Stefannie Wheat carried this sign about her adopted hometown town all the way to the White House in October.
Stefannie Wheat carried a yard sign all the way from her Midwestern town to the nation’s capital. She visited the White House and tucked it into the guard rail.
“I Love Ferguson,” it said.
It was mid-October and her beloved city turned restive after the police shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown. Businesses were boarded up and losing money, protests had on occasion turned violent and anxiety had spread through the city of 22,000 people northwest of St. Louis.
Ferguson, the quiet community she chose to make home, had become synonymous with racism, injustice and police brutality. Wheat wanted to scream.
Her Ferguson was not what it had become in the headlines.
For this 45-year-old white woman, things were far more complex than they appeared in the news. The world that she, like many others, saw as black and white had morphed into myriad shades of gray over the years.
She has been married to Ken, who is black, for almost two decades. She adopted Christopher, a black child from a foster home. In eight years, he will turn 18, Brown’s age at the time of his death, and embark on life in a world she knows is still full of hate.
She raised him in a biracial home and tried to make race a nonissue. She wanted Christopher to grow up colorblind, even though America wasn’t.
But after Brown’s death, she couldn’t shield him from race or anger anymore.
Ferguson changed overnight into what she describes as a poster child for the nation’s racial woes.
Source: CNN | Moni Basu
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