Justice Doesn't Live Here

This issue isn't that 2 of the 3 cops that shot Sean Bell to death were black themselves, the issue is the mindset that allows for the system to not provide equal punishment under the law for killing, maiming, hurting, harassing black people at the same rate of other ethnicities. I now pray the family gets a nice settlement out of the later civil suit against the officers for the manslaughter of a year and a half ago instead of justice of the litigious nature that flew out the courtroom this morning like a fart in the wind. What have the events of the last 24 hours taught us? Apparently shooting an unarmed man 50 times is more permissible than tax evasion under the law (Once again, Wesley you got a raw deal, man.)

I tell white friends that being black is like playing basketball and getting hacked while the referees sit and choke on their whistles and rarely see fouls being committed. Being black is playing in front of an audience that can only be categorized as an away crowd, the entire game unfolding before them, the refs, fouls and all, that rarely help point out to the officials what's really happening out there. Really it's quite frustrating. There's a fine line you have to walk in stating your case too, for fear of looking like Tim Duncan. Don't get me wrong, Tim is a great player and will inevitably go down as an all-time great and probably the best at his position, it's just that if you let him tell it via his facial expressions on the court he's never committed a foul and thus doesn't know what language you're speaking when one's called against him but when he's fouled not only does he know what a foul is and that it's happened to him, he wants to know why you don't seem to.

Blacks don't even bother half the time to point out every ticky tacky situation their put in on a daily basis that works to their chagrin. Some offenses, agitating as they maybe, blacks silently find tolerable in the larger sense in a trade to gain credibility when bringing up larger points of unfairness at later dates. This is the kind of thing that creates a different experience for blacks in America separate from the experience of white Americans and further divides.

So here we are a month removed from the greatest speech ever given on race relations in the United States by a politician, and were presented with an opportunity like today to really test and see if people were actually listening to what Sen. Obama was speaking to and I'll leave you with your own judgment on that.