Black and Blue: What Say You?
It’s been 55 years since my grandfather integrated our county’s police department. Institutional and societal change are still desperately needed.
Every time another instance of police brutality against a Black man surfaces, anger and anxiety surface as my brain instinctively brings two Black men to the forefront: my grandfather and my brother. For years, I’ve gone numb, shut down, and forced myself to take a nap or just go to bed early, to keep from thinking about how the latest person killed and displayed on TV could one day be my brother, or that it likely triggers an experience of my grandfather.
Now, this isn’t to say that I don’t have cause not to worry about my father, uncles, cousins, or friends. But my grandfather is the foundation of my relationship with and understanding of police as an entity, and at the root of my present anxiety about police interactions is my brother. My grandfather and brother are both tall (over 6 feet), dark-skinned men with booming voices, sharp features and facial hair, and aren’t exactly people one would describe as slender and lanky. Their appearances definitely command attention. Throughout my life I’ve witnessed the mouths of adults and children (of all complexions) go agape, and gasp when they see them appear.
Over the last couple years, I’ve learned how important it is for me to continue to listen to the elders who raised me and have passed away. Their spirits signaled to me that it’s time to sit and collect history from my grandfather before it’s forgotten, and before he leaves this Earth. On the heels of personally dealing with racist, entitled white women in medical and professional arenas, the last thing I want to see when I open my social media applications is yet another person having whiteness wielded against them. The last thing I want to see is a Jewish person who has the luxury of attaching themselves to whiteness — whose ancestors fled here for safety (a stark contrast to my ancestors’ method of arrival) — invalidating the deliberate, inherent, racist infrastructure of the United States, followed by the push to replace the focus to the oppression that is anti-Semitism.
And so, here I am. I spent the last few days conversing with my brother, interviewing my grandfather, and writing and re-writing until the release of my emotions exhausted me to the point of falling asleep. The other day I saw a tweet that said something along the lines of, “America gets to learn from the collective mourning/grief of Black America.”
So here you go, America: here is where I’ve channeled my grief and pain, and I hope you learn something from it.
Roots
At 31 years old, my grandfather and his partner, Norfleet Barnes (d. 2015), integrated Maryland’s Anne Arundel County Police Department in 1965: the county both sides of my maternal family have called home since at least 1845 (my genealogy work is never-ending). In 2001, they were honored by the county’s Black Police Officers Association. Fancy plaque, ceremony, and all. The plaque is outfitted with enough slots to display the first 100 Black police officers. While my grandfather recently provided the plaque to the county to add names to slots, it still won’t be full upon its return.
In Thin Blue Lie, author Matt Stroud details the troubling history of the taser, the incorporation of various technologies (dash cams, body cams, etc.) in police departments across the country, and the increasing militarization that came with them. He touches on half-hearted federal, state, and municipal attempts at police reform, and he also says this:
“Policemen deal with people when they are both most threatening and most vulnerable, when they are angry, when they are frightened, when they are desperate, when they are drunk, when they are violent, or when they are ashamed. . . . Every police action can affect in some way someone’s dignity, or self-respect, or sense of privacy, or constitutional rights.” (p. 9)
I find it intriguing that the very ways he mentions police action can affect others — dignity, respect, privacy (bodily autonomy), and Constitutional rights — were actively denied to my grandfather and his partner, both as regular citizens, and as police officers. Like countless Black officers across the country at the time, they were told not to bother white citizens in the county, and that they did not have [arrest] authority over them. This county was, and still remains, overwhelmingly white. This is something that has always bothered me when people try to counter #BlackLivesMatter with #BlueLivesMatter. This is aside from the fact that “blue” is not an artificial, settler-colonial white supremacist racial category, but is a chosen profession. It was made abundantly clear by the department and reinforced by white citizens, that they were to be treated as n-words first; respecting the authority of the uniform was optional. Barnes would stay an officer for four years, my grandfather, for six and a half.
In May 2015, my grandfather did a short interview as a part of the commemorative piece published in remembrance of Officer Barnes, who passed away that same month. He noted how it’s a shame that the injustices that existed when they integrated the force still exist today.
