Police are the problem, according to protesters and activists who believe law enforcement is systemically biased against black people. This argument, however, becomes very complicated when we consider one very important group of people: Black officers. They know how important their work is, but also what it feels like to wear their skin.
David J. Thomas is one such officer. He still remembers approaching a squad car outside the corner store in downtown Detroit when he was 11 years old to ask the officer how fast the car could go. The next thing he knew, the officer had shoved a handgun in his face and said, “It goes fast. Now get away from my damn car.”
This was one of many incidents in which Thomas says he was mistreated by Detroit police because of his skin color. But he chose this profession anyway because he believed he could “be the change” his family members, friends, and neighbors needed, he told the Washington Post.
Several decades later, and that change is still ongoing. But Thomas, like many other African Americans in the police force, take pride in their work and the ways in which they serve their communities. Indeed, black Americans have invested so much into law enforcement that in several major cities, such as Detroit, where Thomas grew up, black officers make up the majority. Do their voices not matter?
Not according to the Black Lives Matter activists who portray the conflict between law enforcement and protesters as a black vs. white issue. Ronnie Dunn, a professor of urban studies at Cleveland State University, would beg to differ.
“The thing is, no matter what your race or ethnicity, when you go through the academy, that identity becomes second to policing,” he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “You become blue.”
Videos over the past few weeks have shown black officers pleading with white protesters to allow for nuance. In one such video, a protester pointed her finger in a U.S. Capitol Police officer’s face and demanded to know why he had become a police officer. Pointing back to the Capitol, the officer said, “This country did not want us, but yet there were people who fought anyway. Now, we got spaces here.”
“You have officers across the country who have never even dealt with black people … so if I quit and then all the police department is white, how does that help?” the officer continued. “I was black before this,” he said, tugging on his uniform. “When I’m off duty, I’m black. … And I’m going to be black after this job.”
