I am Sean Bell

Hi everyone,
Hope your finishing up finals with a minimal amount of stress. Below is my final for this class which Kathy asked that I post. I'm meeting more and more people who aren't familiar with Sean Bell and I encourage you if you are not familiar with the case to read about it and draw your own questions about the type of country and world we are living in.



I am Sean Bell

How many shots does it take to kill a person? One? Four? Forty-One? Fifty? It took one bullet to the chest to kill 26-year-old Patrick Dorismond. It took one bullet to the chest to kill 19-year-old Timothy Stansbury. It took four bullets to the back to kill Ousmane Zongo. It took 41 bullets to kill 23-year-old Amadou Diallo. It took 50 bullets to kill 23-year-old Sean Bell. How many shots does it take to kill a person? How many shots does it take for a police officer to kill a black man in New York City? One? Four? Forty-One? Fifty?
I saw a man shot and killed. I was in Alexandria, or “Alex,” a black township outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. I was walking with a friend through a market after lunch when we heard yelling from behind us. As we turned, a crowd of maybe 30 people rushed towards us. My friend grabbed my hand, yelled something in Zulu and pushed me around the corner of a building. We crouched. The crowd cleared. A black man ran past followed by two white cops with guns. With no warning there was a blast, then another, and another. The man stopped running. It took thirteen bullets to kill.
On an overcast Sunday in Harlem, two days after three detectives from the New York City Police Department were found not guilty of manslaughter and reckless endangerment after firing 50 shots into unarmed Sean Bell, a group of approximately 150 black people and one white person peacefully protested along Malcolm X Boulevard. As I stood with my black neighbors and listened to demands of justice, cries of anger, and moans of disbelief, I clung to the gentleman’s hand I was holding and cried. I cried for everything I do not understand. I cried for the anger inside me. I cried for a country that I want to believe in but cannot. I cried for a police system that cannot be trusted and a judicial system that delivers injustice. I cried for the body of a dead man I did not know. And with tears streaming down my face and my breathe coming in short uneven gasps, the man, whose hand I was grasping so tightly, offered me a handkerchief and told me, “You can cry, but Sean will not be the last, you may not want to waste those tears.”
As I gathered myself and the crowd moved forward down the street named after a man who was shot seven times and killed, a man with a young boy on his shoulders passed. The child held in his hand a sign with the words, “I am Sean Bell.”*
I am Sean Bell. I am white living in the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City. I am Sean Bell. I am middle class and college educated; I am Sean Bell. I am a woman; I am Sean Bell. I am a human being that believes in nonviolence. I am a human being deeply concerned. I am concerned about police brutality. I’m concerned about domestic violence. I am concerned about war and torture. I am concerned that we live in a world so inundated with violence that it no longer fazes us. I am concerned that another dead black man is just another dead black man. I am a human being that questions why two black cops and one white fired 50 bullets into an unarmed 23 year old who is only a year older than me. I am a human being but I am concerned because I am questioning what that means.
According to a 2006 United States Department of Justice Special Report, approximately 422,000 people 16 years old and older were estimated to have had contact with police in which force or the threat of force was used during 1999. The same report also highlights that in 2002 26,556 "citizen complaints" were filed at state and local law-enforcement agencies throughout the country. However, in only 8 percent of these cases was punitive action against the accused officer suggested and/or executed. These are the numbers of people who filed a complaint. In a report compiled by Human Rights Watch entitled, Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States, only 30% of people who have experienced police brutality in some capacity have filed a formal complaint.
