Review of What Killed Michael Brown?

In this engrossing film, Shelby Steele sets out like a gumshoe detective to reconstruct the world in which Michael Brown found himself that day of August 2014, as a young member of the black underclass in Ferguson, Missouri. Beginning with the poor black urban communities of the 1940s, Steele traces their transformation through the programs of post-1960s Liberalism, and all its good intentions which culminated in Michael Brown's public housing project and the neighborhood which influenced many of the fateful choices he made. Steele approaches his subject from many angles, drawing from a variety of witnesses, community leaders, social historians, newsreels, and the accounts of beleaguered residents of Ferguson--black and white--who have survived in the chaotic aftermath of Michael Brown's death. Steele allows the people who were there to tell the story in their own words. Ultimately, this Film is a lesson on history, human nature and power politics. Steele offers no easy solutions, but a wise and rational way forward for a nation which remains engulfed in the flames of conflict over race.