Using the method of class analysis, this paper analyzes whether Ferguson protesters are rich or poor or racist.

The Ferguson incident only reminded Americans of unpleasant memories. Historically, after the Lincoln administration abolished slavery, the de facto apartheid system called "Jim Crow Act" still existed in some American states, which was only broken in the civil rights movement in 1950s and 1960s. But today, according to a number of survey results, blacks may still be treated unfairly by the police, for example, they are more likely to be stopped and searched. In recent years, many black people have been killed by the police, but such things almost never happen to white young people.

The shadow of racial discrimination

Racial discrimination is a history that Americans can't avoid, or it hasn't completely entered history. Even if Americans have the first black president, it does not mean that racial discrimination has been eradicated in the United States. Annette Gordon Reid, a professor at Harvard Law School who won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2009, compared two examples in a column in the Financial Times. Earlier this year, white farmers in Band-Aid, Utah, many of whom were armed, protested against illegal actions by the federal government. The confrontation between federal officials and farmers was quite calm, and there was no conflict between the two sides. This incident was described by the international media as a beautiful talk. But in Ferguson, the death of the black boy Brown triggered a peaceful protest, and the government responded by sending a militarized police force similar to the invading army, who aimed their weapons at unarmed civilians. From this, Annette Gordon Reid concludes that in today's America, "blacks are not citizens in the full sense".

Take Ferguson town as an example, two-thirds of the residents are black, but only three of the town's 53 police officers are black; Five of the six members of the mayor of St. Louis and the city Council are white. The New York Times reported that at present, it is very common that the power structure is dominated by white people in towns with a majority black population in the United States.

But the Ferguson incident is an example after all. Although the incident exposed the shortcomings of human rights in American society, it cannot be used to deny the progress made by the United States in correcting institutional and cultural racial discrimination, let alone the overall protection of human rights such as freedom of speech, assembly, protest and demonstration. The international community should pay attention to the Ferguson incident, not just watching American jokes, but taking it as a reason to be "inferior" on human rights issues. Instead, we should take this as a mirror and look for ourselves.

In fact, the American media's reflection on the Ferguson incident is not limited to racial issues. An article published in the latest issue of Time magazine entitled "The coming race war has nothing to do with race" holds that this incident has made everyone speak out about race, but it has made Americans ignore a bigger problem: when the police choose overreacting targets, they are not so concerned about skin color, but more concerned about a more painful feature than Ebola virus: poverty. "Poverty is synonymous with criminals", and class contradictions can easily be covered up as racial discrimination.

Whether the conclusion of this article in Time Magazine is correct or not, it at least provides us with another perspective to judge the Ferguson incident: in many cases, in many places, the so-called ethnic, racial, ethnic and religious contradictions are, in the final analysis, class contradictions caused by the gap between the rich and the poor.