Americans Get Real On Black-Police Tensions

Told me some of the harsh things you had to see, and I don't wanna repeat it because it was just dragged down the energy. But it's he really does see humanity at its worst moments, you know, and a lot of death. And so if it's the I want the departments around the nation to really make a push toward and I also want this for the military to support you all in seeing these very drastic things. Especially since you were talking about the a feeling of lack of support as a black police officer from the black community, how do you manage that duality of being an officer of the law, being an authority figure, but also with the what feels like venomous relationship blacks have with the police right now, having to also want to be a part and fit in into the black community? How do you deal with these variables? It's tough. Honestly, I think you just reach a point where you accept what it is, and you just rock with it. I mean, it is what it is. I used to care a lot about fitting in and wanting to be relatable and not wanting to be ostracized, but now not so much. What shifted What shifted Yeah. Is a lack of understanding, a lack of accountability, and at some point, you just get tired of caring. You get tired of trying to prove a point, and it's like, whatever. Yeah. When you reach your forties, you do get tired of caring. I've noticed for me, being a police officer is a job. When I'm off work, like, right now, I'm Marcus. I'm not a cop. I'm a cop. That's something that I do when I go to work, and I just separate the 2, and I don't worry about it. So you're saying you deal with the variables by compartmentalizing? Yeah. Do you think that's good for your mental health? No. I don't. I think about you a lot, Marcus, because I recently started watching the news, and people make awful choices in life. And you, Marcus, I'm very sympathetic to your mental health and your situation because you see society at its worst and in some of the worst moments of their life. And I'm sure that takes a toll on you as a human being, as a man, and a lot of these worst moments you see with people of color. And here in my city, the user, a lot of them are black people. Right? And because, I mean yeah. And I wish there was something I could say to help aid. I think it's just something you have to go through. But what I will say is, you know, I appreciate, and I've said this privately to you, the work that you do. And I think one solution because I also want us to pivot the conversation towards solutions to all of this is to maybe help with urge the departments to help with mental health awareness. Even at my job, and I work with a bunch of data engineers, they're like, sitting in front of computer all day is not healthy. You need to have you need to find ways to help with your mental health awareness. And I think that is one way you could possibly impact your fellow coworkers of coping strategies with so many because you've told me some of the harsh things you had to see, and I don't wanna repeat it because it would just drag down the energy. But it's he really does see humanity at its worst moments, you know, and a lot of death. And so if the I want the departments around the nation to really make a push toward and I also want this for the military to support you all in seeing these very drastic things. And, you know, and helping Mary and I were recently talking about men and the space for men to show their emotions, even if that leads them toward crime. And we know in the United States, it's a tough guy nation. But some of this stuff that men and women, as you know, officers of the law see, is so drastic. You really need to release that stuff. And my fear for you is that you're bundling it in. You're bundling it in. You're bundling it in, and we all know how that happens. Pressure moves outward. And one day, you're gonna folinate. And I just don't want that to be bad. I don't want that to happen for you. I got you. Well, that's why it's important when you're not at work to have friends that are not police officers and to have an outlet. That's why I go to church. That's why I sing in the choir. That's why I work out. You're singing the choir. That's how you knew I was a soprano last night. Yeah. I can hit them, though. Like my beloved dog, bro. I can hit them now. Heard it. I heard it. I heard it. Baby. So yes, baby. You just have to have things that are not police related to give you that escape. So, Marcus and I and I think there's a way to pivot it. I just wanna ask what maybe if I could be more pointed. Andre just shared all the things you have to see. Is it your, you know, fainting motivation to keep doing this work around the things you see and or the way people treat police in the context of you seeing what and experiencing what you have to see and experience? Like, if you got to support more, not lack of criticism, but more support from the community than maybe you've been feeling of recent time, would that make a difference, or is it just the magnitude of the things you have to deal with are so are so great that it's hard to do it over a long period of time? I think it's the magnitude of it. I think every young officer starts this career, and they think, oh, I'm gonna go out. I'm gonna save the world. I really wanna make a difference. And then you meet humanity. Hit the ground running. And then probably around the 1, 2-year mark, you realize that society really doesn't care. You're really not gonna make a difference. You end up going to the same homes over and over again. You deal with the same people over and over again, and you just reach a point where you realize there's no accountability. You're damned if you do, damned if you don't. Even if you give it your all, it doesn't matter. Mhmm. Because no one wants to be responsible. You can say, for instance, a DWI. You get a drunk driver off the street. They have to spend $12,000. They hire an attorney, and they pick every bit of your investigation apart. You did this wrong. You did that wrong. You signed wrong in this spot. Mhmm. And then they get off with it. Some of them go on to do it again. Some of them go on to do it multiple times. Some of them go on and hit a family and kill them. And all of that work was for nothing. You literally spend 3, 4 hours working on this for a defense attorney to pick it apart and make you look like a complete idiot. You told me that. You said DUI, it's easy money for lawyers because it's very and Marion's father is a notary public. Yeah. It's easy money for lawyers because it's so easy to pick it apart and then just get it dismissed. I felt it was so timely hearing a lot of what Marcus had to say about being a black police officer and just the emotion of the moment given everything that was going on. I really wanted to give him the space to be able to express that. Yeah. And I was very, very moved by that. I had completely I mean; I don't know a lot of black people in law enforcement. I have heard all the grumblings from you know about black people in law enforcement. So to hear kind of directly from him was very, very moving. With the black community and police, it's a very it's a I think it causes so much suffering in so many people. It's like an unresolvable battle in some cases that I that I worry will never resolve and then we'll just keep people, you know, going through traumatic experiences continually. When I see police violence, I don't feel that that, you know, that