I was in my twenties when I asked my mother this question: How is it that all my family are prejudiced, and I’m not? Exasperated might describe the look she shot my way as she raised her voice to answer.
“You are as prejudiced as the rest of us.”
I do not know what response I expected, but that wasn’t it. I saw myself as an outlier in my family. I had marched for civil rights. I even organized and spoke at a memorial procession at my alma mater, Villanova, the day after Dr. King was killed.
Mom, as always, saw the deeper reality. I have pondered the truth of her pronouncement throughout my life and have recently had cause to ponder anew.
Cops were an integral presence in my childhood. I knew the Darby police by name. Two of my favorites were Howard and Ted. Yes, we called them by their first names, a remarkable practice in a world where my best friend’s mom was Mrs. Courtney, my teacher was Sister, priests were Father. None of their first names were even known to me.
But the cops were Ted and Howard. It was their last names I didn’t know. I spoke often to them as they manned the intersection at Main and MacDade, manually working the busy stoplight. A different time, definitely.
Both were tall, but while Ted was beefy and sported a pugnacious Jay Leno chin, Howard was trim well turned out, handsome. Both smiled readily. Both made friendly conversation as I stopped at their corner on my way to school.
Ted was white, and Howard was black. To me these were descriptive facts, like Ted’s chin and Howard’s ready smile. The first name basis implied a kind of intimacy but not an absence of respect. To this child these men were symbols of a world determined to keep me safe, secure. If they told me to do something, or not to, I was convinced it was only to protect me. They were guardians of my well-being.
I would not have called them heroes. That silly word would await our era where we must prove our appreciation with inflated honorifics. Still, to me cops meant protection, freedom from worry, freedom from fear. Freedom. I certainly did appreciate them, welcome their presence and constancy.
As far as I knew, everyone felt the same.
I know better (or worse) now.
Even then, I knew about disparate treatment at the hands of police. An incident occurred when I was perhaps 11 or 12 that confirmed for me that black suspects were frequently beaten by police as punishment for getting caught. Whites, of course, experienced no such retaliation. I didn’t know the word “systemic” back then.
Dr. King tried to explain to us, us whites. He didn’t have to explain to black folk. Did anyone have to explain to my young self what it’s like to feel protected by the police? It was my daily experience. Likewise, no one has to describe to black men a world where the police are a potential life threatening presence.
These are wildly different views of the same societal reality: local law enforcement. Both views are rooted in lived experience, mine of safety affirmed, theirs of danger imminent. I am amazed that I cannot relate to someone seeing a cop as a direct threat to life and limb.
More amazing is the thought that a black man cannot know what it is like to approach a cop and experience a feeling of security and protection, will never say, “Hi Ted” or “Hi Howard.” After viewing the video of the Nine Minute Murder, I can see how impossible such a thing might be.
Robert C. O’Brien, the president’s national security advisor, claimed that the president wanted “peaceful protesters who have real concerns about brutality and racism…They need to be able to petition their government and let their voices be heard.”
This is false. A group of high profile black men, not long ago, did exactly as O’Brien wished and staged the most peaceful protest in our nation’s history to call attention to “brutality and racism.” These men simply knelt for two minutes in complete silence. They were unusually large men who, in a different context could be seen as quite threatening.
They were NFL football players, protesting exactly as O’Brien recommended. The president then expressed his views on their peaceful two minute kneeling demonstration. He called them thugs. He demanded their bosses fire them and taunted the bosses as cowards for not doing so. He said the protesters were un-American because they used the playing of the National Anthem as the setting for their protest.
If they were heard instead of reviled, perhaps further deaths could have been prevented. Perhaps the Nine Minute Murder of George Floyd would not have happened. We’ll never know, of course, because the bosses caved, the organizer of the protest was indeed fired and blackballed from the game, and, once again, the networks went to commercial during the playing of the National Anthem, as was their practice before the protest.
Now peaceful protest coexists with violent actions. The president and his Attorney General blame weak-willed Democratic leaders in beleaguered cities. They blame vague left wing groups like “Antifa.” They blame thugs. Not a single member of this administration thus far has taken any responsibility for the unrest.
I understand, Mr. Trump, Mr. O’Brien. I am guessing your experience of cops was similar to mine. The Nine Minute Murder by a uniformed policeman, surrounded by a phalanx of fellow cops, is utterly unthinkable. You would have denied it was possible right up until you viewed the video.
In O’Brien’s telling, bad cops like those four comprise literally .1% of all police on the force. He might be convincing to people like me whose experience of local law enforcement is as benign as mine has been. It is exactly what I want to believe, what I wish were true, what was in fact true for me. Nothing systemic going on here. Just a little aberration. Erase that terrible video and go on about your lives. Remember, folks, there are black cops also serving on those forces.
I think of Howard the cop, the black man I admired as a child. I knew nothing of him beyond his warm smile, inviting small talk, comforting uniformed presence. I saw him as a “colored man,” but that was solely because of the color of his skin. I mainly saw him as a policeman, and that was because he behaved with dedication and honor.
What I’ll never know is the daily price he paid to remain dedicated, to retain his honor, in a world far less dedicated to his well-being than he was to mine. Long after his passing, I learned how revered he was in Darby’s black community. Of course, what I wasn’t aware of they knew all too well.
I suppose in some cases, the word hero isn’t hyperbole at all.