In being interviewed by reporters, he said that his partner was more outspoken (particularly about racial discrimination) when they served together. This doesn’t surprise me. For as long as I’ve known him (my entire life), my grandfather has never been a man of many words. In what I’ve heard from others growing up, it seems as though that has always been the case. Since a document of his experience doesn’t seem to exist, I hope this, and my recordings and transcription, will one day be of use to our city and county, and that the future generations of our family will appreciate it.
Those who know me and my family know that I have a special relationship with my grandfather. I’m sure he wouldn’t call it a friendship, but I think it comes close. I won’t go into details, but I’d be remiss not to set the tone. He and I have talked about various topics over the years, though they were mainly during the walk to and ride in the car, since he drove me to school for ten years.
Growing up, I knew my grandfather had been in the Army, integrated our county police department, and until the year I graduated from college, was a bailiff at our district court. Having been raised by other family elders who blazed trails and are a part of local history, when I sat down to interview him for this, I just knew that his decision to become a police officer was going to include the intent of breaking barriers.
To my surprise, policing started out as what you would call a “side hustle.” I guess you could say that runs in the family. My grandfather had some fascinating jobs over the years, and none were really related to one another. He and his friend George were classified as, “Special Deputy Sheriffs,” asked to work at Black establishments that are now long gone due to urban renewal and the pushing out of longstanding black families: places like Carr’s Beach and Welcher’s Grove. As other work projects ended, he found his side hustle more interesting, and decided to try his hand at being an officer full-time. The Annapolis Police Department integrated in 1960, but was full of what he described as, “a different breed,” in comparison to the behavior he had seen from county cops and state troopers. And like the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., the Annapolis Police Department relegated its Black officers to foot patrol only: no access to squad cars (Locking Up Our Own, p. 91). With the county, my grandfather at least got to ride a motorcycle.
Full-time
“There is nothing wrong with seeing policing as a source of stable employment or upward mobility. But the fact that so many blacks joined the force for these reasons undermined the theory that integration would change police practice. After all, most new black officers saw policing as a job, not as another front in the civil rights movement. Expecting them to change how police fought crime was like expecting black firefighters to change how the department fought fire. At the same time, the limited job market for black officers made it less likely that they would do what many reformers hoped they would: buck the famously powerful police culture.” (Locking Up Our Own, p. 111)
You could say it took two years for my grandfather to become a police officer. When he first applied in 1963, Anne Arundel County’s political structure was a commissioner system. When he got tired of waiting to hear about whether or not he’d be an officer, he contacted the commissioners. Imagine the surprise when he was told he had not passed the physical, and thus, couldn’t be an officer. My grandfather chuckled a bit as he elaborated on this. “I thought… that’s interesting. Of course I didn’t pass a physical. They never told me to take one in the first place.” This, of course, was no accident. Not a logistical snafu, or someone dropping the ball. When the system changed to include a county executive, Joseph Alton made sure his becoming an officer was seen all the way through.
“Police officers, after all, can take your liberty, or even your life. Putting such awesome power in black hands seemed preposterous to most whites, who believed that a primary police function was to control blacks (Locking Up Our Own, p. 79).” The reason(s) for the unwillingness was not lost on my grandfather.
Given the family stories, and having the privilege to be raised by some of the family elders who played active roles in his life, I asked him how they felt about his decision. There was an air of indifference. Aside from my favorite family pillar, my “Aunt” Reetsie (a barrier-breaker in her own right) who saw it as another notch in our family’s belt of civil rights action, no one really said anything. There were, however, some people around the community who were excited at the thought of never being ticketed, and getting favors.
The intake process was pretty standard: a paper test, background check, physical exam (though now they aren’t performed by the county’s medical examiner), etc. After that, it was time spent in the classroom. Book work on this topic, book work on that topic, and more book work. There were also what you could call, “field trips” to places like the morgue at Johns Hopkins, to watch autopsies. Apparently after that trip specifically, they would take the guys for a good spaghetti dinner at an Italian restaurant in Baltimore.
