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The
Shooting of Sean Bell and the Resurgence of American Racism
By KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA
TAYLOR
Sean Bell was murdered and his two friends,
Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, were maimed by New York City
cops minutes after the trio finished celebrating Bell's marriage
the next day. The three were set up by undercover cops who were
looking for trouble in a bar in Queens; they were trapped in
their car desperately trying to leave the scene. New York's
finest pumped fifty bullets in their direction-twenty-one shots
hitting the car the three friends were in-invoking the ghost
of Amadou Diallo.
The NYPD is already leaking
and spreading lies to a willing press in hopes of shifting the
blame onto three unarmed, innocent Black men-as per usual. So
now we can read about the "sympathy shooting" explanation-likened
to how when one person in a room laughs then everyone starts
laughing: when one cop started shooting they all started shooting.
The cops and the media are bending over backwards to troll through
the histories of these men to bring up juvenile criminal records
that were supposed to have been sealed. We are fed uncorroborated
stories that Guzman bragged he had a gun. Predictably, in the
smoking carnage of the aftermath of the NYPD execution of the
three buddies no guns were found.
In many ways this case is just
another example of the racist police terror that grips most of
the inner cities in the United States. Police departments in
New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Dallas, and Philadelphia-to
only name the most egregious-have spent the better part of the
last two decades locked in corruption scandals from accusations
of torture and racism; to drug dealing and murder for hire; to
forced confessions and planting evidence, and battling lawsuits
against charges of police brutality and police misconduct.
Racist police practice remains
the main culprit for the disproportionate numbers of imprisoned
African-American men and women in the nation's jails and prison.
58 percent of all convicted drug felony cases involve African-American
men-even though Black men are only 6 percent of the national
population and 72 percent of all illegal drug users are white.
12 percent of Black men aged 25 to 29 years old are imprisoned
compared to 3 percent of Latinos and 1 percent of white men.
In 2002, there were 603,000 Black men in college compared to
791,600 Black men in prison. Black women are two and a half
times more likely than Latinas and four and a half times more
likely than white women to be imprisoned. In total, 49 percent
of the U.S.'s two million prisoners-in prison or in jail-are
African American. This is a shocking statistic considering that
Blacks are less than 13 percent of the entire United States population.
Legitimizing
Racism
The legal lynching of Sean
Bell certainly fits into the historical continuity of racist
police violence directed at African Americans. But racism against
Latino immigrants, Arabs and Muslims have also risen sharply.
The cold, hard facts are that the political rancor in Washington
amongst Democrats and Republicans about immigrants, so-called
border security, homeland security, and the War on Terror in
general has made racism permissible, tolerable and legitimate
all in the name of "political debate".
The racist backlash against
the nascent immigrant rights movement is not only embodied in
the neo-fascist Minutemen Project, but has also found expression
in a number of "state's rights" initiatives aimed at
rehabilitating Jim Crow segregation for Latinos and relegating
Latinos to second class citizenship. Since the mass marches
of last spring, several local ordinances have passed in favor
of English only laws, prohibiting the extension of social services
to the undocumented, and essentially criminalizing the undocumented-and
those who look like the undocumented-across the country. Local
officials and anti-immigrant activists have taken their cue from
Washington D.C., where politicians from both parties have blamed
the presence of immigrants in this country for everything from
unemployment, to low wages, to poor schools, and to placing an
undo burden on the social safety net-a ludicrous charge considering
the now two billion dollars a week the U.S. continues to plow
into a losing effort in Iraq. Both Democrats and Republicans
worked together to sanction the building of 700 mile long wall
along the U.S. and Mexican border-including liberal darling Barack
Obama who pitched in his vote for the wall as well. During a
heated race for a Senate seat in Tennessee Democratic Congressman
Harold Ford bragged, "I'm the only person on this stage
who has ever voted for an anti-illegal-immigration bill"
Congressman Tom Tancredo-an elected representative of the United
States government-recently compared the 65 percent Latino city
of Miami to a Third World country. He complained about Miami,
"the sheer size and number of ethnic enclaves devoid of
any English and dominated by foreign cultures is widespread.
Frankly, many of these areas could have been located in another
country. And until America gets serious about demanding assimilation,
this problem will continue to spread."
It is not only the racist nature
of the "debate" over undocumented immigrants that poisons
the atmosphere, but it is also the shrill anti-Arab and anti-Muslim
rhetoric that has been the political vogue since 9-11-with no
end in sight. Since 9-11 and the racist roundups of thousands
of Muslim men, it has been open season on Arabs and Muslims in
American society. According to a Washington Post poll taken
last March, a majority of Americans think that "Muslims
are disproportionately prone to violence." The same poll
found that one in four Americans has a negative view of Arabs.
A USA Today poll in August found that almost 40 percent of Americans
harbored some prejudice against Muslims and the same number favored
Muslims having to carry national identification cards.
