Ferguson, MO & The Sean Bell Tragedy Revisited
I am re-posting an article I wrote for my first blog in 2009 after a young African-American male by the name of Sean Bell was shot and killed by NYC police outside a strip club the night of his bachelor party. The same theme occurred in Cincinnati just before Easter 2000. The recent Ferguson, MO, incident is just another example of the same worn out theme played over again. However, what few comprehend is the real tragedy of the African American gang-plagued communities.
In that shooting, a 17 year-old black youth with 14 unpaid parking tickets and other violations was being questioned by a rookie cop during a routine traffic violation. The young man panicked and took off running into a dark alley despite commands from the policeman to stop. Instead of doing what any reasonable person would do by actually LISTENING and ACTING UPON the commands of the policeman, the youth, now in the dark alley, appeared to put his hands under his shirt as if to pull out, what? His bellybutton? Yeah, apparently the cop thought so, too. So, naturally, the bellybutton of a black inner-city youth from a drug ridden area of Cincinnati being a weapon of mass destruction gave cause for the cop to shoot him. Of course, the cop shot him. Any normal person with right-minded logic would have entertained the thought the possible gang member from the local gang-ridden community was pulling out a gun. The real question is why didn't the youth do what the cop asked in the first place? If it is perfectly natural for an inner-city black youth to run from a cop, then PARENTS, TELL YOUR KIDS NOT TO DO THAT, because it might mean their life. Don't blame it on the cops. The responsibility of the death of your children for stupidity, if you didn't teach them otherwise, is yours. Sorry to slap reality on you.
Fast forward to the scene outside a New York strip club. Yeah, the great tradition of stupid males who apparently think that a good preparation for marriage is to hire a stripper, go to a strip club, or have sex with a prostitute the night before they are to be married, apparently bit our boy Sean Bell and two of his friends in the behind. Tragically, truly tragically, Bell was killed. It's tragic because he was unprepared to meet his Maker. No, it's no "crime" to be outside a strip club, but it sure as heck was a serious sin to be in one--let alone on the night before one is supposed to wed in a lifelong chaste relationship with your only true love. O.K., let's put the obvious aside. Let's look at a more telling fact that more people can agree on: It is a crime to ram a police car, and it is not too smart to use words like "gun" when you are around a cop who is informing you that you are under arrest. Nor is it very bright if you make threatening-like motions to aggravate the police when they start issuing commands. Apparently, Rodney King, the youth from Cincinnati, and now Sean Bell and two of Bell's friends didn't have enough brains to figure that out. So, Darwin wins again. This is not about race. This is about common sense and the serious lack of it that issues from the inner-city, African-American, gansta-rap culture.
The real tragedy of Bell's death is not that he was shot and killed, but that his life was a rejection of God's love. God will judge him in the totality of who Bell was, complete with the disadvantages he faced growing up, and not being God, it not my place to condemn the poor guy to eternity in Hell, but is the lesson here racism or is it, rather, long overdue that the inner-city, hip-hop, gangsta rap culture take a serious look at their culture of death and self-destruction and consider a life of faith in a God who opens his arms enough to die on a cross in miserable crucifixion by subjecting himself to the ignorance of lost souls like Bell and his ilk for love of each one of them?
If, by 2014 any reader of this article hasn't figured it out YET, no race is superior over another (sorry, Mr. Obama and Holder. I know this disappoints you), and anyone who makes this post about race is a blind fool. Heaven knows that every race has its Einsteins and its idiots. The caucasian race is chock full of them. Hell, we have a whole world full of them--we call them, "Liberals". Rather, it is that Christianity, and specifically the Catholic faith (1500 years before Luther) which began in the Middle East, spreading over and around the arc of the Mediterranean, eventually, too, highly influenced the caucasian world of western and northern Europe. For all the many human faults of the Church, its best part, that is its Divine influence, brought out the best in humankind. (The wars in the name of Christianity are not at issue here. These were due to the fallen nature of man, not the principles of Christianity if fallen man had followed them. The crusades were brought about by aggressive and violent Muslim incursions into Catholic Europe and the Middle East. Compare Christian principles to the principles of Islam, where Jihad is the method of conversion or death for failure to be of Muslim belief.) When has the African community best flourished? When it has embraced Christ who is God of all mankind and his true principles of sacrificial love. Look at Martin of Tours, Peter Claver, Cyprian Michael Tansi, Charles Randolph Uncles, who are just a few examples of men of Africa or African descent elevated to sainthood or who were pioneers in the Catholic Church. Then, there are the secular examples of men of virtue like Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, and Martin Luther King, George Washington Carver who, though not Catholic, still embraced Christ.
The inner-city African-American culture of death, led by Malcom X in the 1960's, argues that Christianity is not an authentically black religion. Well, heck, Malcolm, Jesus wasn't white either. He was a Middle-Eastern Jew, probably olive skinned. White people have no more claim to Christianity than any other race on the planet. Most of white Europe embraced it as an alien faith. The premises of Malcolm X's argument is false. As a result, he and those who follow his thinking, including our own racially prejudiced President and his Attorney General, set back the inner-city black community 40 years in their social development. All the government programs in the world won't solve it either. Mr. Obama, our fraudulently elected President, hasn't either. It is not until a majority of inner-city African-American's make the personal decision to embrace the God who loves them and finds their self-worth in Christ who died for them that any change will ever occur in that community. Screaming and rioting may bring you a little attention, but how has the Watts district in L.A. ever changed in the 40 years since the riots of the 60's? Not one iota. In fact, the problems are worse. Take Ferguson, for example. All it does is make the black community there look like criminals and thugs, maladjusts hoping to get attention from the news media as a cheap substitute for the attention they didn't receive from their selfish absent fathers or their broken, drug-induced mothers--and this is better than the God who offers you true and unending love if you only take time to honestly seek him?
No, until the African-American community turns toward the light of Christ authentically given to the world through Jesus' chosen apostles and their true successors, that is, the Pope and the bishops of the Catholic Church, broken as even they sometimes are, there will continue to be tragedies like Sean Bell.