I live in a city and a country where law enforcement is not just mistrusted by the black population, it is feared. To have black skin you are guilty until proven innocent. In 1999 when Amadou Diallo was gunned down by 41 bullets fired from four white cops, the murder was seen as a case of racial profiling. The racist undercurrent that fuels the NYPD was dragged through the media, city streets, and neighborhoods throughout the city. Waves of protest crippled city streets and the name Diallo is forever synonymous with racism and police brutality. As Diallo reached for his wallet, the police, assuming that a young black man in New York City carries a gun, opened fire and killed him. Nine years later Sean Bell still falls victim of racial profiling and racism in the police force however; two of the three cops responsible for his death are black. Unlike the shooting of Diallo, the media is presenting the Sean Bell case through the prism of police misconduct not through the lens of race. But regardless of the color of the shooting officers, Sean Bell died because he was a black man. It is a case of police brutality. It is case of extreme violence. It is a case of racism. Detective Michael Oliver, a white man, fired 31 bullets - he reloaded his gun. Look how far we have come since 1999 people say. This isn’t a case of racism, that’s behind us, black cops fired at Bell too. If Bell had been a white man would the police have been so quick to assume he had a gun? Would they fire 50 times? This is a case about the perceptions of black men. This is a case about shooting first and asking questions later. How many shots does it take to kill?
I teach high school students documentary film production in an after school program. One of my students says she is so used to the sounds of gunfire in her neighborhood that she hardly notices it anymore. Her family lives on the fourth floor of a building in the South Bronx. My student’s best friend lives on the first floor of a building in the same neighborhood and has had seven bullets shatter her home. My student is 16 and is tough. She says guns do not scare her and she is not afraid to die. We talked about Sean Bell. “The police will fuck anybody up if they feel like it, but that’s how it is. If I see one, I simply walk the other way, that’s just how it is.” She is 16 and she says she is not afraid to die. She is 16 and she is not afraid to die. She is 16.
I don’t want to live in a country where a 16 year old goes to sleep to the sound of gunfire. I don’t want to live in a country where a 16 year old has to act tough or be embarrassed to say she spends nights on the phone with her best friend telling each other stories of the trips they will take to Japan together as they fall asleep to the sound of each others voices and the gunshots in the background. My student’s brother and two uncles are in jail. How can it be that black men comprise 13 percent of the national population, but 30 percent of people arrested, 41 percent of people in jail, and 49 percent of those in prison? Where is the justice? What is justice? Sean Bell died because he was a black man. In this country black men are disposable. Black women loose their husbands, brothers, and sons. Black children loose their fathers. And the white population sleeps better at night. And we don’t want to talk about it but I do and I am infuriated. Some of my fellow white Americans would say that I’m being too harsh, that this is not always the case, things are not that “black and white.” These are bold statements I’m making but someone has to say them. It’s not everyone my fellow white American’s would claim. And I do truly want to believe that but I’m questioning.
What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to see someone without the lens of race? We cannot. Black skin means fear, means doubt, means you walk on the other side of the street, it means you lock your car doors in certain neighborhoods, it means you shoot first, it means you shoot 50 times. I do not think every white person in this country hates black people. I don’t even think a small percentage of white people in this country hate black people. What I do think is we are all to blame in the death of Sean Bell. By allowing these shootings to go unquestioned we all shot Sean Bell. By teaching our black children to be rappers and basketball stars in order to get out of the ghetto, we shot Sean Bell. By being impressed when a 15-year-old girl from Harlem is “actually articulate,” we shot Sean Bell. By not demanding that the resources in black and Latino inner-city schools be the same as white suburban schools, we shot Sean Bell. By not knowing the history of this country, the slave trade, or colonialism, we shot Sean Bell. By being quiet and comfortable, we shot Sean Bell.
The media wanted an outrage when the Sean Bell Verdict was read. 1000 police officers were present outside the courtroom, as Justice Arthur J. Cooperman of the State Supreme Court read, not guilt, not guilty, not guilty. Fingers hovered over camera record buttons, microphones quivered, as the media waited for the response, the black response. But nothing came. There were no unruly mobs, there was no violence, and thousands did not pour into the streets. But the black population took another bullet on Friday. The white population took another bullet. The country took another bullet. One in the heart, one in the mind, and one in the soul.
