One of my new friends is/was a cop. Just found out about it. I genuinely believe ACAB, and this news has me conflicted because my new friend seems really cool and super nice. I don’t know him super well yet, though. He’s a big part of this new friend group and I don’t know how to process this and how to deal with the fact he’s a cop.

I don’t want to look past the fact he’s a cop, but I want to stay his friend and stay in this friend group.

Any advice for dealing with this shit?

I can’t talk to my therapist about it until Thursday.

  • NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.comEnglish
    204·
    16 days ago

    This is one of many problems with “ACAB” because not every cop is one way or the other.

    Reality is that a functioning society needs police officers. It sounds like you hit it off with this person and they have some good qualities that you like.

    How do you expect the police to change if we don’t get involved? Getting rid of the police entirely is not a solution. But getting in and making changes from the inside is a valid way to make things better.

    Why are you wanting to create an echo chamber for yourself? Why don’t you expose yourself to others and other ideas that are different than yours? What’s the harm there? Are you scared you won’t be able to change his mind or that his ideas might make some sense to you?

    • hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world
      82·
      16 days ago

      This.

      I’m friends with a former Republican social media person. I don’t share his views and he’s knows that, but I can appreciate his views so that I can learn.

      Sometimes the most uncomfortable perspective can help you grasp some really complicated things.

      And also, you might not even know what their views on the police are.

      Just get to know them. Don’t adapt their views if you don’t subscribe to them, but listen to them and maybe you can take away some stuff here and there.

          • Free_Opinions@feddit.uk
            3·
            15 days ago

            Neo-nazies are the same species of human as KKK members. If what Daryl Davis did worked with KKK it should work with neo-nazies too. Or do you have a valid reason to think it wouldn’t?

      • Fondots@lemmy.world
        2·
        15 days ago

        I have a friend who worked at a convenience store in an area where the KKK still has a decent presence. The local grand wizard or dragon or whatever ridiculous rank he had took a liking to my friend (it should maybe be noted that my friend is practically a caricature of blond, blue-eyed whiteness.) I wouldn’t say they were friends, it was more than he was on the clock and couldn’t really afford to lose his job by telling some racist fuck to pound sand, they didn’t keep in contact outside of work, neither of them changed each other’s minds about anything (my friend is now engaged to a black woman) but they did have some fairly in depth and civil conversations about race and society and such.

        I can’t say for what Mr Pointy Hat’s takeaway was from their talks, but my friend’s overall impression is that the klan guy was kind of stuck. He kind of seemed to know that the world had changed around him, and that maybe he was in the wrong and there was no place for someone like him anymore, but he was unable and/or unwilling to change himself to adapt to the new world and to different ways of thinking than he’d been brought up with, so the kkk was kind of his way of carving a safe space for himself out of the world where he knew how things worked and where he had some sort of value. And his hatred towards black people and other people different from himself wasn’t really that they should be killed or enslaved or treated poorly, but that he didn’t get why they needed to be part of the same society as him, sort of like if they could just all go off and live in their own countries he’d wish them the best in their endeavors.

        I’m not saying that’s at all a good philosophy, I find it absolutely abhorrent, but it’s also more nuanced than I would have otherwise thought a klansman would be capable of.

        I also won’t say that my friend necessarily had a perfect read on this guy, it could very well be that he totally took the wrong things away from what the guy said. And even if he did hit the nail on the head, with a sample size of 1, you can’t exactly extrapolate that to say that the rest of the klan or other racist shitbags feel the same way.

        But I do think there can be some value in talking to some of these types of people, maybe not befriending them exactly, but building some sort of mutual understanding might help get some of them onto the right path before they end up too old and stuck in their ways like that guy.

    • greedytacothief@lemmy.world
      32·
      16 days ago

      I have a couple of friends in law enforcement (NYPD & state Police). They tend to be best cops around, one of them is being sent to be a trainer so he can get some bigger promotions.

      You got to ask yourself and maybe them if they are a good person. All cops are bad because of what the system does to them. But who they are in spite of what that system is doing says more about who they are as a person.

      Chances are they’ll have edgy jokes, but you’ve been on the Internet long enough to end up here, so I’m sure you can navigate that.

      Remember conservatives hate liberal arts colleges because people who are exposed to diversity are more tolerant of it.

    • nl4real@lemmy.world
      14·
      16 days ago

      This is one of many problems with “ACAB” because not every cop is one way or the other.

      It’s a statement of what the job entails, whether the individual is a “moral” person off the clock is not relevant.

      Reality is that a functioning society needs police officers.

      Police are a relatively modern invention, have only been around ~200 years.