I have a relative who spent his entire adult life, after the Army (during Vietnam), as a police officer in Cincinnati, Ohio. My hometown from birth until age 35.
Cincinnati is a racially tense place that makes Seattle look like a successful melting pot on even its worse day.
There might be a few more ethnicities represented back there now; on my annual visit last year I noticed a Mexican specialty store and grocery in my old neighborhood. But mostly Cincinnati is black folks and white folks, living in mostly segregated neighborhoods.
The Cincinnati police department was the only major law enforcement outfit investigated by John Ashcroft, a noted law-and-order guy. And as far as I know, the Cincinnati cops were the only department investigated by The New Yorker since the turn of the century.
Seems the Cincinnati cops have a problem: they shoot a lot of unarmed black men. A bad habit Seattle cops seem to be picking up, although even there our boys in blue are more egalitarian - they have been shooting folks of all colors. But it still is nothing like Cincinnati was.
The tension is the first thing I notice each and every year when I go back. Whether I am riding the buses or going to the mall with my aging momma. Eye contact is sporadic but often fierce. My relative, the lifelong cop, thinks all but about nine African-Americans are criminals. If you challenge this otherwise normal-seeming man, he always says, "If you had my job, you'd...."
There is no answer to that. I know an emergency room nurse very well. Once, years ago, we lived together for a few months while she was beginning her career. We still talk, via the telephone, since she too is in Cincinnati. During one conversation her then-9-year-old son came in the house crying loudly enough that I heard him 3,000 miles away.
"Let me see," I heard Florence N. say. Then: "That's not even gonna be a stitch. Hold it up in the air and quit bawling."
Since I knew this woman had a huge heart, I must have sounded a bit surprised when I asked what the problem was.
"He had a little cut on his finger. I know, I know, but I'm so used to seeing real injuries...."
Her perception of what demanded sympathy and attention had changed, even when dealing with her own kids, because of what she has seen for more than 20 years while at work. She told me a couple of years ago she had helped treat more than 1,000 gunshot victims.
Cut your finger? Off? If not, get outta here.
That's why I don't trust any veteran reporter who isn't a cynic.
I've seen more than one virulently homophobic politician get caught trying to get his hand in that cookie jar. While a younger journalist, in Sun Valley, Idaho, I interviewed a younger and at-the-time-thinner Larry Craig. Even then, Lar was all about family values. I have interviewed so many pro-war politicians who have never heard a gunshot anywhere beyond their televisions, I could form a very bad soccer team with them.
"Sacrifice is required" is their message boiled down. But they don't mean they are going to sacrifice. We must stay the course, they say, although they have never once laced up their combat boots.
Journalists, no matter how idealistic, eventually lie to themselves or become cynics. We see, up close, the so-called liberal politicians climbing into bed day after day with developers whose only concern is lining already dirtily deep pockets. We see them shielding their offspring from punishment for criminal deeds while calling for harsher sentences for your kids and mine. And I don't even want to get into the womanizing many of these sidewalk moralists indulge in every time a reporter ambles off with a pencil and a closed notebook. Can you say JFK?
Perceptions are everything - and jobs, I think, come in second only to families when it comes to forming them. We are who raised us. And we are what we do over and over. For better and for worse. Like it or not.
Seattle writer Dennis Wilken may be reached at this link.