My grandfather’s experience as an officer was much different than I expected. Honestly, I think I’m glad it was a lot less traumatic than I anticipated. If it had been all of the worst of my imagination, I’m sure this reflection would have a much harsher tone. Though, when I think about his personality, it fits. He was in the traffic division. Each shift had to have a traffic officer, and he rode solo. The county officers didn’t double up for duty. When there were accidents, this was a huge help. Given the lack of technology and tools in comparison to today, depending on when an accident happened during your shift, the rest of it was gone. You had to collect all of the information related to persons, take photos and measurements, triangulate, and of course, all the paperwork that came with the report. He guffawed at the mention of overtime; he’s baffled by how easily officers are able to get it now. Had to be in court for some of your reports/cases? You better schedule them for the next set of day shifts, because if you didn’t, the department wasn’t going to pay you for that time spent.
“You can’t do this. A black man not supposed to arrest a white man.”
When I asked my grandfather about allyship from colleagues and reporting racial discrimination, he had to pause for a bit. He was able to build a good rapport with hospital workers, because of his assignment to the traffic division and having to deal with accidents. Though their division didn’t do much in the southern half of our county anyway, he wasn’t allowed to patrol down there. No offense to my friends in or from South County but, to be frank: his facial expression showed that he was grateful for that. I responded with my own look of affirmation. Having attended Bates High School — the only school in our county for Black people — he knew people from all over. Whenever he was out, he either saw someone that he knew, or a relative of someone he knew. Very few degrees of separation. This is precisely one of the reasons why (aside from being a homebody) I avoided doing anything that could get me in real trouble growing up. Between the amount of people who know him and my mother, I could be snitched on before I even left the scene.
In any case, being a traffic patrolman led to him making friends with various people in different parts of the county. While the cynic in me wants to attribute it to the victims and family members being at their most vulnerable, I also hope it is because they were decent people who saw that he was human.
As far as the department, he could name one person who was supportive immediately (he recently passed away), and eventually named three others. Two being his Lieutenant and Captain at the time. Why them? They kept him abreast of what was said behind his back. Like when local merchants got together with some of his colleagues about the perks they afforded officers (such as a free meal, or the infamous coffee and donut). “They would serve me, but I’d have to pay full price.” It wasn’t until almost a year later that they decided to allow him the same perks as his colleagues.
Early on, he’d be told about how Officer So-and-So didn’t want to ever have to back him up. He’d walk into a room at the precinct, there’d be looks, and previous chatter would hush. The racism from his colleagues wasn’t overt. They never knew when they’d need him to back them up at a scene. Without the communication devices and technology of today, “once you stepped out, you better hope nothing happened to you.” Their radio was built into their vehicle. As you pulled someone over, it was your job to radio in, describe your location as narrowly as possible, and give the make, model, and tag number of the vehicle, and number of occupants. All before you even approached the car. Need backup? You’ve got to get back to your vehicle to page for it. As he nodded in remembering the protocol, he followed up with an example of a time one of the officers needed him. After all was said and done, he was given a, “Man, I never thought I’d say it but boy was I glad to see you pull up.”
The stigma of being prejudiced is apparently a reputation our county still holds: “…you’ll find that still, police will gravitate to Baltimore City before Anne Arundel County, which says something.”
On Structure and Current Events
My grandfather can’t remember having to fire his gun. Not that he really should have, given he was in the traffic division, but we’ve seen the videos over the years (Philando Castile, Walter Scott, Terence Crutcher). He claims that officers and citizens, for the most part, had more cordial relationships. Police wrote tickets more than they made arrests. He doesn’t recall any of his colleagues having killed anyone either. There was, however, one outlier who was particularly quick to trigger, wrecked over a dozen police cars, and wasn’t exactly the most sober man he ever met.
Over the years I’ve watched my grandfather react to the news reporting and the graphic videos. I think I was too afraid to ask how he felt about them, worried I would trigger an unwanted memory. But who better to ask the following questions about the repeated events of police brutality than a Black, male, former police officer?
B: Do you feel as though police officers should live in the jurisdictions they police?
G: *no hesitation* Yes. When I was there, it was required that all of us live in the county. For a while, when a lot of them lived on the Eastern Shore, they couldn’t take their cars home, out of the jurisdiction.
It’s a benefit for the police and the people. If you talk to people, they understand you as a person, they trust you as an officer, and you can identify people that are normal to the neighborhood. Now in some places like D.C., they had a radius you could live in. Not sure if that’s still the case now.
