Vanity Fair:
I am afraid of the cops. Absolutely petrified of the cops. Now understand, I’ve never been arrested or held for questioning. I’ve never been told that I “fit the description.” But that doesn’t change a thing. I am afraid of cops the way that spiders are afraid of boots. You’re walking along, minding your own business, and SQUISH! You are dead.
Simply put, I am afraid of the cops because I am black.
I’m not as Black as Bell but I am the same height and weight and I know the feelings he describes.
Wow this guy is paranoid (the story about getting shot by the cops part). Although, I try to do some of the same things he mentions because it is simply considerate to store owners (taking hood off, hands out of pockets, etc.), and I’m an average sized white male.
How many white guys will give this writer advice on how he ought to feel? Any bets?
LOL Ummm..if you do the same things Bell does, how is he paranoid but you’re not?
Paranoia is when one has delusional feelings of prosecution.
One before you even posted this. 🙂
Seriously.
“I am the same height and weight and I know the feelings he describes.” I don’t think you do.
I say go for it. I’m the same height and race as that guy and don’t experience any of those fears despite growing up in NYC. Not all white people or cops are bigots. 🙂
I wouldn’t presume.
I’m not black OR his height (though close), and I don’t have these feelings every day. Nevertheless, I assure you I know of these feelings. They came when a cop shone a flashlight in my face and put her hand on her gun because I was out for a walk with a couple friends on a night schedule, and there was a report of three men harassing someone in a park.
The cop asked where we’d been, and we went through the list of all the places we’d walked. Luckily, we didn’t mis-speak and say the wrong park name (they’re very similar) because it turns out a woman in her cruiser had been assaulted twenty minutes away (on foot). She threatened us and took our ID. Then she returned everything and let us go.
I now suspect the whole thing was a delaying tactic to give her time to shine the flashlight on each of us so a witness could get a good look at us. Thankfully, the witness recognized we weren’t the ones who’d hassled her.
What I don’t know is what happens to you when you’re made to feel them every time you’re out in public, and I can’t being to imagine how much that would screw up my thinking. Still, I know of some of these feelings.
This is why African-Americans feel hopeless. Because a guy can share a deeply personal truth about how his life is different from yours simply because of the color of his skin, about the additional dangers he faces that you don’t, and then you piss all over him with a comment that has absolutely zero thought and zero empathy behind it.
Well, like I said, his fantasy about getting shot by the cops is what makes him paranoid. I do the things I mentioned because it is considerate to others.
Being 6-4 has nothing to do with it. Police in Cleveland just shot and killed an unarmed 12 year old boy who was nowhere near 6 feet tall. I will let you all guess what color the kid’s skin was.
I know what it’s like to be the first American in a family of Jews who fled Poland, then fled Israel, then fled their own sanity. For some reason I was raised to be terrified when less than thirty feet away from any person of color. Possibly because they resembled displaced Palestinians in social status.
I was never someone for whom daily stop-and-frisks or an annual neighborhood-death-by-angry-cop-toll was a consideration.
Now imagine if that cop knew that she would suffer no penalty at all if she just shot all of you. In fact, she would probably be called a hero by many fellow cops and prosecutors and the meatbags on Fox News. And then imagine that cops were stopping you once a week.
What happened to you was really minor. You weren’t even beaten up or arrested. There are some innocent African-American men being let of out prison right now after 39 years because the key witness against them just came forward and admitted that cops pressured him into lying and giving false testimony against the accused.
How did you live in NYC and not get stopped at least once a week during stop-and-frisk?
BTW, most cops are bigots. That is part of police culture in the US. That is why even though everybody commits crimes at the same rate, cops mostly arrest African-American and Latino people.
And most European-Americans don’t have any idea what it is like to be anything other than a European-American. They are so clueless about racism, they don’t even call themselves European-Americans, even though everyone else is a Native American, African-American, Latin American, or Asian-American, etc. Instead, they use racism: white, black, red, yellow, etc. But they will tell you right to your face that they are not racist, because they are also ignorant of what racism is.
I don’t know that its accurate that crimes are committed at the same rate (murders certainly are not, but I think its true for things like selling drugs – for which black and latino people are arrested overwhelmingly more often).
