The Racial Reasoning of “Reasonable Doubt”: The Familiar Story of Sean Bell
Appearing on thehuffingtonpost.com later today.
Today the courts sent out another powerful message that the lives of African American men in New York City have no value, no recourse to “protection,” in the eyes of the law. As a 25 year old African American man, it is in moments such as these that I fully understand—and endorse—the bitter feelings of hatred that many young men in my neighborhood (Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn) feel towards the police.
History—both recent and distant—has demonstrated that innocent, unarmed black men are prime target-practice for the old boys club, the NYPD. Those who support this morning’s acquittal have highlighted that a legal indictment can only be reached in instances where the burden of proof exists beyond that of a reasonable doubt. Moreover, they point to the fact that New York City police officers are protected under the ubiquitous “law of justification,” which safeguards “unfortunate deaths” of innocent people in the name of a supposed greater societal good (i.e., the continued protection of the lives of white people).
However, what has become exceedingly clear from Sean Bell’s case—the latest is an all too familiar stream of incidents that have taken place in the wake of the totalitarian Guillani and Bloomberg regimes—is that it is literally impossible for a police officer to be convicted of a murder/manslaughter crime against an African American so long as the cloak of “reasonable doubt” looms in the shadows. Thus, an innocent reach for car keys; a frantic grasp of a wallet; an unsure grip of empty pockets: each of these gestures provides full legal justification for a police officer to send a parade of bullets into the chest of an unarmed black man.
And of course, the logic of “reasonable doubt” is itself steeped in racial reasoning. In the contexts of highly racialized spaces such as South Jamaica, Queens—African American men are always already constructed as dangerous, outraged, tick-tick boom criminals. The discourses of “the law of justification” and the clause of “reasonable doubt” thus essentially protects the right for police officers to take the life of anyone he or she sees fit, because, after all these folks were probably up to “no good” to begin with.
As liberal discourses of “racial transcendence” emerge in the wake of Barack Obama’s campaign for the U.S. presidency, here on the ground the lives of young African American men continue to be regulated by powerful racialized forces of governmentality: the state has the power to end life as well as “justify” it’s cause. What the legacy of Sean Bell teaches us is that for African American men here in New York City, in the eyes of the state we’re always already marked for death— one way or another.
So very true...
JB
Posted by
Joey Bahamas |
4/25/2008
Will all due respect to the poster's academic credentials, he is still young... Of course, hatred towards the police is a basic response, but it is futile. It is obvious and has always been the case, that with the exception of incidents caught in video and viewed by all the population, the POWERFUL will protect its private security guards when they display brutality towards minorities, the poor, the immigrants.
A segment of law enforcement recognizes how they are used and have aligned in groups such as Law Enforcement Against the New World Order. Ironically, the majority of the oppressed people support political leaders who advocate their disarmament and submission to the puppetmasters. These people, were they to follow an enlightened leader, would support individual arming, collective resistance, political action in political opposition (no Republican nor Democrat), protest, and similar actions... Of course, the judges (lawyers), the courts, the legislative and the executive, are subservient to the real powers: the bankers, who control the military-industrial complex and pharmaceutical companies, and the main actors in government... Of course, it's not only minorities who are the undesirables... it's the bankers and their agents, against the rest of us, the rest of the free world... Do you honestly think the Republicans, or Bush or Cheney, ARE the problem? Oba-hillary and any Republican are mere stooges. Regardless of who wins, Government will get bigger, police-military will get more money for the war of terror against American citizens, and after the next self-inflicted terror act, we will end up more enslaved, or in the already-built domestic Guantanamos (a-la REX 84), or the same as the unfortunate Sean Bell!
Posted by
Anonymous |
4/26/2008
Tick, tick, boom! Well said. When the archive is accessed the imaginary and the lived are so incongruent that black bodies in white eyes create their own narrative; a narrative that is steeped in blindness and pathology.
This weekend Sharpton is planning an act of civil disobedience. Thousands of Black bodies and white supporters will work to tell the globalized community that Black men are not disposable. I'm sure the media and many African American communities affected to believe that the Bell incident would be born in silence. I applaud Sharpton for speaking out, walking out-side, performing Blackness in the public sphere, and for not letting Sean Bell die again.
Resist! Contend!
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5/04/2008
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