rush or anything. It doesn't really make me, you know, scared or fearful or you know, I don't have that same, emotional tie that I see that a lot of other people do, and especially members of the black community. So I know that there is deep history there, but I view it almost like, you know, a social scientist would look at it, you know, in some ways. You know what I mean? And I'm like, well, this is the crime rate, and this is gonna therefore, gonna be the frequency of encounters. And these are gonna be the nature of the encounters, and therefore, this will be the inevitable result in a nation as complex and diverse as ours. And I and I come to the conclusion that this will never these kinds of experiences will never disappear. You know? And but the thing that I see about it is that that it really causes a lot of trauma among you know, probably, Andre, you feel this really strongly, you know, when you use these videos. Right? And so, you know, it would be interesting to understand more about that and why because it's like you've seen that video, and you feel it like it's an attack upon yourself in some respects. You know? And I don't know what that, emotional tie feels like. And to hear it also, more about Marcus and how what are the hard realities that he thinks are there? And will this ever you know? I see that reform has been made in a lot of cases, and it's going in good directions. But I also worry that, if you push reform and antagonism too far, then you get receding police presence, and then, therefore, you get more people harmed by violence, in the long run. You know? So I wonder what's the right amount of pressure to put on the police and in reform, and I think it's a really good question for American society. Talking about Tyre Nichols, I felt like I wanted to get into that more. I may have wanted to say something about the different instances of this horrible thing that have happened, you know, to all these, people, you know, George Floyd and, you know Breonna Taylor. Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, I mean, and Anna. I you know, in each of those circumstances, I heard what, on what sorry. What Marcus said about needing to consider them individually, and I wanted to talk more about that. Like, I think I probably held back, because I do think some of those situations, you gotta look at them individually, and what happens on both sides of the equation? Like, what what's happening? I don't know. It's hard to say, and I'm and I'm hesitant to even say it now, because, Andre, I'm afraid I'm gonna offend you. No. You won't offend me. The intent's a lot of what they need. Because sometimes there may be things that the person who's the victim of it has done. Not in all case, they I mean, you really have to take them individually. But in some cases, there's something that they've done that has brought that there it's escalated the situation. And I know the cop is the professional, and he should be the one to deescalate. Mhmm. But if when you have two sides escalating, boy, it spirals. And so I think I might have wondered what? The lines get blurry, and there are They do. But I hear what you're saying. There can be contributing factors that don't help the situation. Yes. Yes. And it's different in every case. And then I've tried really hard to I haven't done this with everyone, but in every case, I tried to do a deep dive. I look at the whole video. And since we talked the other day, I walked looked at the whole Tyre Nichols video. That one, there's, yeah. I definitely had time to do it. And in the beginning, like, for example, I'll just go ahead and give you the apprehension. In the beginning, when they were telling him to get down get down, he was only on his side trying to talk to them. And yes. Yes. That was that that was, and I know Marcus will say this, because we're friends, an act of noncompliance, right, where most would have just gotten down on their belly Follow the instructions. Until they were up in order to accost orally the officers. Right? Right. And so that has been pointed out by the media, and I saw, and I saw that myself. I was like, well, he's technically not, you know, complying, and then you'd escalate it from there. Right. I see I understand what you're trying. Right. But in that in that and so in this one, now I've not only seen the whole videos, but I also think that that was, like, that that one's on the cops, period, to me. And, I mean, I didn't want to make that full judgment until I've seen it all. I probably got some more reading to do and need to hear more about it, but I don't I mean, that's my opinion. This this time, it's on the cops. But in some situations, I have seen where it some of like, with the Michael Brown, to me, is a little more complicated. That one's a really complicated one. And I may have been holding back to well, I may maybe it's just that we didn't have time, but I also probably would have held back a little bit on that. So yeah. I don't know. And the concern there, Susan, is just the kind of response you might get and yeah. Yeah. What people might think of you for even kind of thinking. Yeah. That there's some nuance in a situation like that. I mean, people might think, how could you say there's nuance? There's you know, in any of those cases. Well, in some, there's no to me, in some cases, there's no nuance. It's just flat out horrible. You know, one side has a 100% of the blame. Yeah. In some of them, I, you know, I think there's room yeah. There's I'm just afraid I'll be judged thinking that I'm okay. I'm trying to blame a victim blame. Yeah. And I don't wanna be seen as that. Thank you for watching this Thank you for watching this episode of Healing Race and stay with us for a scene from our next video. If you wanna see more conversations like the one you just watched, please subscribe to our channel, share this video with friends and family, and like and comment on the video below. If you'd like to be a guest on one of our episodes and have an open real conversation about race, email us at guests at healingrayshow.com. And if there are topics you think we should cover, we'd love to hear them. So please email your ideas to topicshealingraceshow.com. As always, thanks for your support. We look forward to continuing the conversation with you. Now, here's a scene from our next Healing Race. As Black people, oftentimes, we do have to carry that double consciousness in terms of, you know, the way we carry ourselves in the way that we are, which, you know, gets into respectability politics and, you know, and that whole thing because, you know, sometimes where it could lead to conflict is when, you know, you're a predominantly white environment and you wanna prove so well that you're not that kind of black person. Right? So you are overly friendly and overly articulate and overly, like, I wanna prove I'm a good black person. Right? But how that can come across as disassociating or being condescending to, you know, others. But, yes, you also have to be ready and willing and able to navigate your own communities as well. It's definitely, I would say a dance, a tap dance of sorts. Landon, you were gonna say something. You said there's a white version of this too? Yeah. There are white versions of this. To watch the rest of that episode, go ahead and click the video below me. To see a different compelling healing race episode, you can click the video below me. We look forward to seeing you in the next video.