This anti-Arab and anti-Muslim
racism has been sanctioned from the highest levels of government
as the Bush administration and the Democrats who support its
war efforts demonize and de-humanize the Arab "enemy"
to justify both the U.S. and Israeli destruction of Arab country
after Arab country. The unfathomable, genocidal deaths of 655,000
Iraqis since the war began in 2003 is only tolerable if the Iraqis
are viewed as having less humanity and less worth than the rest
of the world. Even as late into the war as 2005, there was a
30 percent increase in hate crimes perpetrated against Muslims.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) tracked 1,972
incidents against Muslims in 2005-the highest number since 1995
in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. According to
a study compiled by the University of Illinois, the wages of
Muslim men in the United States have dropped by 10 percent since
9-11.
Racism and
the State
Racism in American society
is hardly new, but there is a new respectability for it that
is sanctioned by the highest levels of government lending an
air of authority and legitimacy to the attacks on Latinos and
Arabs in our society. Racism has historically been used to divide,
distract and rule American workers. Today is no different.
Neither political party has solutions for the ongoing crisis
that all workers lives are mired in-unattainable healthcare,
rising taxes, low wages, raided pension funds, perpetual downsizing
and layoffs and general insecurity spurred on by unending wars
and an uncertain future. In the absence of a real political
program, the powers that be have opted for scapegoating and repression.
The resurgence of racism is
coupled with ever expanding police powers and the legitimization
of a "by all means necessary" approach to law enforcement.
From wiretapping to the purposely vague "enemy combatant"
label the Bush administration is not only preparing for battles
abroad but the inevitable conflicts at home. In other words,
not only has the Patriot Act allowed the Bush Administration
to follow and surveil perpetually suspect Muslim organization,
but the same laws are used to monitor and harass peace and anti-war
organizations. From Abu Grahib to Guantanamo to the South Side
of Chicago, to East L.A., to the streets of Queens where Sean
Bell was gunned down law enforcement has been allowed to roam
unchecked by city halls, state houses and the federal government.
It is inevitable that this
web of "respectable" racism directed at the undocumented,
Latinos, Muslims and Arabs would eventually entangle African
Americans. American racism is not like a water facet that can
be turned on for some and turned off for others. It is a continuous
stream that eventually gets everyone wet. In the 1990s in California,
tens of thousands of African Americans voted for the racist Proposition
187---an ordinance aimed at stripping immigrants of their access
to a wide range of social services. Blacks were told that the
presence of Latino immigrants-documented and undocumented-were
cutting into desperately needed resources for the Black community.
Of course the passing of Prop 187 did not increase resources
in the Black community it only helped to stoke general racial
animosity so much so that a few years later Proposition 209-a
California ban on affirmative action-passed resulting in thousands
of Black students being locked out of universities across the
state.
When Latinos buy into the stereotypes
that Blacks do not work as hard as immigrants, it helps to preserve
an atmosphere of finger pointing and scapegoating and divides
Latinos against a necessary ally. When Blacks and Latinos accept
the racist caricatures of Muslims and Arabs as terrorists it
only helps justify government spending on "security"
and law enforcement which in turn contributes to a "law
and order" atmosphere allowing the police, the military
and the border patrol to do "whatever it takes to keep us
safe"-including harassing, detaining and sometimes killing
Muslims, Latinos and Blacks. The American state has used the
scapegoating and demonization of undocumented immigrants and
Muslims to rehabilitate racial profiling after African American
protest in the late 1990s largely discredited the practice.
Fighting
Back
The attacks on these affected
communities has not only created victims but has also produced
resistance. The immigrant rights movement, which drew millions
of documented and undocumented workers onto American streets
in unprecedented numbers, is the most powerful example of this
dynamic. The movement was largely born out of reaction to a
proposed congressional bill which would have criminalized the
mere presence of the undocumented in the United States while
turning all Latinos into suspects.
But there have been smaller
expressions of resistance showing that the pieces for a generalized
movement against racism exist. Earlier this month when six imams
were handcuffed and herded off of a U.S. Airways plane because
some passengers complained the men made them "uncomfortable",
supporters organized a pray-in at the airline's ticket counter
at Reagan Airport in Washington, D.C. UCLA student, Mostafa
Tabatabainejad, was handcuffed and tasered in the school library
when he was profiled and asked to show identification and he
refused. In response to this blatant act of racism and police
brutality, two hundred students organized a protest against the
police tactics and anti-Muslim racism. When management at Smithfield
Foods fired 75 immigrant workers because they said the workers
social security numbers did not match federal data, nearly 1,000
Latino workers walked off the job to audible shouts of "justicia"
, "we want justice" and "no more abuse."
Within two days management caved reinstating most of the fired
workers and promising no reprisals for those who participated
in the wildcat. Finally, in the aftermath of the murder of Sean
Bell hundreds of Blacks took to the streets to demand justice
and an end to police brutality in the Black community. This
all just in the month of November.
The current debate and discussion
amongst activists and in movement circles on how to achieve "Black-Brown"
unity and collaboration are not simply abstract projections on
"can't we all get along". These are desperately needed
discussions on how to organize a movement based on the political
principles of solidarity and "an injury to one is an injury
to all." In fact that debate needs to be widened to include
Muslims and Arabs and white workers who are rapidly being disabused
of any false notions of privilege and power as their living standards
have followed everyone else's down a bottomless sink hole.
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes regularly on issues of race
and class for the International Socialist Review. She is author
of Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs: Racism in America Today
and Racism and the Criminal Injustice System. She can be
reached at keeanga2001@yahoo.com
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