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 What Went Wrong With Sean Bell
By K.B. McDavid
I know I should be outraged by the shooting of Sean Bell, but I am a different type of Negro. The police kill Black men it is in the job description  keep the Darkies at bay. But two things did really upset me this past week.
The first thing was the New York Daily News having the nerve to question, just two weeks after the Sean Bell murder, why City College of New York would have a center named for Assata Shakur. It is so funny how obtuse mainstream  my code word for White America can be. To Black America, Assata Shakur symbolizes the fight against police violence and hence is an icon for what she has done. ICON. After the Bell murder and the ridiculous assertion by the police that there was a fourth man in the car, I don t understand why mainstream America would not understand why a College in Harlem, the Black capital of the world, would honor Assata Shakur, an ICON of the Black community. It is just stupid and insulting for the New York Daily News to run the story on its front cover. It is even sadder that no one called them on it.
The second thing that got to me this week was hearing the mainstream media phrase  What went wrong with Sean Bell constantly verbalized by television newscasters. It is a sick phrase. Sean Bell is no longer a person but a situation, an occurrence, a happening. What went wrong with Sean Bell I am certain that there are a lot of Black people who would love to be in my position to answer that question. What went wrong with Sean Bell Let me give you my list.
1) Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock
2) Puritans established a system of crime and punishment based on a sick and twisted moral code
3) Slavery
4) The continued exploitation of Black labor through the creation of Prison Slavery which was created with the 13th Amendment
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States Slavery as punishment for a crime is as American as apple pie.
5) The development of a Social System
that has been set up to generate a constant supply of Black labor for the prison system From public school teachers to the police, the System does the job it is supposed to do.
The problem is no longer race. The Bell shooting involved a Black and Latino officer. The problem is the System. Black America needs the police. Unfortunately, Black America is akin to a child stuck with a pedophile as a parent in exchange for protection we are constantly subjected to mental and physical abuse let us not forget Justin Velope and his plunger.
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Cubas Rap Vanguard Reaches Beyond the Party Line
Kidnappings in the Niger Delta have often moved world oil markets, analysts say
Iranian President Ahmadinejads allies in black Hasidic Jews
Hamas says Abbas wants war
Military Considers Sending as Many as 35,000 More U.S. Troops to Iraq, McCain Says
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No Shame, No Gain
By Justin Mitchell
Cases of police brutality always put ordinary, hardworking black folks in a compromising situation. Were sick and tired of being preyed upon by people who look like us, if only for practical reasons. Forget any noble notions of black brotherhood. Many of us just dont want to be confused with our desperate, underclass neighbors out of fear that the police, whose powers of discernment remain woefully inadequate, might make us the target of their next confused fusillade. This, rather than any genuine affection for AfricanAmericans, was the real spirit behind Bill Cosbys now infamous
Pound Cake Speech. The question, of course, for the black bourgeoisie has always been how can we as honest, productive members of society distinguish ourselves when all most people, cops especially, are able to see is our blackness
When I walk through Brownsville Brooklyn everyday on my way to and from work, I dont feel any safer from the cops than the local thugs. My sophisticated sartorial tastes, my consciously unthreatening gait, my cleanshaven facesurely these things are too subtle for the average New York City Police officer to detect, or, at the very least subordinate to my obvious racial affiliation. The black underclass has always been our evil twin. Yet one cant help but be troubled by recent trends.
Ever since gangster rap rose to prominence as the acme of AfricanAmerican popular culturea sad state of affairs indeedthe idea that blackness and criminality are inextricably intertwined has become even more pervasive, more deeply entrenched in the American psyche. Rather than resist the signifiers of criminality, black people of all ages now unabashedly embrace them. They dress and act like the professed criminal entertainers they see on television. They are not made to feel the slightest sense discomfiture or shame for
cursing at their elders,  fathering children out of wedlock, or shooting each other over petty disputes. They happily portray themselves as fools by dismissing anything of intellectual value, diplomas in particular. Yesterdays deviant behavior is todays normative behavior.
