So, yes, I understand the anger and consider it justifiable. (Not the looting, though. I heard St. Louis Alderman Antonio French on the radio saying that the white community would be wrong to consider it thuggery and leave it at that. French is smart and thoughtful, and all things are complicated, but looting as a form of righteous protest is beyond me. Maybe it’s an autostereogram.)

But here is where I really get lost: Why not get angry at all the other killings?

When a community gets together and rises up, it has power. In this case, the authorities are not going to be able to sweep this shooting under the rug. No way. Authorities in Detroit were not able to ignore the shooting of that 19-year-old woman.

And yet, had that young woman been shot a couple of hours earlier by a young black man, it would not have been big news.

Had Michael Brown been shot a couple of hours later by a young black man, his killing would have been scarcely noted. Not by the media, and not by the black community. No marches, no protests, no nothing.

It is not condoning police shootings to point out that they constitute a minuscule fraction of the shootings that ravage black neighborhoods. It’s not the cops, and it’s not the Klan. It’s the residents themselves.