The killing of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson has sparked violent confrontations and shattered any illusions of racial harmony in Barack Obama’s US. As the standoff continues, the deep grievances fuelling the protests have been laid bare

Last week, a brutal midday sun beat down on Ferguson, Missouri, and brought it slowly to the boil. The temperature has barely fallen since.

Before the apocalyptic scenes of troops, teargas and “less lethal” bullets turned this town of just 21,000 into an international spectacle, a man who gave his name as HB quietly sprinkled Remy Martin cognac on the spot on the residential side road where his young friend Michael Brown had been shot dead on 9 August. Six bullets from a policeman’s pistol meant that Brown, who was 18, would never grow old enough to drink his favourite brandy in a bar. “We are in so much pain,” HB told me. “We’ve got to tear shit up. And it ain’t going to stop until we get some kind of justice. We need to stop these white cops.”

His threat might have been easily dismissed that sunny afternoon as the idle talk of the grieving and vengeful. But more than a week later, just about the only thing clear through the fog of noxious gas clouding Ferguson’s streets is the burning, implacable rage of Brown’s peers against the police and their political masters in this northern suburb of St Louis.

The notion may have taken hold among some elites on America’s coasts and European capitals that the US led by Barack Obama has entered some kind of cheerful post-racial era; that the new challenge, after the great recession, is colour-blind income inequality. Yet 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and six after the election of the first African-American US president, hundreds of young black men this month have taken to the streets of a midwestern suburb to deliver a cathartic roar against the overwhelmingly white authorities that they blame not only for murdering their friend, but for ruining their lives.

Brown, who was unarmed, was shot dead by Officer Darren Wilson, who is white, in sharply disputed circumstances. Brown and a friend were told by Wilson to move from the road to the pavement as they walked back from a convenience store. Police say that Brown assaulted Wilson; several witnesses say that the 18-year-old was shot while trying to flee a struggle. Both regional authorities and the federal government are investigating potential charges.

“Mike Brown was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” DeAndre Smith, a 30-year-old barber and salesman, told me as he retreated with his girlfriend through teargas from an advancing police line during clashes on Sunday night. “That’s when we said this is enough. That’s it.”

“This is a revo-fucking-lution,” Smith added, prompting an order from his partner not to curse. “Plain and simple, this is the revolution. The one everybody was waiting on. It happened like this. By a people who want respect. African American people in this country.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Demonstrators gesture with their hands raised in protest at the shooting of Michael Brown. Photograph: Lucas Jackson

The reaction intensified last Friday when police released a report and surveillance footage of Brown allegedly shoplifting cigars and aggressively confronting the shopkeeper minutes before he died. Police admitted that the theft had nothing to do with Wilson confronting the 18-year-old, leaving Brown’s family incensed that their son was being posthumously smeared as a black criminal who had somehow got what he deserved.

As the days of protests wore on, the police presence, followed by a midnight curfew order by governor Jay Nixon and the arrival of the US national guard to help quell urban unrest for the first time in a generation, persuaded hundreds of the more peaceful protesters seeking justice for Brown to stay at home or leave the streets as night fell on West Florissant Avenue, the main drag where clashes raged. But a hardcore of 200 or so young men refused to be quietened. They turned out repeatedly, sometimes vandalising and looting shops. They threw rocks, bottles and occasionally molotov cocktails at the police lines, leading to dozens of arrests. One night, police chiefs claimed, a small group perched with their guns atop a barbecue restaurant, waiting for the police to advance so they could pick them off. There are few crimes taken more seriously in America than the killing of a police officer.

“There is a small group of people who cannot be defined as protesters or demonstrators. They are more like fighters, rebels or insurgents,” Antonio French, a local alderman who has turned out night after night to monitor the demonstrations and was forced to spend one in a police cell, has said on Twitter.

“St Louis is rising up,” Al, another protester, tells me. “This was one of the last states to abolish slavery. Well, you know what? They never got round to abolishing it. These are the slaves today and these,” he says, pointing at the police, “are the damn owners.”

Dozens of black protesters and residents say that they see the crisis in Ferguson as a moment of reckoning after years of abuse. The preachers, peacekeepers and community leaders working to keep demonstrations in check, through sweltering heat, sirens and barking of police dogs, do not disagree.

“There are people around America who still have no idea, who can’t begin to understand, what these young guys are going through,” Pastor Herbert Thompson Jr tells me. “I compare it to my wife going through childbirth. I can see her enduring it, but I can’t truly feel what that is.”