He went on to share a story about an officer whose home was in Brooklyn, Maryland. If someone caught wind of a rumor or something going on, they would ask him, he’d talk to people, and they’d willingly let him know what was going on. I asked a follow-up question about affordability, since I know our municipality is particularly expensive. He said he believes there should be some sort of financial/incentive program to help with affordability. Though he chuckled, and noted that officers’ salaries these days are considerably higher than when he was on the force: a whopping $4,800.
B: What do you think about the need for/there being more extensive and comprehensive psych assessments for police department applicants?
G: OH YES. There should be. But some things that create problems, like racism, sexism, and all the other -isms, I don’t know how you give a test for that. When you interview them, they’ll give you the answer you want to hear, and you can’t really gauge how well a person will react under pressure or stress. If I found a way to do it, I’d be a rich man!
B: Do you agree that when it comes to incidents that occur, that an outside independent investigation should be conducted?
G: *nods head* Sure! Yes.
B: Do you believe police officers knew the law better when you were patrolling, versus now?
G: No…well, hmm. Policemen then enforced the law better, but it’s hard to say that they knew the law better because education levels were different. Most had only gone to the 10th grade. My class [in the academy] was one of, if not the first where most of us had at least gone to college. Now, I would think there are more college-educated policemen, but I wouldn’t necessarily say their understanding of human nature is better. Police officers today don’t treat people like they did then. There wasn’t really a lot of praise for locking people up, you were to try to be more diplomatic. Negotiate better with them.
As if integrating the county police department wasn’t enough, my grandfather was also the first and only classified (state employee) bailiff. My confusion caused me to push back on this because…well, after about 10 years of saying he was going to retire, he didn’t retire until five years ago. To which I received an, “And? What did I just say?” He continued to explain that (at least here) every other bailiff is contractual to the court system/jurisdiction to which they are assigned. Now if suddenly, some bailiffs inquire about state employment, don’t look at us.
Two Generations Later
I’ve had four face-to-face encounters with law enforcement officers in the last twelve years. Each with a white, male officer. For some reason, I thought that knowing my grandfather had served as a police officer and bailiff, would mean that when I had an encounter with one I would be fine. I wouldn’t be afraid. Looking back, I can appreciate my attempt to be positive (given my normal outlook on life) but I‘m not sure why I thought that would be the case.
When I was 15 years old and practicing driving with my mother, we were pulled over for what was a dead tail light. My mind couldn’t keep up with the pace of my body’s reactions. I began to hyperventilate, dart my eyes between the police cruiser in my rear view mirror, my mom, and my hands that somehow managed to set themselves at “10 and 2” on the steering wheel. Even once in park, I remained the same. My mother made no sudden movements, said my name in a low tone, and told me to breathe. I saw the officer approach my window in my left rear-view mirror, I saw him through the window, and I faced forward again. My mother had to tell me to at least crack the window so that I could talk to the officer. I dropped the window halfway, my hand snapped right back to “10,” and my eyes went back to the windshield. She had to coach me through the whole encounter. I could hear the officer when he asked for my permit and registration, asked questions. But I couldn’t process it all in live-time. Even after it was all over, I didn’t immediately restart the car and pull off. I was still full of anxiety and fear.
When I was 17 years old, alone, and in the comfort of home, I was awakened by the intense knock of an investigative officer from my city’s police department. He asked if I was okay (yes, of course, as I wipe the crust from my eyes), and proceeded to inform me that a young white male had broken into a neighbor’s home, and told them they were looking for a young woman that matched my description and name. I had no idea who it could be, but I took his card when he offered, just in case. I couldn’t focus on anything, and didn’t leave the house for the rest of the day.
At 22 years old, I found myself in a car accident that required the jaws of life to get me out of my car. As my car spun and flipped across highway lanes, I had accepted that this was how I was going to die, and was frighteningly calm. I landed next to the guard rail on the opposite side of the highway. Some nice people from the traffic pulled over and talked to me, made sure I was conscious and of sound mind, stayed with me until the fire truck and ambulance came. I was fine and my mood was somewhat the whole time (just annoyed that I had been in an accident and that my road trip to see friends was now a bust).
