Y’all, please come get the Sergeants Benevolent Association, please, because I do believe someone in public relations has lost his damn mind.
On Sunday night, the New York City Police Department union released a video claiming that cops are the victims of “blue racism,” and face worse prejudice than those who are judged by their race.
This is not a drill.
Like a trailer for an exceedingly bad movie—you know, the kind that makes you cringe and squint as you watch, but you can’t peel your eyes away from the horror—a narrator details all the ways in which cops suffer in today’s society.
“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,” the narrator laments.
It seems that the union missed the memo that went around the office detailing that racism and racist lenses, or whatever the fuck they’re talking about, require that ... you know ... actual race be involved. Like, stop this. Immediately. You’re embarrassing yourselves.
Last time I checked, there ain’t nobody walking around with blue skin, other than the Smurfs and the Blue Fugates. Blue is not a people. Blue is not a race.
But these guys won’t ever quit even while they’re far enough behind. The video continues on to show clips from protests, which I guess they perceive to be threatening? It also shows clips from cops who were attacked in the line of duty or in recent ambushes, and shows stories when officers were allegedly refused service.
“Because I am blue, increasingly I’m vilified,” the narrator says in the voice-over. “Surely we haven’t lost the ability to discern the facts from whatever might arise.”
I think by “whatever might arise,” the narrator might be referring to the countless black men who have been gunned down by police over the past few years for no apparent reason. Or the way in which the justice system appears to favor cops, with many cases involving a shooting not even making it before a judge, let alone leading to a conviction.
We haven’t even touched on other incidents involving brutality and misconduct.
And for a video talking about the ability to discern the facts, it sure does a terrible job of addressing those facts. Like the fact that roughly 1,000 people were either killed by police or in police custody in 2016, including 258 black people, of whom about 34 percent were unarmed black men. Or the fact that although white men and boys are in fact those most often killed, accounting for about 46 percent of deaths in 2016, when adjusted for population, black men and boys were three times as likely to die at the hands of police.
To top it all off, of course (of fucking course), the video had to include a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. reading, “I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by their color, but by the content of their character.”
Also speaking of facts, it’s worth noting that the SBA neatly edited King’s speech because, in reality, MLK knew a thing or two about racism and clearly stated, “I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin ...”
But hey, what are facts in the face of a police union acting as if officers are related to blue, anthropomorphous creatures living in mushroom-shaped houses in a forest?