Blood and Race


A "nicer" essay than I would write, myself...

Alix Paultre is another of the editors at Dvorak Uncensored. Obviously, one of the brightest and most talented in the crowd. This brief essay appears at that site, today. It's more than worth reprinting here:



Paultres at a rally: L-R, Hector, Furci [Nicole's father], Les - and Alix

Click image to visit Nicole Paultre Bell's site

As a cousin of Sean Bell’s fiancée, Nicole Paultre, I was asked to provide an opinion piece about the Sean Bell shooting and the acquittal of the three police officers involved in his death. (I cannot say that they murdered him, for they are now innocent in the eyes of the law.) However, members of Sean Bell’s family should not be the only ones outraged at the acquittal of the men who pumped multiple bullets into people, killing some of them, in extremely questionable circumstances. Everyone should be upset at how thin the veneer is between authority and anarchy and how little those who police that line police themselves.

I agree to a point with those who say that race was not a factor in this killing. The color of one’s skin is not as great a factor in whether or not you have a risk of being shot by reckless cops as class. Skin color only helps reinforce the stereotype in the observer’s mind. A dark-skinned person in a nice neighborhood isn’t hassled much by the local cops (especially if they speak well). A white person in a bad neighborhood has a slight advantage due to skin color, but is treated poorly by police just the same.

Our police act as if they were occupying forces and we are simply civilian units they have the responsibility of controlling. Even that nice person in that nice neighborhood is just a citizen to monitor, control and pacify. Police act as they please and feel that they are above the law they enforce and we scrape and bow and apologize for questioning their judgment over life and death. There are good cops; most cops believe in their service oath. The cowboys that shoot people are (hopefully) a small percentage, but the good cops are hypocrites when they tolerate the wrongdoings of their fellows who do not respect the public trust.

Sean Bell shows us in death that we must always be careful of those we give the authority to police us.

Alix Paultre

Posted: Mon - April 28, 2008 at 07:36 AM