Extended coverage of Ferguson

The shooting death of Michael Brown by a white police officer attracted national press, in part because it was a gruesome turn in a longer spate of similar events. Youth Radio set out to cover the trouble in Ferguson from a youth perspective, using different voices, media, and analysis for different components of the story. The incident renewed public consciousness about race, but not everyone felt the same way about the event.  In some environments, it served as a spotlight on the more subtle forms of racism existing among American whites.  Nineteen year-old Rafael Johns graduated from high school in a mostly-white suburb; he set out trying to expose certain mindsets that reaffirm racism, and recorded the conversations for Youth Radio Podcast.  Johns also analyzed social media dialogues referring to the racial profiling implied in many police shootings. While it was good to see youth getting involved, some internet memes - particularly the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown - began to shift into absurdity, a trend Johns saw as trivializing the reality of a grave problem. "I don’t find these images funny at all. The people posting them are using so-called humor to derail a conversation lots of white people aren’t comfortable with. I was excited to see young black people having a conversation about the media’s portrayal of youth murdered by the police. The attempts at humor felt invasive." These powerful stories and more are on Youth Radio.