Once I heard the sirens, I broke down. It was as if all of the uncertainty of my life hit me at once. In the hospital, the sheriff assigned to my accident took my information and account of what happened, and informed me that where there’s a car accident, there’s a ticket to be given! Since I was without my phone the officer was nice enough to let me use his phone to call my emergency contacts. Suggestion: Answer the phone when a specific phone number calls you multiple times in a row and leaves you a voicemail. He was nice enough, but I can’t say his presence made me feel any more at ease.
I couldn’t use the left side of my body for the next 3 months. I spent the first few weeks at in-patient rehabilitation, and the rest of the time stuck in the house, with the exception of out-patient rehab appointments.
At 26 years old, I was driving alone on my way to meet friends for a getaway weekend. As I drove through a town in a conservative part of the state, I continued to not see speed limit signs, and so I drove at a speed I deemed fit according to the traffic, residential areas, and amount of retail/businesses around. I noticed a police car behind me. There were no sirens and no lights, so I kept going. After a few minutes more, I noticed they had turned on their lights (still no siren). They still kept a decent distance behind me, but out of concern that they were for me, I slowed down and pulled over. Naturally, he pulled up right behind me. Cue somewhat of a repeat from age 15. Except I had no co-pilot and had to maneuver this one on my own. I turned the car off, started a voice recording on my phone and slid it back into the compartment, sat my license and registration on my lap, cracked my window, and there I was again, hands at “10 and 2,” and my face toward the windshield. I tried to pace my breathing as I watched oncoming traffic ride past, and then I heard the officer at my window.
He asked for my license and car registration, I slowly removed one hand from the wheel, and handed it out the window — all without looking at him. He must have noticed my heavy, anxiety-ridden breathing, because before he walked away, he asked if he could ask me a question. I turned my head and looked at him, trying to calm my breathing. He asked, “You aren’t from around here, are you?” In my head, the answer was a resounding no (proud Annapolitan, here), but it came out more meek. What helped calm my breathing? The look on his face. He had taken off his glasses, and the look in his eyes made me feel like he knew that one of the reasons I had yet to look him in the eye was because I saw my interaction with him as one that could possibly end my life. The next words I heard were, “Your record came back clear, but I had to pull you over because you were speeding. You know what the limit is here? It’s the same through the town.” I told him that I wasn’t sure, since it had been a long while since I last saw a speed limit sign. “Well, unfortunately I’ll have to give you a ticket.” I got cut some slack since I, “clearly don’t frequent these parts often” and was told I could be on my way.
I spent the next few minutes texting my sister, my mom, and friends, and waited for the officer to pull off and drive away before I merged back onto the road.
I’m unsure of what will undoubtedly be future interactions with police officers will be like. Just because I seem to get a little better mentally and emotionally with each instance, doesn’t mean I want them to become more frequent. At this juncture, one every 4–5 years is enough.
My brother’s experiences are quite the contrast to mine, and much more explosive.
I Am My Brother’s Keeper
I spoke with my brother before I interviewed our grandfather. When I told him what I was writing about, and wanted to incorporate his thoughts, I didn’t fully anticipate what I got in return (despite his shameless personality). My brother and I have had very different life experiences over the years given our age difference, and our paternal families are different. Make no mistake: there is no “half brother” nonsense. I still remember how I felt when someone “clarified” what I said and called him my “half brother.” My neck snapped so fast my head almost detached. But I digress.
True to the overlaps of our upbringing with our mother, he started with a quote from James Baldwin:
“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”
When I saw a lot of question marks in response, I was thrown off. My brother, the Geek of Geeks, the Nerd of Nerds, had questions?! But as I focused on the content, I realized that they were philosophical, arguably rhetorical, even. The generational trauma comes through in his reflections and questions, too.
Considering the actions of white people across centuries and currently, why don’t we as a society vilify and stereotype white men? Why do they never fit the description the way we do?
At what point did we as a society decide that they (police officers) are infallible?
He also initially had the same odd assumption of comfort with police because of our grandfather, which was both interesting and validating for me to read, since I don’t recall us ever discussing it. I imagine that if the comfort hadn’t already been long gone, it would have been out the window after having to pull over his truck at 2 AM while driving through Mississippi, all to go through 40 minutes of having his truck searched, be questioned about his travel and if he was harboring drugs, and told that he matched the description of a person of interest in a crime committed in a town he had no idea existed. That, or maybe it would have been the first time he had police officers pull him out of his car.
