I grew up in St. Joseph, Missouri, San Francisco, and Shawnee, Kansas. These three places are drastically different from one another for several reasons. Besides having superior barbecue, in Kansas and Missouri my neighborhoods were almost entirely made up of Caucasian people. I can count on one hand  the number of black students that were in my honors high school classes in Kansas. Conversely, while living in San Francisco my best friends were Filipino-American, Japanese-American, African-American and Arab-American.

Ferguson is a short 3-hour drive from my home in Kansas City.  I recently moved to Taiwan and even though I am thousands of miles away I can still feel the tension.

I have a friend whose father is white and has worked in the police force in STL for decades; he feels that white police officers have been judged too harshly. I have several friends from college who are black and are so