has learned that violence yields no positive results.”

Cedric Alexander, President, National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, stated on CNN that “The community and the police department, somehow at some point are going to have to start to heal together. … ”

The verdict is in. So ask yourselves, “Why is Sharpton organizing protests across the country?”

Dr. Carson warns “We have a social crisis brewing if we continue down the path we are on now.”

But Kevin Jackson, Executive Director, The Black Sphere and author of the book, Race Pimping, told FOX News “The Democrats want the strife in Ferguson to happen, they need this to happen….They love this strife.” (http://theblacksphere.net/race-pimping/)

Michael Brown was clearly not a model citizen, but he was somebody’s child. The manipulation of Ferguson needs to stop and let this family mourn their child in peace.

Barbara Howard is a political consultant, radio host and commentator and motivational speaker. She is Florida State chairwoman for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Trade & Travel goodwill ambassador to Kenya. She may be reached at bhoward11@bellsouth.net.