Michael Brown's Death Due to Poor Parenting, REALLY?

     

  
Among the most vitriolic responses to the grand jury decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson with  any charges pertaining to his shooting and killing 18 year old Michael Brown are those that blame the boy's parents for his death. While with one hand swatting away any suggestion that the larger social issues rendering Ferguson, MO cut off from the American Dream decades ago put this story into any context, the other hand is used to point fingers at Michael Brown Sr, and Lesley McSpadden for raising a child who would get himself gunned down by a cop. 
            So what are the iniquities these parents visited upon their son?  That they became parents as teenagers? That they eventually split up?  That they looked to other family members and friends to provide guidance and care taking for Michael?  That they made him  angry by forcing his hand so that he would graduate from high school with 60% of his classmates rather than dropout with the other 40%. That they did not have complete control over his actions as an 18 year old?  That they were unable to offer their son more than they had as children?  I can't imagine that even the most brimstone and fire believers think these parents are to blame for, much less deserve, the loss of their child. Nevertheless, many without intimate knowledge of this family were able to hand down guilty verdicts to the grieving parents without the slightest understanding of why others want to assign blame to the person who actually pulled the trigger. 
          When black kids go awry, the media, the culture at large, even Barack Obama blame the parents.  It's part of the lazy negro narrative that was told to justify keeping blacks from attaining education and professional careers. Today black parents are blamed for their children falling victim to lack of access to all of the things outside of family that are needed to thrive in our society. Perceiving black families as not teaching their children right from wrong, as inherently flawed and misguided, allows us to believe that the hemorrhaging of young black men to violence and prison is a problem of their own making and there is nothing those with privilege and power can do about it.