He noted that our mother had what people call, “the Black talk” with him when he was a pre-teen. This would mean I was too young to have been paying attention to what was being discussed. I’ve been trying to imagine how that talk would have gone, based on the family discussions we had over the years at the dinner table, in bedroom doorways, and sitting on the sides of her bed. My talk was a bit more, “by osmosis,” associating the history learned from my elders and their experiences with actively seeing what my elementary school classmates went through (many of whom I’m still connected to), what I was reading (Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, etc.), and the shift in facial expressions and tones of voice when I asked pointed questions to solidify my understanding.
As if our mother didn’t have enough to worry about, my brother changed his profession around the time I left for college. For what has been almost a decade, he has been the driver of the 18-wheeler that you either are annoyed by, or fear on the highway — getting groceries, supplies, packages, you name it, from point A to point B. In this era of COVID-19, my brother might be heralded by some as a hero or lifesaver. However, those gratitude-filled titles are with him sight unseen.
He criss-crosses the country, mainly the south and midwest, with deliverables. His experiences are precisely why I’m sure my mom wishes she could have 24/7 CCTV on his life: “I get stared at or followed in stores, and have had cops actually put their hands on their waistbands or weapons as if to reassure themselves that they can kill me. White women have literally jumped into cars when I’ve been at the gas station at night and they see me step out.” As he put it, “I do not have the complexion for protection […],” so naturally, he’s used to the behavior.
On what could be considered a lighter note, not long after the 2016 election, some enthusiastic supporters of the leader of the current administration had set up camp outside of a Wal-Mart in Utah. Drinking and loitering…what a way to pass the time. He saw and overheard them cheering about the outcome of the presidential election, and telling anyone with a tan to, “go home” and, “back where they came from.” Of course, he couldn’t be missed. He was served with the infamous, “Go back to Africa.” To their surprise, he responded and told him he was from Maryland, and asked them where in Africa it was (a true reflection of his personality). Silence.
They say you should laugh to keep from crying. You also can just laugh at the ignorance. I had forgotten that happened to him, but as soon as he said Wal-Mart and Utah, I had a flashback to his Facebook post, and my mother and I laughing with him on the phone about it.
Heartbreak, USA
Every time there’s a breaking news alert about someone losing their life at the hands of a police officer, my mother checks in with my brother (she generally knows my whereabouts and schedule). She checks in with me to ask if I’ve talked to him, checks his social media for recent posts, and if what she sees isn’t recent enough to her liking, she proceeds to contact him in every method at her disposal. Now that she knows she can do video chat on Facebook Messenger, that might be added to the list. If not, she just read that and is now considering doing so (sorry bro). Despite his air of sovereignty, he’s learned that it’s in his best interest to answer immediately or respond as soon as possible. When I asked him how he felt about our [self-proclaimed] Helicopter Mom checking in with him, he shared that he knows it’s done out of fear, and knows that hearing his voice calms her. Being the way he is, “She fears that I will react and get myself killed. I hate that I have to reassure her.”
I’ve got to hand it to my brother for something else he said. The complexions we have, and what society has attributed to it, means we have the ability to see our country for what it truly is, because we aren’t afforded the rose-colored glasses that come with white privilege. I’ve heard a version of this from my friends who are biracial and multiracial, and even just lighter skinned Black people who have been conflicted about their identities, but somehow, I was surprised to hear a variation from my brother. We’ve both developed thick skins over the years because, well, it’s required when you’re as dark as we are. And though we know our history, we both still have the loaded, one-word question: WHY (and many more questions that start with the same word)? *all caps courtesy of my brother*
Two years after my grandfather and his partner were sworn in, President Lyndon Johnson’s administration released his 1967 report titled, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society. It named institutionalized racism, and an economic structure that exacerbates and exploits an impoverished class, as roots of crime. Though it offered recommendations on restructuring civic organizations and employment regulations, the only one that really seemed to gain momentum was the “need” for a nonlethal weapon option (the taser) for defense sectors.
