The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

It is truly unfortunate that I often get to observe instances of bias, prejudice, and oppression.  The memory that I would like to share took place where I work. We were in the process of undergoing an administration change.  This process is when a new police chief takes over.  This usually means that the whole department is going to be adjusted.  This particular administration was headed by Caucasians. There had be a lot of talk about uniform patrol going to twelve hour shift and deleting the eight hour shift we were accustom to.  These decisions are made by the chief of police with the approval of the mayor and city council.  No officer wanted to make this transition. However it was dynasty it was going to happen.  This entailed longer hours and longer hours provided more stress to an already dangerously stressful job. They divided the shift up into four shifts of men and women officers. Strangely when the 12 hour shift went into effect all the Caucasian female officers were given new job assignment and they did not have to endure the long gruesome twelve hours shift work.  After losing several officer and encountering multiple careless situations and casualties we were able to return to the 8 hour shift.

This incident destroyed the moral in the police department for the African American female and the male officers. Seniority plays a major role in the police department and these young ladies were lower on the totem pole the most of the officers.  The equity was diminished in that the chief had no consideration for the African American female officers because like the Caucasian female officers many of them were single parents and had small children.

My feeling of this situation was disappointment.  Yet I then began to really realize that prejudice and bias are real. I was in denial for many years but as I grew I got a good lesson in racism, sexism, prejudice, bias and oppression. I remember riding in my patrol car once I discovered the way that incident went down shaking my head wondering if this would ever past.  I survived that situation however I know it this job the next bias, prejudice or oppression situation is right around the corner.

 In that situation if the chief was trying to do the right thing by all the officers it would have allowed everyone to apply for the open positions. Then it would have made the placement based on qualification as oppose to gender and race. This would have provided everyone with the opportunity to seek the position and to see how they measured up. Instead this diminished the moral of the qualified officers and caused a slow boil. The worst thing in the world is a lot of upset Police!!!