Would They Still “Back the Blue” If All Cops Were Black? (Haha!)
Heck no. Because for some people, enthusiasm for “the blue” seems to depend heavily on seeing the police as protecting their group from a racialized out-group. Change the racial composition of the police, and suddenly that unwavering devotion to “law and order” would very likely change.
For my European readers: “Back the Blue” is a U.S. pro-police slogan that became especially prominent as a counter to Black Lives Matter and demands for police reform, including greater accountability for police misconduct, changes to use-of-force policies, and debates over qualified immunity.
And while the phrase is American, the underlying issue certainly isn’t. Police brutality, excessive use of force, racial profiling, and deaths in police custody are documented problems in Europe too. European institutions have repeatedly documented racial and ethnic profiling, discriminatory policing, and excessive force against minority communities. So this isn’t simply an “American problem.” The American debate is one particularly visible example of a much broader problem involving policing, race, power, and accountability.
Because what they actually are backing isn’t simply the police. It’s what the police represent when authority and punishment are directed at the people they already distrust, dislike, or fear. Their allegiance is to racism, or to anything that upholds it.
What they actually back is:
Authority and punishment directed at groups they hate.
The perception that police are protecting “people like them.”
The minimization or excuse-making of police violence against Black people.
The idea that police reform is somehow an attack on white social status or national identity.
And, for some, the disturbing enjoyment of seeing Black people controlled, punished, brutalized, or killed through police violence.
The use of “Back the Blue” as a counter-slogan against BLM.
Stereotypes portraying Black people as inherently more criminal or dangerous.
Selective perception, applying completely different standards to police violence depending on who is being policed and who is doing the policing.
And the use of “law and order” as a justification for aggressive policing, including a political tradition in which that language has been used in response to racial unrest and struggles over racial hierarchy.
So maybe the real question isn’t, “Do you support the police?”
Maybe it’s:
Would you still support the same police tactics, the same “law and order,” the same aggressive policing, and the same unquestioning loyalty if the people doing the policing and the people being protected were Black?
Because if the answer suddenly changes when the uniforms stay blue but the people inside them change from white to Black, then perhaps the color people were really defending wasn’t blue after all.
Maybe it was white.
Photo Credit: Pexels - Ludmila Aleksandra