“He probably charged.” “He was a thug.” “He shoplifted.” “He was holding a gun in a picture.”

There’s an undercurrent to these sentiments, an ugly idea at their spines that no one seems to be willing to say plainly: “He deserved to die.”

“He,” of course, is Michael Brown, an 18-year-old unarmed black man killed by a police officer Aug. 9 in Ferguson, Mo. His death has sparked a firestorm of reactions, some of them vocal, some of them violent and far too many of them openly racist.

In the week following the shooting, the community demanded answers the police were unwilling to give. Basic pieces of information, such as the name of the officer who shot Brown and the number of times Brown was shot, were withheld. The people of Ferguson took to the streets in protest, and the police responded with riot gear and assault rifles trained on their own citizens. 

The situation deteriorated fast. A mostly-peaceful protest was overshadowed by a faction of protesters who broke into businesses and stole from them. Members of the media were arrested for not exiting a McDonald’s quickly enough, then released without any explanation or the badge number of their arresting officers. The police used tear gas repeatedly. Protesters from out of the area arrived, looking to goad police into slipping up again. The governor of Missouri enacted a curfew. Images of protesters fleeing tear gas with their hands up flooded social media. 

A clear picture emerged from the city, a picture of a community where the citizens and police were opposing forces. This isn’t news for the citizens of Ferguson. This is their day-to-day reality, brought to a breaking point by the killing of an unarmed teen.

The Daily Beast reported that in 2009, the Ferguson police arrested a black man with the same first and last name as someone with an outstanding warrant. The officers refused to acknowledge their mistake, hit him while he was on the ground and even kicked him in the head. He was later charged with property damage for bleeding on the officer’s uniforms and is currently in the midst of a lawsuit against them. It’s an event that is absurd, almost cartoonish in its blatant injustice. 

Black citizens of Ferguson say they expect to be pulled over for driving while black. “Over 80 percent of stops [in Ferguson] in the past five years have been of black drivers, despite blacks only comprising about two-thirds of the population. But once stopped, blacks are more likely to be searched — and less likely to be found carrying anything illegal,” the Washington Post says. It is a reality of daily life for them, the people entrusted with their protection actively working as antagonists long before they broke out the tear gas canisters.

A large segment of white, privileged Americans close their eyes to this reality. 

The chorus of excuses for the officer who shot Brown, Darren Wilson, rose almost immediately after Brown’s death was first reported. Most white Americans have never experienced discrimination at the hands of the police, so some are unwilling to believe it could happen at all. This is why the mainstream media only jumped on the story when reporters were arrested and children were tear gassed.

That’s the easy narrative. It’s black and white, with clear villains and heroes. Intrepid reporters, militarization of the police gone too far – these aspects are absolutely worthy of attention. That police were so quickly able to turn a town into a nigh-authoritarian regime is especially concerning.

But there’s a more insidious part of the story that’s just as disturbing. It’s the little ways the police and the media tried to shift the focus onto Brown, what he may have done wrong, that are receiving less attention than they deserve.

The Ferguson police department was pretty stingy with information about the shooting, but they did not hesitate to let it slip that Brown was a suspect in a shoplifting case. (The police chief later said Wilson didn’t have that information.) A photo of Brown holding a handgun was widely circulated among media outlets. (He was unarmed at the time of the shooting.) He smoked weed and rapped about vulgar things occasionally. (It would be funny that people actually consider this a mark of his character, if the situation weren’t so hideously serious.) 

These carefully dropped anecdotes all play on white fear. They’re meant to somehow convince white America that Brown’s death was warranted.  And they’re working.

As of Sunday night, Darren Wilson had supporters who raised more than $235,000 for him via crowdfunding. Brown’s family had received more than $214,000 in donations. 

It’s a startling show of non-empathy, a clear statement that a large part of white America is comfortable with a status quo that results in the death of unarmed black men. 

They shouldn’t be comfortable. They shouldn’t be comfortable with a mentality that refuses to understand that our country is built on a foundation of racism and inequality. They shouldn’t be comfortable assuming their own experiences are universal. They shouldn’t be comfortable trusting the police who have historically abused their power over eyewitnesses to the shooting. They shouldn’t be comfortable celebrating the death of a black man. 

“I Support Darren Wilson.” Why sugarcoat it? “Michael Brown Deserved To Die.”