I’d agree that there are plenty of racists and many of them are going to be cops by simple statistical probability which is enhanced by the demographic from which police officers are often drawn. My argument is essentially that (a) my being black doesn’t mean my opinions on race are beyond challenge, regardless of the race/gender/sexual-orientation/lactose-intolerance of the person challenging them and (b) there is no “Emperor of Black People” whose word on the so-called black experience is final and binding. I’d also like to say that many people will have a take on these questions that makes people uncomfortable – if they can convey their opinion respectfully and ask reasonable questions, I think it can be an enlightening experience for everyone whether or not they are “ignorant of what racism is”. Perhaps not ever being able to discuss any of these issues without being called racists keeps otherwise well-meaning people from being enlightened. I disagree that someone’s race or national origin means they don’t have the right to voice an opinion or ask a question about these issues. Just as I disagree that someone’s race or national origin makes them an expert on anything but their own personal experience.
For the record, I actually know plenty of black people who weren’t regularly harassed by cops growing up in NYC. And admitting openly that the plural of anecdote is “anecdotes”, not “data”, I’m growing tired of the same narrative that all black people are simple, hapless victims waiting to be saved; or that white people spend all of their collected free time trying to figure out how to oppress me personally. Neither of these is accurate but it seems to be the default attitude many people are taking.
tl;dr is: I don’t know all of the facts in Ferguson – nobody does. The sad thing is that we never will since one person never lived to tell their side of the story. I’m sure there are enough irregularities to have warranted another look.
How dare this man express his thoughts on the matter! Rarrr!
say do you have data to back that claim up, or is it just a fact in your book?
In many urban US cities it simply isn’t true — but likely due to the socio-economic differences between the richer and poorer classes.
Wait, you mean the one who had an air pistol in his hand and had removed the day-glow orange tip designed to prevent that exact situation?
I think orange is the important color, here.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/26/justice/cleveland-police-shooting/
Because his thoughts are poison. JohnDoey hit the nail on the proverbial head.
This isn’t a matter of just another person’s opinion. He is completely discounting another person’s feelings because he can’t believe they could possibly be true. And if they are, then that person is just crazy.
Next time T_Will should just not say anything.
So he deserved to die for taking the orange tip off of his toy gun? Is it that black and white for you? There is no in between? He couldn’t have been sent to his room without dinner? He had to be put down? What in the holy hell is wrong with some people?
Having now read the evidence that was presented to the Grand Jury in this case, the cop was correct to defend himself and shoot the assailant.
Unless anyone can present any other evidence to the Grand Jury, the police officer was correct, after giving many warnings right to shoot.
Until otherwise, and until evidence to the contrary is presented there is no case to prosecute the law officer.
He did not deserve to die. He did die because of actions he took and guns.
Well, thank you for telling me how I think and feel. Makes it much easier for me.
There’s a huge difference between “fantasy” and “fear”.
He lives in a country where one in three black males can expect to spend some time in jail during their life, in contrast with one in seventeen for white males. He’s hardly paranoid.
How do you know he’s paranoid? Have you ever been black? Or are you extrapolating from your own experience, and coming to the conclusion that a black person’s experience must be the exact same as yours?
Except that innocent black people DO get shot by the police quite a lot. It’s a fantasy TO YOU, because you’re white, and it won’t happen to you.
How dare this other man point out that the first man’s thoughts are misguided! RARRRR!
Only takes one bigot to screw up your life.
I’m not living in the US. I’m in Europe. Kids play with modified toy guns all the time. Somehow, they don’t get shot. In fact, the last time I remember the police shooting anyone in my country was about six years ago. It was national news for months. Just something to think about.
Keep in mind that this was not a decision about whether the cop did the right thing. It was a decision about whether he should be prosecuted. Normally, the barriers to that are very low, which is why in these kinds of cases, the decisions is made to go ahead with the prosecution in most cases.
his thoughts are poison? holy shit hyperbole much? he said he thought he was paranoid and that he does the same thing in shops out of courtesy.
i live in the deep, deep south — thats nowhere near poisonous.
its a fair opinion, non racist in the slightest, and the guilty white mob comes to silence him. the irony.
deserve has nothing to do with it, durr. but in today’s society of mass shootings and violence, no, you do not get to walk around pointing a gun at people and expect not to get shot by the police.
also, my point was this wasn’t racially motivated at all….yet the white guilty are trying to paint it as such.
depending on your nation your populace may not have access to firearms as americans do. you also don’t have the sheer number of mass or school shootings as we do in the US, which lowers our tolerance for pointing guns at people in public. and depending on your country, your officers may not even be armed. and they certainly aren’t militarized as they are here.
that i have to explain these things is absurd.
