“We have nothing to hide.” That’s what San Francisco police chief Gregory Suhr recently said in the wake of a flurry—a nine-page flurry!—of bigoted text messages between three officers. Here’s a sampling:
“We got two blacks at my boys [sic] school and they are brother and sister! There cause dad works for the school district and I am watching them like hawks.”
“Those guys are pretty stupid! Ask some dumb ass questions you would expect from a black rookie!”
“Niggers should be spayed.”
“Cross burning lowers blood pressure! I did the test myself!”
“Indian ppl are disgusting.”
“[Black people are] like a pack [of] wild animals on the loose.”
“These are the actions of a few,” Suhr added as part of his participation with a federal investigation of his department. But not everyone is so sure. “These texts evidence a deep culture of racial hatred and animus against blacks, Latinos, gays and even South Asians,” insisted Jeff Adachi, a city public defender.
What makes this especially scandalous is that the texters are not cops in some backward town. San Francisco has always prided itself on its liberalism and cultural melting pot. While it’s not shocking that the city has racist cops—because every city does!
Every. Single. City.
It’s that the police officers felt entirely comfortable expressing their racism so brazenly.
(Incidentally, the text messages were discovered by accident, as part of an investigation looking into whether an officer raped someone (as if that weren’t bad enough). This is also about a year after a similar episode in which 14 officers had also sent racist texts. Most of them are still actively on the force, by the way.)
Now, perhaps you’re envisioning some nefarious white police officers typing out their ignorant thoughts, but think again. In this case, two of the three officers are Asian-Americans, who, it’s worth noting, also made derogatory remarks about other Asian-Americans. In other words, this isn’t a black/white thing.
To deal with this fiasco, Suhr also announced that all police officers would have to partake in anti-bias training. That sounds nice, maybe. Such training is often a box to check and is consequently a waste of time and money. Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way. And I hope that it isn’t.
But it also raises a more complicated and interesting point: It would be great if diversity training could change people’s minds and hearts. That should be the aim. It often is. But I’m wondering if sometimes that is too tall an order. Is teaching people respect not based on inculcated inclusive beliefs but regardless of people’s beliefs sometimes more valuable, or at least more realistic? I realize that this doesn’t have to be an either/or question, but I think it’s a worthy question nonetheless. What do you think?