The recent shooting of three unarmed black men by police in Queens rightfully has the citys black community upset. But one wonders what would happen if we raised this kind of hell over education, over the degrading images of women shown on BET, or, perhaps most importantly, over black men killing each other. Because to tell you the truth, when nearly all of the countrys ten most dangerous cities have majority black populations, we have a lot more reason to fear ourselves than even the most trigger happy white guy in a blue suit.
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Contagious Shooting
By Beth Beatrice Smith
I was asked to write a piece on the human rights aspects of the Sean Bell story. But this is all I can say.
ALLEGEDLY  during questioning following the incident, two of the officers involved could not remember how many shots they fired at the scene two other offices remembered firing shots but did not know how many one of the two who recalled firing was responsible for 31 of the 50 bullets used that night, after emptying and reloading his gun during the barrage one of the three Black men struck was overheard earlier in the evening telling someone to go for his gun.
THE PROBLEM extends beyond race or a historical clash between policeperson and civilian the problem is that in todays society, people are so quick to act to reactthat they dont think, even when theres time to do so. Then, when a scenario like the one outside Club Kalua in the early hours of November 25th presents itself, people seem to have no option but to fall victim to what has been coined as contagious shooting.
IN THE UNITED STATES, we read of incident after incident involving men or women drawing guns in a heated moment to settle conflict or confrontation. We read of officers firing when initially unsure of the actual imminent danger but yet following procedure as they shoot to kill to defend themselves.
IS CONTAGIOUS SHOOTING a phenomenon that only fuels existing issues of race and class conflict in our country Or is it a result |
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Wire Lesson 1: Stop Being Stewpid
By Vasco Bridges III
Chief editor of Diseducation.com
If you havent seen The Wire, the show is the story of the Heroin trade in Baltimore, told from every vantage point possible from the dope fiend to the mayor from the cops to the hustlers. Despite the wealth of story lines and characters, theres one common theme throughout the show cops are stupid.
This season, thanks to the ineptitude of the Baltimore Police, one young boys house is burned to the ground and his foster mother critically injured, an old preacher is unwillfully stopped, searched and fondled by officers on suspicion of drug possession, and a reformed dope fiend tries to kill himself because a cop cant live up to his promise of protection. The cops help send wellmeaning kids from the schoolroom to the street corner. They send a budding businessman to a group foster home.
As Baltimoreans would say: Cops are stew-pid
Now I hear you saying, Vasco, calm down, The Wire is only fiction. True. But current events only prove the point:Tempe, AZ
Local police have come under fire for an episode of a policeproduced local public access cable show called Tempe Street Beat where police reenact their own version of COPS. In the episode in question, Sgt. Chuck Schoville pulls over two Black men in a mall parking lot. He first asks for a name and ID from the driver and then asks the two men if they know how much the fine is for littering. The officer then tells the men that they can avoid getting a littering ticket if the two of you just do a little rap.
This is craziness. Whether its a punishment of death, pain or embarrassment, local police officers are making residents, especially residents of color, pay. Its not policework, but simple ineptitude that leads to this horrible decision making.
So lets examine the moronic nature of the cops.
How many local police officers actually went to college Graduated The NYPD requires 60 units of college classes from applicants?but what kind of college student studies differential calculus, physics and european literature, only to enlist as a cop to hail traffic during the Puerto Rican Day Parade Not a very bright one.
Police officers were the kids in high school who wanted to shoot guns, but had a moral conscience about breaking the law...so they found a way to do it legally. They were the dumb jocks who enjoyed the status of being important, but had nothing substantial to back it up. The smart jocks where the ones who became the criminals and investment bankers of today.
No wonder we cant find the people who shot Biggie and Tupac.
Black people come in all shapes, sizes, colors and creeds. We are doctors, lawyers, actors, rappers and athletes. But the one thing we share is a distrust andor hatred for the police. Those lumbering, donuteating, gunplanting idiots who are supposed to protect and serve but seem to do neither very well. They kill men on the way to marriage, shoot old ladies, taser protesting students and embarrass us all for the world to see. Why should we trust them
I wont go as far to quote NWA but I think you get my drift. Local police are the most narrowminded, imbeciles in America and until they earn my trust and respect, they will never get it.
The Wire has opened my eyes.
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