As the media questions where the public outcry is, reports like the one from National Public Radio entitled, “New York Largely Unmoved by Sean Bell Verdict,” suggests New Yorkers have finally rolled over and given up. “Acting White” blogger James Collier, a black man, suggested on NPR that 50 shots is poor marksmanship and says that shooting Bell was somewhat justifiable because he was drunk behind the wheel of a car. I just took another bullet. This country just took another bullet. If I were drunk driving would I be shot? Black writer Trey Ellis, in the same NPR discussion, talks about cynicism. He is not surprised by the seemingly quiet verdict because this type of behavior is expected from the NYPD whom we hold to a lower standard according to Ellis, black men are shot in New York City regularly. I want to scream. How is this possible! How can we hold police officers to a lower standard and accept that black men are just going to be shot in New York and no one is going to care. How can we hold the men and women who are sworn to serve and protect us to a lower standard than we hold ourselves? Don’t we all deserve the same level of respect and dignity? Aren’t we all human? I scream, what does that mean? NPR, I care. I AM MOVED.
People are questioning where the black leadership is? Reverend Al Sharpton is berating Barack Obama for calling for nonviolence and not being a strong enough voice of the black population. But if there is any hope for this country to move forward in our discussion of race we need not just black leaders standing up, we need everyone. Where is any type of leadership? What has Hillary Clinton said? We need somebody, anybody, to stand up and say that 50 bullets was 50 bullets too many! People expected Obama to stand up for the black community and I’ll agree he fell short as a candidate promoting change and conversation among the multi-races of America. But is should not just be Obama standing up. It should be Clinton, and McCain, and Bush. It should be every parent who has a child, every politician who represents his or her constituency, every teacher who has a student, every child who has a sibling, cousin, Aunt, or Uncle, every person who has a friend, loved one, or family, every person who wants to live in a country where people have the right to not be shot! How much longer are we going to let men, women, and children be killed because of the color of their skin? People are looking for leaders and we are in desperate need of someone, black, white, Latino, Asian, male, female, transgendered, whomever. Who is going to stand up and say enough is enough? Right now though we need to stop waiting around for a leader and begin to lead ourselves.
This is not just about Sean Bell. This isn’t just about police brutality. This is about the increasing amount of torture and violence in our world and how it is infiltrating how we live, how we see one another, how we think, how we move, how we breathe. This is about how we view one another with fear and assumptions. This is about how we communicate with each other and how we fail to do so. This is about my student in the Bronx. This is about my female students in South Africa who have to go to the community bathrooms as a group for fear of being raped in their own shantytown neighborhood. This is about my cousin in Iraq who is trained to kill brown skinned people. This is about not questioning injustices in the world because we are scared of failing. This is about being scared of the police, of arrest, of blacklists, of reputations. This is about being scared of our voices falling on deaf ears and the sound of silence when no voice is heard. This is about fear making hope seem impossible. This is about three bullets – one to the heart, one to the mind, and one to the soul. Three bullets to kill.
If we loose our ability to feel love, compassion, and happiness we take a bullet to the heart. If we loose our ability to think, to question, to speak, we take a bullet to the mind. If we loose our ability to hope, to dream, to clasp our hands together and pray for a better future, brown hand in white hand, black hand in red hand, then we take a bullet to our souls. We all took a bullet on Friday, April 25th, 2008 when the judicial system said 50 bullets in an unarmed black man goes unpunished. We can say the system is corrupt, that police training is inadequate; that there was a possibility Sean Bell was armed. We can also say no. I refuse to loose my voice. I refuse to be told that I don’t care that a black man needlessly lost his life. I refuse to sleep comfortably at night knowing that my neighbors, men and women I share walls with, laugh with, cook with, could just become another statistic, another disposable black American. If this was just a case of police brutality, that could have been me riddled with bullets on the Jamaica pavement. They would have shot me too. I could have been Sean Bell. I am Sean Bell. I am white. I am an American. I am a woman. I am Sean Bell and I refuse to take another bullet.