What Daunte Wright’s Killing Foretells for the Suburbs
The death of Daunte Wright, a Black motorist killed by police in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, is a window into the future of civil-rights conflict in America. That Black Lives Matter was launched after a police shooting in a similar community outside St. Louis—Ferguson, Missouri—is not a coincidence. Both Brooklyn Center and Ferguson are small, older suburbs. Both have become racially and economically segregated, and much poorer, over time. Both are perfectly tailored to produce inequality, discrimination, and, ultimately, conflict between their citizens and the institutions shaping those citizens’ lives—institutions that include local government and police.
Metropolitan regions across the country are producing hundreds of suburbs where similar problems prevail. The Fergusonization of parts of suburbia threatens the well-being of those communities’ residents and damages the fabric of American society.
