Ferguson: Why can't we talk?

FERGUSON, Mo.— We put up barriers to ease our fears. Some, plywood and chain-link, like those in Ferguson, Mo., where residents await a grand jury decision in the shooting death of Michael Brown. Other barriers are invisible.

Blacks and whites still struggling to talk with each other about race, until the pressure builds and bursts.

Why is it so hard to just talk?

"The things that I've heard white folks say about black people. Even sometimes when it may be true, it hurts, that may be one reason people don't talk," Ted Douglas said.

"I don't know what it's like to be a black man when the police are hassling you, or what not, so I don't know where they're coming from. So I don't completely understand it," Mike Huffundick said.

Barriers. St. Louis University professor Norm White is constantly trying to break them down. The barrier of exclusion that silences blacks, or whites' fears of the being labeled racist for honestly expressing what's on their minds.

Perhaps the biggest barrier of all, is the separation in our neighborhoods.

"Not having that social interaction just creates this circumstance where it's really difficult to know how to talk to each other," White said.

"Even when the situation happened here, the lady that I work with, you know she's Caucasian, and she just asked me, 'How are you doing?' That's a human question, that's not a black and white question," Sharon Randal, a Ferguson resident, said.

"It's a matter of relationships," Ferguson resident, Paul Beins said.

"That's it. Relationships just willing to talk, and to know them," said Ferguson resident, Barbra Hughes.

A matter of fewer barriers, and more connections.