Personalizing Sean Bell

At work, there are four of us that almost daily e-mail each other: out of boredom, the news of the day, who’s screwing who on the job (and got promoted for it). Two are female, one of Chinese and the other of Italian heritage, and CK who happens to be a 40-something white, gay male. He sometimes likes to goad us into feminist rhetoric with tricky comments like, “Women want it both ways,” and sends ridiculous Hillary-bashing cartoons. Other times, any of us can launch into or participate in a flurry of e-mail discussions on some pretty serious topics – openly and with refreshing frankness.

So I took it serious when CK sent me the following e-mail.

Subject: Bell verdict - All 3 officers aquitted

Mixed feelings about this... On the one had, the law hinges on intent and I don't think these police officers set out to kill this man. OTOH, as a police operation, it went so terribly awry that the participants should be held accountable.

I'm sure this is not over, with all the Civil lawsuits that will almost certainly follow.

Of the 3 defendants, only 1 of them is White, so how this pays [sic] out racially will be interesting as well.

My reply:

There may be a federal suit as well. I didn’t expect this city to convict anyway.

As for my opinion, I have little doubt what would have happened, or how race would have played out, if it had been my son who shot 31 times at a vehicle filled with unarmed white men. If my son had been brought up in a racially segregated environment ignorant of companionship, knowledge or respect for any other race but his own, yet forced to “work” with other races because of judicial ruling not civil or humane sensitivity, what then? Intent? – legal jargon, which hasn’t caught up with social reality.

That’s my opinion, because Sean Bell could have been my son, and I had my own child’s life to worry about day after scary day. I knew that the same police officers who out of their job, passion, and sincere concern went searching for and found my wandering three-year-old, could be the same cops who could one day shoot him down for wearing his pants too big, his hair too long and nappy, his wise-talking mouth too sixteen year old, his testosterone-filled jogging body too “suspicious.”

My New York-born son never returned after graduating from the Wahoo (sounds too close to “yahoo,” doesn’t it?) college, University of Virginia. He chose to make a life for himself in the antebellum South. I finally released my 20-plus-years-old held breath, and exhaled with a black mother’s huge sigh of relief.