In Locking Up Our Own, author James Forman Jr. elaborated on Johnson’s report and the 1968 Kerner Commission. Johnson’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice provided the obvious suggestion that there needed to be Black (Negro) police officers because, “the relationship between the police and the community is so personal that every section of the community has a right to expect that its aspirations and problems, its hopes and fears, are fully reflected in its police” (p. 104). However, this was not necessarily a support for integration, but for some semblance of separate but equal. They understood that if there weren’t black officers in black neighborhoods, the residents would feel they were to be supervised, not for help.
“There’s an old adage that good policemen used to go by that isn’t the case as much anymore: ‘A policeman can start more trouble than he can stop.’ Did you catch that? Think about it.”
— Reginald Harris, Sr.
Here we are, generations later, still without societal change. Still without a societal and political investment from the government — and from an overwhelming majority of the population — to acknowledge and atone for the sin and permeation of white supremacy. And before you use it to question it as some sort of rebuttal: yes, Black and Brown police officers (and people in general) can and do uphold white supremacist infrastructure. All sorts of marketing techniques were used to recruit Black men to the police force. From celebrities to Playboy-adjacent photos, to financial incentives for referrals, the government at various levels aimed to recruit the right amount of officers to be tokenized on paperwork, and weaponized against their own communities. Advocates and regular citizens alike projected their hopes of representation (no pressure), racial solidarity and leniency upon those who made the decision to serve.
When on the job, there’s something to prove: not only to meet quotas, and keep a roof over heads and food on the table for their families, but to be able to say, “See? I can be like y’all” (and therefore, at least at the individual level, worthy of not being treated as less than). With newfound power, classism and colorism were on display as researchers in the 1960s and 1970s interviewed and observed Black officers across the country. It was noted that, “those officers were as harsh as or harsher than the white ones,” and, “while they were less likely than whites to use excessive force (at least according to their reports to the researchers), these officers freely admitted to being markedly more aggressive about responding to such low-level infractions as drunkenness and loitering.” Many officers attributed their aggressive policing to pride and embarrassment (Locking Up Our Own, p. 107–109). Take the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971, for example. Then exacerbate its premise with the context and history of structural racism, internalized racism, and the issues both have caused the Black community internally, over centuries.
Ironically, it isn’t just Black and other officers of color who act this way. My grandfather recounted being present for many a conversation had by his white colleagues that centered ethnic jokes, derogatory comments, and despicable remarks about, “poor white trash” and, “trailer park trash.” Overhearing those conversations very much validated his suspicions that when he wasn’t around, they surely said the same, if not worse, about Black people. If the population/area they were talking about was more ethnically homogeneous, “it became a separation of religion and whatever else they could think of.” As county policemen, their assignments were by ZIP codes, not neighborhoods, and the department required they live in their jurisdiction. The same can’t be said for police departments across the nation today, including our own city’s. When asked about the difference in behavior by policemen, he attributed part of it to the perception of where they anticipated trouble. Citing urban renewal, the tearing down of public housing, white flight, and pushing out of minority populations as the cause of the creation and concentration of “hot spots” that are seen as, “where the trouble is going to be” today.
So, what does he think?
My grandfather attributes the unrest and tension that exists between police officers and citizens to issues that existed then, but have been exacerbated over the decades. From his jurisdiction, there wasn’t as much unrest as there is today. From underemployment and unemployment, to frustration, fear, and perpetuation of stereotypes and institutional frameworks, there’s enough blame to go around, including upon the white woman in the grocery store who pointed at him and told her misbehaving child, “You see him? He’s going to get you if you don’t start acting right,” while he perused food products in the same aisle. She got a firm comment from him: “You will not make me out to be some ‘boogie man’, just because you can’t control your child in public.”
While there are a few places to point to as the foundation of police (nightwatchmen, slave patrols, etc.), my grandfather referenced it as an outgrowth of the bounty hunter system. He went on about how the first men that policed people’s behaviors and bodies were more ruthless, and that the notion of Black people seeing white guy as the, “bad guy” goes hand-in-hand with the historic perpetuation of white men seeing us as inferior, and acting accordingly. “In general, Black people have a mistrust for policemen because in the history of policing, we were policed different. And when you think about it, we haven’t had Black policemen for long.”
According to author James Forman Jr., civil rights groups nationwide demanded attention to and accountability for unchecked corruption and unwarranted arrests. When interviewed, many Black people said they felt they were powerless. There was no recourse. “In 1966, a nationwide study validated their fear, finding that police officers were almost never convicted or punished in the aftermath of abuse allegations (Locking Up Our Own, 98).”
