Former Boston College basketball star Troy Bell is more than 20 years removed from his childhood in his native Minneapolis. He is nearly 40, and yet he watches his hometown emerge as the center of the social and racial unrest caused by the death of George Floyd, just six blocks from where Bell was reared.
Floyd was an unarmed Black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, pressed a knee into his neck for several minutes. Bystanders captured the events on video.
Bell has mixed emotions. He hates that Minneapolis is burning and there has been violence over the weekend, but he also has visions of his interactions with the Minneapolis police over the past few decades, even when he was a successful overseas basketball star, and he understands the anger and frustration of the Black community.
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“A lot has been going through my mind,” he said. “The whole scene where Mr. Floyd was murdered, I spent so much time in that area as a kid, to watch the video, it was like watching a car accident in slow motion. It was one of the most heartbreaking videos that I think I’ve seen in my life.”
Bell said he knows how Minneapolis is perceived from the outside regarding the Black community. In his 1996 HBO special, “Bring the Pain,” Chris Rock said the only Black people living in Minneapolis are “Prince and Kirby Puckett.”
You could add Kevin Garnett to that eventually, but actually Minneapolis is 19 percent Black, according to the 2020 census. It has a vibrant community, one which Bell is proud. But unfortunately, he said there have been issues between his community and the Minneapolis Police Department for years.
“The tension between the cops and I am not even going to say Blacks, I’m going to say minorities, has been in the red zone,” he said. “I don’t know why it is like that but I’m pretty sure that [for] most Black men, this is nothing new. Every person has a breaking point, and you can’t say you don’t understand why people are lashing out.”
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There is one example that keeps repeating itself in Bell’s head. One night he was driving home in his Mercedes during an EuroLeague offseason when he was stopped by a Minneapolis police officer.
Bell said the officer told him he was pulling him over for speeding. And then the questions turned to about where’s the drugs, guns, and pills. Bell said he wasn’t carrying any of those things. He said he was a professional basketball player and presented his driver’s license.
Bell said the officer recognized his name, told him they played against each other in AAU, and had the nerve to ask for an autograph. The moment the officer realized Bell was a local celebrity the tone of the traffic stop changed.
But what if he wasn’t a pro ball player? What if he was a normal dude like George Floyd, accused of a misdemeanor, a non-violent offense? Like speeding?
“I have had a lot of interaction with the cops in a lot of different places, other countries and other states and I can honestly say that all of the bad interactions I’ve had with cops have been in Minnesota,” he said. “I’m not saying that there are not good cops here because there are good cops. I know some. But you know how it goes. If you have some moldy grapes in a batch of good grapes, all the grapes are going to mold a lot faster. I think that’s the situation with the cops here.
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“But I can honestly say, it didn’t matter if I was in high school driving a Chevy Beretta or when I was a professional basketball player driving a Benz, I would say 80 percent of the interactions have been semi bad to bad.”
Bell lives about 12 minutes from his childhood home. And he is painfully watching his city erupt. He is watching generations of pent up frustration unleash in a weekend, sparked by the senseless death of a man accused of passing a counterfeit $20 bill while white people who have committed heinous crimes are arrested and detained alive, without incident.
There is reason to be angry, but the question for Bell and many of us Black men who have been the victim of overzealous policing and racial stereotyping and brutality, is how do we relay the message to those who don’t understand that we’re treated differently, we’re stereotyped, we’re feared and we’re not valued?
Bell knows the only reason he avoided jail or even brutality that night was that he had a recognizable name. But what about those like Floyd, an everyday man who was just trying to make to the next day in a pandemic? Who speaks for him?
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“I was thinking about that and one of the things I struggle with is how do you tell somebody how to feel about what they just saw,” Bell said. “We watched the Rodney King video. We’ve seen so much that for us, that we’re almost desensitized. It’s almost like it’s become the norm for someone to get beaten or killed and then the police to get off. So for the younger people that haven’t seen everything that we’ve seen, I feel like the outrage is probably 10, 20, 30 times what we’ve felt because we’ve seen so much happen to us.
“But I don’t condone destroying things that innocent people built. I don’t know if there’s also a right answer. I don’t know what the answer is. It’s all just heartbreaking. There’s not too many times in my life where I feel pure confusion, but this is one of those situations. I couldn’t believe that no one helped (Floyd). I couldn’t believe [the officer] that [had] his knee on [Floyd’s] neck.
“I hope this is a wake-up call and I hope people realize this [incident] is a normal day at the office.”
What is evident and clear is change is needed. And maybe this situation will finally expose the unjust discrimination, mistreatment and stereotypes of people of color and especially Black men.
Bell watches chaos in his hometown and all over America and hopes this time it will lead to meaningful progress and overdue justice.
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Gary Washburn can be reached at gary.washburn@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GwashburnGlobe.
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Ex-BC star Troy Bell knows the tension between the Minneapolis Black community and the police - The Boston Globe
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