Former Police Officer Badge #1087

26 May 2020

Former police officer Badge #1087,

Who were your teachers?

Who were your mentors?

Did your kindergarten teacher teach you to share?

Did your elementary teachers teach you to be kind and think about other people’s feelings?

Did your middle school teachers teach about point of view and perspective?

Did your high school teachers teach you to listen??

Did your police academy teachers teach you to respect life?

Who were your other teachers and mentors?

Were they parents, sports coaches, club leaders, friends, family, religious leaders?

What did they teach you?

And did all of those teachers and mentors look like you?

Did the characters in the books you read look like you?

Whose customs, traditions, stories, and histories were told in those texts?

And were most of those words written by white people too?

Whose stories, histories, and perspectives weren’t represented?

What riches did you miss?

How much of your education was flattened by the lack of diversity?

Was all of the teaching of values, traditions, and measures of success so rooted in Eurocentric standards that white privilege was positioned as normal and neutral?

And did this prevent you from learning not only how to take an anti-racist path, but also allyship and empathy?

Did we teachers, we as a society

that uphold our institutions

from which violence and disregard for humanity pour

saturate your soul with the sludge of white privilege and racism?

Is that why George Floyd was murdered?

Former police officer Badge #1087, what had you learned?

Have we so failed?

If you didn’t learn any of this, did we fail to teach it?

If we have failed to teach what’s most important,

then we have failed.

Artwork by Minneapolis artist Andres Guzman (IG: @andresitoguzman)