First of all, I’d like to thank you for attempting to invalidate my feelings. That tells me everything I need to know about you: You’re a total and complete tool.
Secondly, as I said in my message… that apparently you replied to without reading… I don’t pretend to know all of it. I have a thin slice of it. I also have something many humans, but not you, have called empathy which enables me to try to feel how others feel and empathize with them. I apologize for the circular definition there; maybe a dictionary would help you.
Thirdly, you’d have to understand the circumstances around the incident to know why it was so unbelievably inappropriate and an overreaction. But I’m done writing things you can’t be assed to read.
Finally, you should just generally quit being an asshole. When someone is trying to understand, “No you don’t!” is not a way to make friends. Thankfully, the cause is far too great for me to walk away from over you.
Shawn, the sentiment “I’m as Black as Bell but I am the same … and I know the feelings he describes” is one that you yourself would deride if someone else wrote it. Putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes is often ill-fitting and just wrong.
Sorry but I have no idea what you are talking about. I’m half Black – my mom is Black. But my skin color is fairly pale so I don’t “look Black” to many people. But I’ve been in similar situations to Bell so I do know the feelings he describes. Not sure how you can say I was deriding anything.
Toy guns existed before they had orange tips and kids didn’t get shot over them.
And if you watch the actual video of the incident, you will notice that (a) what happened is very different from what the police officers describe and (b) they just roll up and shoot the kid without giving him a chance to explain what he is doing.
The only thing absurd here is the mass of weapons, shootings and murders in the United States compared to, well, everywhere else.
That anyone would find that, and the related issues (like cops shooting people because they themselves are afraid) “normal” – that is absurd.
Just going to drop off a couple links here.
Hands in pockets, cops called: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10204118011684106.
Tim Wise Pens Brilliant Editorial on Ferguson: Most White Americans are ‘Completely Oblivious’ – http://aattp.org/tim-wise-pens-brilliant-editorial-on-ferguson-most-white-americans-are-completely-oblivious/
Tim pens it beautifully. The amount we have to deal with solely based on societies misconceptions, which includes many people in power, is a seriously heavy weight to bear.
If you don’t care to read the article, just read this excerpt:
“Can we just put aside all we think we know about black communities (most of which could fit in a thimble, truth be told) and imagine what it must feel like to walk through life as the embodiment of other people’s fear, as a monster that haunts their dreams the way Freddie Kreuger does in the movies? To be the physical representation of what marks a neighborhood as bad, a school as bad, not because of anything you have actually done, but simply because of the color of your skin? Surely that is not an inconsequential weight to bear. To go through life, every day, having to think about how to behave so as not to scare white people, or so as not to trigger our contempt—thinking about how to dress, and how to walk and how to talk and how to respond to a cop (not because you’re wanting to be polite, but because you’d like to see your mother again)—is work; and it’s harder than any job that any white person has ever had in this country. To be seen as a font of cultural contagion is tantamount to being a modern day leper.
And then perhaps we might spend a few minutes considering what this does to the young black child, and how it differs from the way that white children grow up. Think about how you would respond to the world if that world told you every day how awful you were, how horrible your community was, and how pathological your family. That’s what we’re telling black people daily.”
Wow.
Whatever world you live in, I do not want to live in that world.
He was 12.
That is BS. Do you really think that if it were a 12 year old white kid playing with a toy gun in the park that the cop would have assumed it was a real gun? Of course not, but in our society too many assume that black = up to no good.
When it comes to drugs, a higher percentage of white people use illegal drugs. Explain why a higher percentage (by far) of black people are in jail for using drugs.
It makes absolutely no difference how many moor of anything we have. If we have more than our police need more training. The simple fact is that thousands upon thousands of police officers manage to go to work every day and not kill someone. Why do people insist on making so many damn excuses when those in that small murdering minority do kill someone that should not have died?