Spending the past year protesting in different parts of New York City, I’ve encountered a wide range of fellow demonstrators and police officers. Some cops are open to dialogue, while many others look for any excuse to resort to violence. In contrast, the vast majority of protesters have been peaceful, with only a fraction of scattered individuals seeking to incite violence. Without unification, however, they pose little to no threat. Regardless, hyperfocusing on select cops or protesters as symbols of their respective groups distracts from the greater context.
Something feels off about watching white people berate, accost, and hurl insults at black police officers during protests against systemic racism. “Race Traitor!” “Sellout!” “Oreo!” “Turncoat!” “You’re black!” have all been things I’ve heard white people yell at black cops. Black police officers don’t need to be reminded they’re black. They know. By simply existing as people of color in America, black and brown officers are victims of the same racist structures that white protesters seek to reform, restructure, defund, or abolish 1. So, where’s the white sympathy for black cops?
While it is impossible to determine one’s intentions for pursuing a career in law enforcement, remaining silent in the face of gross injustices committed by fellow cops is inexcusable. Silence is complicity. Those who refuse to acknowledge the failures of the police due to a shared occupation are further perpetuating violence against minorities under the guise of maintaining law and order. With the continued murder of black people at the hands of negligent police, now is not the time to sympathize with the plight of silent black cops, but it is also not the time to attack or judge them based on their race. Despite the context, weaponizing race in the name of protest does not positively contribute to the fight against racism.
Protesting is a medium in which to vocally reclaim power from our government in attempts to pressure elected officials to respond to the demands of the visible majority. However, when white people introduce anti-black criticisms into protesting, they are only stripping the power from black cops by weaponizing historical context and leveraging racial stereotypes. This tactic of race-baiting is counterintuitive in the fight to end racism, as it bolsters antiquated ideas about race and identity, thereby impeding progress. Black people that stray from expectations defined by a narrow understanding of blackness are often mislabeled as “race traitors,” “sellouts,” “coons,” “Uncle Toms,” “house n*ggers,” and so on. These attacks unfairly target individuals for their race and establish a dynamic that reveals the privilege a white person has to make such an accusation. These terms have an extra weight due to a long history that links directly to slavery, in which black people were forced to seek out the approval of their white masters in hopes of elevating their social standing. Chanting “black or blue” in the face of a black police officer propagates an uneven power dynamic, situating the white person as an authority on black identity and thereby erasing the complexity of an individual black person’s experiences. Well-intentioned white people must recognize that they cannot judge or determine anyone’s blackness, regardless of occupation or political affiliations.
Within certain minority communities, people are encouraged to pursue careers in the armed services and the police force, as these are secure jobs that represent a reclamation of perceived respect and honor. Having a desire for that esteem can be misinterpreted as rejecting one’s blackness, but individual success cannot radically change a social perception of race. Once a black cop is without a uniform and a badge, they immediately become a target, indistinguishable from the rest of the black community.
Milton Green had been a cop for more than a decade in St. Louis, Missouri, when he was shot by a white colleague a few feet from his home after being confused with a fleeing suspect 2. Even for cops, racism is inescapable, as the idea that black people are inherently dangerous has permeated our society as a whole.
Attacking a black cop’s loyalty to their race will only further alienate them from a movement they could greatly enhance. If black and minority police officers collectively embraced the Black Lives Matter movement by boycotting their duties, this country would be forced to enact immediate change. In the moment, it may feel good to hurl insults at a cop; however, it is only a vindictive personal victory to capture a false sense of control. The anger is understandable, especially with the graphic nature in which we all experienced George Floyd’s death, but cops have been killing black people on camera for years. Where has this white outrage been for so long?
With black people continuing to be killed, it is clear that police departments are failing. There aren’t just a couple of “bad apples” in the police department giving the force a bad name; it is the faulty design of an organization that keeps allowing officers to kill without repercussions. Unmotivated attempts to reform hiring practices and increase accountability have failed, because it is impossible to weed out the few “bad apples” when the actual tree producing the apples is what’s rotten 3.
The fight is not against police officers as individuals, but deeply corrupt systems and organizations that produce government-sanctioned murderers. There is no strategy of reform that can cure a structure embedded with racism, reliant on stereotyping and race-based targeting. The living history of police abuses cannot be erased, and the eroded trust between cops and communities of color is unsalvageable. Long-lasting change will only be accomplished with the abolition of the police force as we know it. Abolition would make way for a rebuilding process of the entire criminal justice system that considers the best interests and safety of all people.
When a white person attends a protest, they choose to directly implicate themselves in a battle against injustice. Once they leave the protest, however, they are no longer visibly implicated nor associated with BLM. Yet, the harmful things that white people have the privilege to get away with at protests ultimately damage the public’s perception of black people and the movement as a whole. In all of their actions, white people must recognize how they contribute to deepening biases and promoting violence against black people. Rather than using protests as merely an outlet to exercise anger and frustration, white people must tactfully leverage their privilege to support black people in the fight to dismantle racist structures.
1 Southall, Ashley, and Edgar Sandoval. “How Black N.Y.P.D. Officers Really Feel About the Floyd Protesters.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 17 June 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/nyregion/black-hispanic-officers-nypd-protests.html.
2 Eligon, John. “A White Officer Shoots a Black Colleague, Deepening a Racial Divide.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 24 Nov. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/11/24/us/st-louis-race-police.html.
3 Beauchamp, Zack. “What the Police Really Believe.” Vox, Vox, 7 July 2020, www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/7/7/21293259/police-racism-violence-ideology-george-floyd.
Ciarán Short is a black artist and writer, born and raised in New York City. His work explores New York culture and tackles issues of race and masculinity.