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Shelby Steeles new documentary, What Killed Michael Brown?, ostensibly focuses on the tragic case of a black teenager killed by a white officer in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. But what it tells us about cultural mythshow they develop and whygoes far beyond a single flashpoint.

A widespread inaccuracy about the Brown shooting is that he had his hands up and said Dont shoot just before he died. Its one of several myths that Steele, a Hoover Institution fellow at Stanford University and long-respected race scholar, calls poetic truth. People believe cultural myths, he says, not because they have examined evidence and found it credible but because they align with narratives theyve already bought into. They feel true. In Steeles illustration, the poetic truth is that systemic racism in the Ferguson Police Department created the environment that led to Browns death.

While President Barack Obamas attorney general, Eric Holder, found no evidence Officer Darren Wilson was motivated by race, he argued that because black people made up only 67 percent of Fergusons population but represented 85 percent of traffic stops, it was clear the police department was guilty of widespread bias. Fergusons mayor had another explanation: While the city may be two-thirds black, the racial makeup of the surrounding -communities is 90 to 95 percent black. People from all over this area come to Sams because there are no grocery stores, no Walmarts, nothing in North St. Louis City, and every one of those people come to Ferguson to shop, the mayor says. Statistically, who do you think is driving down those roads?

Steele says the danger in favoring poetic truth over objective truth (or, broad theories over specific details) is that it traps us into solving the wrong problems. For Christian viewers, its especially valuable how he lays out his thesis through two different churches.

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Truth and myth in Ferguson | WORLD News Group - WORLD News Group