Thompson goes from group to group of young men with bandanas around their mouths, placing his hand on their shoulders and telling them that he identifies with them, that he feels their pain, and tries to persuade them that their voices can be heard. “But they feel that the entire system is stacked against them. All of it. And until they started confronting the police and throwing stuff at them and getting gassed and shot at, none of you outsiders were interested in them. So they are going to carry on.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The ultimate badge of honour … a protester throws a tear-gas canister back at police on West Florissant, Ferguson. Photograph: Robert Cohen/AP

Squaring off against a faceless presence of militarised police officers, looking like something from a video game with their armoured trucks, grenade launchers and assault rifles, has become a nightly ritual. Hurling back at the police a canister of their tear gas – which, I can confirm, leaves your face burning, eyes and nose watering, and lungs struggling – has become the ultimate badge of honour. After a week of violent clashes, the entire US cable news industry has descended on Ferguson, broadcasting live from the frontline, which appears to relish its starring role in prime-time.

The complaints of young black men in Ferguson are borne out painfully by the official statistics. Figures published last year by Missouri’s attorney general showed that seven black drivers were stopped by police in the town for every white driver, and that 12 times as many searches were carried out on black drivers as white, despite searches of white people being far more likely to turn up something illegal.

Standing opposite the spot where Brown was killed, David Whitt, 34, is keen to recount a recent indignity that he says crystallised everything wrong with the relationship between the authorities and residents. After he had returned from the supermarket one evening, he quickly realised that he had made a mistake and would have to head back out on his bicycle.

“I forgot the Pampers for my two-year-old son,” says Whitt. “I had to take back some groceries, cos we needed a couple of extra dollars. We’re broke people.”

As he pedalled back to the shop with his receipt, he sensed a car approaching from behind and heard a crushingly familiar sound. “He put the siren on,” says Whitt. “Whoop, whoop!” A police officer asked Whitt what he was doing in the area. He wanted to see his identification, and rifled through his shopping bag to see what he was carrying. Then, he ran Whitt’s name in search of outstanding warrants.

“I told him: ‘That’s illegal. You’re violating my rights,’” says Whitt. “‘I have not broken the law. You ain’t got probable cause for nothing.’ He told me: ‘I can cite you for not wearing a helmet.’”

Whitt was eventually allowed to go, but was left incensed. “I wanted to shoot that motherfucker,” he says, “because he had no right to bother me.”

The penalties issued for minor offences uncovered during these stops make up almost a quarter of the town’s annual revenues, leading to resentment that poorer residents are being milked to fund the salaries of white bureaucrats. Some say that one of the defining sights of Ferguson comes on the days when traffic court is in session: a queue of black residents wrapped around the block, waiting their turn to be punished by a white prosecutor in front of a white judge.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A boy adds a slogan on a pavement in Ferguson about the death of Michael Brown. Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters

It matters that the authorities imposing this regime do not resemble the community they police. While the town’s population is 67% black, 50 of Ferguson’s 53 police officers – 94% – are white. Ferguson is led by a white mayor, James Knowles, who since the crisis erupted has relentlessly defended his police officers. Five of the city’s six councillors are white and only one is black.

Such alienation has convinced many residents to opt out of the system. Knowles was elected in April on a turnout of just 1,350 – less than 10%. One city councillor was elected in 2011 with just 72 votes. Voter-registration drives quickly followed Brown’s death.

No one I speak to in Ferguson draws much comfort from the coming to power of Obama, who since entering the White House has seemed to go to great lengths to avoid racialising his presidency. After making excruciatingly cautious remarks about the crisis, Obama returned to his holiday on Martha’s Vineyard, leaving his attorney general, Eric Holder, to travel to Ferguson on Wednesday.

Patricia Bynes, a Democratic committeewoman for Ferguson, concedes that the failure of black residents to vote in local elections has perpetuated the problem. But, she says, many “don’t show up because they are too busy working out how they are going to eat and feed their families the next day”. More than a fifth of Ferguson’s residents live under the federal poverty line. The recession punished black Americans disproportionately. The median net worth of black households in the US, at just $6,446, is lower than it was 30 years ago in real terms, while white households’ net worth is roughly 14 times as much, an increase of 11% in the past three decades.

Facing a crumbling education system – now led by a white superintendent, after his popular black predecessor was fired last year – and few opportunities for good jobs amid the long-term industrial decline of parts of the American midwest, many of Ferguson’s young men say they see no way out. They reacted with sharp hostility towards the millionaire rapper known as Nelly, a St Louis native, who rolled into town this week with his entourage to show his support for the Brown family and to urge protesters to remain peaceful. “You got options,” he promised a boisterous crowd. “You got options – you’re rich,” Richard Vantreece, 22, shouted back at him.

Dozens of leftwing demonstrators, most of them white, have flocked to Ferguson from other cities across the US, such as Chicago, New York and California, saying they see the Ferguson protests as the frontline of the broader struggle against inequality that prompted the birth of the Occupy movement in 2011.

But the catalyst for the clashes was the shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old. And, as the immediate reaction inevitably subsides after these exhausting days, so may they be reignited if justice is not seen to be done, protesters and community figures warn. “I’m not confident about this ending any time soon,” says Thompson, the pastor urging calm. “If this officer is not arrested, doesn’t have to go through the due process of law, then we’re going to see demonstrations on an unimaginable scale. We are sitting on a powder keg.”