The Police
There are few phrases in America today that create more division than the phrase, “the police.” When I was growing up and I heard the phrase, “the police,” I thought about Officer Friendly, my friends’ dads and the people that would save me if the “bad guys” ever got to me. When I got a little older and started to interact more with people who were African Americans, I learned that many of them had a completely different view of “the police.” That phrase to them meant racial profiling, police brutality, and the guys that might lock them up, hurt them or kill them unjustly. As far as I could tell, it was a Black and White issue. White people admired “the police.” Black people feared them. This Norman Rockwell painting is a great depiction of how I grew up viewing “the police”. Source However, over the course of the past several years and with the help of digital media technology, many White folks have abandon their traditional view of Officer Friendly. Liberal Whit...