Imagine that you felt like a hostage in your own community: you were trapped in your own home by drug dealers, violent thugs and roving gangs intent on defending their money and their turf by any means necessary.
Stepping outside your door each day for work, school or, God forbid, exercise or fresh air is fraught with the danger of being shot, robbed or violated in some way.
Now imagine that in your little prison, you seek help from those who are entrusted to serve and protect you, from the police who are paid to protect your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
These men and women in uniform, no matter what color, religion or background, are your last line of defense against the daily crime of urban life. You would like to seek solace in the officers who are sworn to uphold law and order in your community, but you cannot.
If you are black, there is no such refuge in America today. The events of the past few weeks illustrate that the black community faces more than just the dangers of criminals; the black community faces the criminals who wear uniforms, who seem beyond accountability, beyond the hands of real justice.
The murder of Sean Bell in New York is just the next front in the war on African-Americans that is seemingly being waged by police departments across the country.
Those with any sort of memory can see the similarities between the Bell case and the cases of Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo, Rodney King and countless others who have been victimized by police aggression and brutality.
Sean Bell is the latest in a sad American tradition that has polarized the black and white communities, as whites in government and in the general public rush to the defense of the police and try to paint the victims as deserving of such treatment or somehow at fault.
Our own city of Chicago also has a brutal tradition of racially-motivated abuse, with the torturing of black men so rampant under Jon Burge and others in the 1980s that dozens of cases from that time bear the marks of confessions derived under severe coercion and worse.
Jon Burge is in Florida enjoying the sun and retirement; Amadou Diallo’s killers went unpunished, despite the 41 bullets they poured into his unarmed body. These cases and many others are a product of white America refusing to acknowledge an obvious epidemic of racist brutality by police who seem incapable of restraining force.
Imagine you’re in your home and the police knock down your door, “investigating” an unnamed incident.
If you’re white, you have a good chance of being treated fairly. If you’re black, don’t reach for your wallet, or walk towards the officers, or do anything that could bring a hail of bullets upon you.
Don’t give the trigger-happy blue wall an excuse to make you the next Sean Bell.