54 years later, does this seem familiar?
Some of y’all are mad about the riots. I get that. I really do.
I too, love people, places, and things.
Do you know why I’m mad? I’m mad that my grandfather and family elders who helped get me where I am today, never received public nor societal apology. Yes, they’ve been honored for being the “First Black ______,” but honoring them with a plaque, a ceremony, a historical marker, etc. doesn’t hold a candle to the expression of humility that could be offered. For goodness’ sake, of all my elders who broke barriers, only two of them are still alive. Though people from my family tend to live into their 90s and occasionally the 100s, why wait to give them the flowers while they’re still alive, instead of placing them on their casket?
A multiplicity of white men whom my elder (who passed away in 2013) helped with policy and GOTV, attended her funeral to pay their respects, express gratitude, and say some compassionate words to our family about the role she played in their understanding of and career in politics. I’ll leave my comments about them at that, because as my grandfather said multiple times throughout my interview with him: “…well, maybe I shouldn’t mention their name. They’re still alive.”
We haven’t even arrived at my anger about what my mother went through as a child born in the late 1950s. And we’re nowhere near the anger I have about my own collection of experiences with racism and microaggressions. If you’re someone who knows me personally, you very well could be someone who has contributed to that pain over the years; depending on when you met me in life, you may not know because I waited until I was in non-white company to let out my frustration. I may have even forgiven you. But what I can promise, is that I did not forget.
¨When people protest shootings such as Laquan McDonald’s, they protest serious, deeply entrenched problems: the leniency given to officers who instigate violence, the disparity in arrest rates between blacks and whites, the overpolicing of the poor, and the lack of transparency in any situation deemed by prosecutors to involve potential investigative evidence. In essence, they protest unfairness. These are problems that technology will never be able to solve.¨ (Thin Blue Lie, p. 215)
I must say, as I see people express their dismay for rioters and looters, my eyes roll. We are on looted land that was built by looted bodies. Your history books haven’t, didn’t, and won’t say that as explicitly as they should. It would be, “too much like right” as my mother says. What happened to George Floyd in Minneapolis, has happened to countless others in a multitude of ways. How do I know? Because I’ve been paying attention. I have to pay attention. The legacy of my grandfather and the lives of my brother, uncles, cousins, and friends, require me to do so. And while I have a little more heart for small business owners who have been affected, the preference for the maintenance of capitalism and material goods, for companies and people that would follow or have me followed in their establishment, is a discussion for another time. That, and the correlation between the recordings of people today wielding their whiteness against Black bodies, and the history of entitlement and white supremacy that manifested itself in revoking the bodily autonomy of unarmed Black people (men especially), is also a conversation for another time.
I don’t think of myself as someone who would riot in public. I don’t even like going to rallies or marches (for many reasons, but primarily because the elders who helped raise me had already done more than their fair share of putting themselves in physical danger to assert the validity of their humanity). But with that being said:
Hell hath no fury like the unleashing of anger from those whose lives are the direct result of deliberately racist and classist infrastructures and generational trauma that began with the pillaging, kidnapping, rape, enslavement, and exploitation of their ancestors.
Hell hath no fury like those who were blessed enough to be raised by and receive wisdom from multiple generations of resilient people, and feel the pain of their experiences in their bodies.
Hell hath no fury like those who didn’t or don’t have the terminology, access to resources, or capacity to verbalize what they know to be true, but experience it every day, and ¨lash out¨ when it all becomes too much to bear.
Hell hath no fury like the rage within me when expletives come from my mouth when yet another video surfaces of someone wielding their whiteness [and uniform] as a weapon against a Black body.
If I ever check social media and find that my brother, or any of my Black family members have lost their lives at the hands of the police and have become a hashtag, I cannot and will not guarantee you what my words and actions will be.
And if I were to become a hashtag? As family and so-called friends, people who invoke my name as someone you know or care about, you all would have a responsibility to do right by me. If you think my spirit/soul won’t haunt you because of your lack of action, think again. I’m watching. I’m an observer by nature. Always have been, always will be. Never mistake my silence for lack of care and inaction.
