The Sergeants Benevolent Association, one of New York City’s largest police unions, knows that racism is a serious problem. Only, they seem a little confused about who the racists are, because they’ve put out a video claiming it’s basically everyone else, and that the poor cops are the real victims of prejudice.
“Blue racism”. They’re seriously trying to argue that’s a thing.
Right from the beginning, you know the NYPD must live in an alternate reality where racial bigotry works very differently from the way it does here, because the department that became synonymous with stopping-and-frisking Black and brown people now thinks that others are “even more racist” towards them:
The average person doesn’t see those things that make me human. They don’t even label me based on being African-American, Latino, Asian, Caucasian, and so on. They tend to see an even broader stereotype through an even more racist lens. When they look at me, they see blue.
This, of a law enforcement collective whose history of misconduct, much of it race-related, has its own novella-length Wikipedia page.
But it gets better. My favorite bit starts at the 1:32 mark with this sober pronouncement:
Because I am blue, increasingly I’m vilified. Still, I’m sworn to protect my community from injustice.
So noble, to continue upholding their oath to protect the very people who occasionally criticize them! Except, whilst our hard-done-by narrator says this, they display a mention of former NYPD Sgt. Hugh Barry, who was charged with (as the video helpfully points out) “2ND Degree Murder”, as well as manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide.
What the video not-as-helpfully leaves out: he was arrested for shooting dead a 66-year-old schizophrenic Black woman in her home after she allegedly brandished a baseball bat. Evidently the threat of a little old lady in her apartment gave the trained and certified law officer such a fright that he decided his firearm would be more appropriate for the threat at hand than his stun gun, pepper spray or other nonlethal means.
A cop needlessly killed a mentally ill elderly lady and is being appropriately punished for it, just as any non-officer would if they’d done the same. And the SBA thinks this is evidence of “vilification”, and thus, anti-police racism.
Oh, and they also quote MLK’s “I Have a Dream”. Because of course they do. The fact that it’s because of the “content of their character”, as judged by the routine abuse they perpetrate upon the people they serve (allow me to mention that mile-long misconduct article again), that they’re increasingly distrusted is another point that flies a mile over the SBA’s heads.
I’ve had a long day and I have no patience left to continue dissecting all the self-pitying nonsense in that video. Instead, go read this unimpressed take at The Mary Sue, which explains to the clueless makers of that video what actual racism looks like.
(via @Popehat)
