Morgan Givens - Chasing Grandma

 

 

My grandmother pulled me to the side and waited until I met her eyes before she said, “Now, Morgan, if you ever have an interaction with the police, you keep your hands where they can see them. You telegraph your movements. Tell them everything you are going to do before you do it. Do you understand me?” I nodded and said I did, because my grandma and I have been having that same conversation for years. But the fact that we talked about it so much didn't make it any less confusing. Because my grandma, she was the police. [audience laughter] I'm serious. The woman had a badge, a uniform, a cop car, everything. And her friends, the people who would show up at our house for backyard barbecues and cookouts, the ones who'd help us move loading boxes into the backs of pickup trucks, well, they were the police too. 

 

As a kid, I didn't really understand, because in my mind at the time, cops were heroes, and I was being taught to fear them. And my grandma is one of them black women they write inspirational novels and movies about, because she was one of the first black women through the Charlotte Police Academy. She was excellent. She was exceptional. She was perfection, because she had no choice. She knew they were going to judge every black woman that came up behind her by the standards she set. And in the inspirational movie of my grandmother's life, some, well, assuming white person shows up at the end and takes all the credit. 

 

But if I'm keeping it completely, 100 with y'all, white folks weren't checking for my grandma like that back then. She had to sue to get the job she had already earned when she graduated from the academy, as if she didn't have the highest academic marks in her class, as if she weren't running laps around her training instructors. But in the end, she prevailed, and her life turned out a bit like a fairy tale, although one with some baggage, particularly for me. Because it's already hard enough to live up to the expectations of our parents and our grandparents. But when your grandmother is literally superwoman, it gets just a little bit harder. And I ain't going to stand up here in front, like, I don't appreciate everything she did on her path to success. As if I can't appreciate how I can trace it like a thread of hope from her to my mother right down to me. 

 

She spent 30 years on that department. When she retired, we had to rent a banquet hall because of how respected she was. The chief of police showed up himself. But I still didn't understand how some cops could turn out like my grandma and others could turn out like the ones we read about in history books, still read about today and still see on TV, the ones who are so clearly on the wrong side of history. 

 

I never thought I'd get answer to that question. But then, I graduated into the middle of the worst recession in recent memory, and I needed a job. So, I looked at grandma. You know what? If grandma can be a cop and be successful, maybe I can too. And could I have gone to the Charlotte Police Academy? I could have. But my grandma cast a long shadow. And the last thing I needed was for some snitching instructor to call her up and let her know I could not do a single doggone push up. [audience laughter] I ain't proud of it, but it is the truth. 

 

So, that's how I ended up at the Washington, D.C. Police Academy, [audience laughter] along with 30 other recruits, willing to do anything and everything we could to become officers in the nation's capital. But things were weird when we got there. Everyone was always staring at us, watching us when we walked down the hallway, peering into the doorway of our classroom. We could not figure out what was going on. Then one day, I'm sitting in the cafeteria next to one of my fellow recruits, and he looks over at me, “Hey man, I know why everybody's staring at us. Yeah. They think there's a trans recruit in our class. Wherever could they be?” I almost choked on my lunch, then ran to the bathroom, barricaded myself inside, reliving some of the worst memories from high school. Because the trans person they were looking for was me. The call was coming from inside the house. [audience laughter] 

 

After a few deep breaths, I made my way back to the cafeteria. The same dude looks over at me. “I know who it is. Mm-hmm, talking with the hands and stuff, putting them all on the hips. Very feminine qualities. It's Everett.” My name is not Everett, but my secret was safe for just a little bit longer. I'd always planned on telling my class about the entirety of who I am, but I wanted them to get the chance to know me first. But apparently, somebody way high up in the police department thought it'd be a good idea to tell everybody, and they murmur that a trans recruit was going to be in the next class and that if anybody messed with them, they were going to get fired.

 

To a certain extent. I get it. I was never going to be just another recruit. But I was now going to have to out myself a lot sooner than I intended to. I was worried. I was afraid, particularly about this one cat named Winston. Winston smoked cigarettes and chewed tobacco at the same time. [audience laughter] Winston was the conservative oil to my liberal water. Winston was going to be a problem, but I was going to have to speak anyway. 

 

So, I stood in front of the class. “All right, y'all, look, listen, the trans person everybody's looking for, it's me. So, why don't we just quit this weird game of gendered hide and seek and let it go?” And of course, it wasn't going to be that easy, because I was the first openly trans recruit through the Washington, D.C. Police Academy. I knew they were going to judge every recruit that came after me by the standard I set. Thank God, my grandma had laid out the path all those decades before when she was a first, because I was going to have to walk the same tightrope to perfection that she had all those years ago. 

 

I would have to be excellent. I had to be exceptional. And I worked my ass off. Stayed up late into the night, so I got As on my exams, crushed myself in physical training just to prove I could do it. And over time, I could see the way my classmates and training instructors began seeing me as a person first. My class even surprised me. They selected me to give the graduation speech in front of our family, and friends, the assistant chiefs and the chief of police. And after graduation, I got another surprise. It was Winston. 

 

He walked up to me, held out his hand, waited for me to take it and locked eyes with me the same way my grandmother had all those years ago. He pulled me close and he said, “Hey man, you listen here. If anybody messes with you, you let me know and we're going to handle it.” [audience laughter] I could not have been more shocked if I had been struck by a bolt of lightning. Because here was Winston, this man I had been seeing in nothing but hues of black and white, reminding me to see the gray in him I so often demand that others see in me. Winston showed me just a little piece of his heart. And I got it. Because the heart of the officer matters. The badge don't do nothing, but exacerbate the qualities of who we are at our core. That's part of the power of being a cop. 

 

But it wasn't a power I really wanted. After a few years, I resigned from the police department, but not before making some changes. The chief of police tasked me and a handful of other officers with rewriting the entirety of the Washington, D.C. Police Academy Training program. And I rewrote the hell out of that thing. [audience applause] 

 

Learning about unconscious bias and intersectionality. Oh, they got that. Learning how not to be a homophobe or transphobe or misogynist. I wrote that down too. [audience applause] 

 

Because one of the things that happens when officers get in trouble is courts pull their training records. And one of the common refrains in defense was, “I didn't know. Nobody told me. I wasn't trained.” At the very least, they can't say that no more. And if they try, most of the officers I know will put that lie to rest. Because the heart of the officer does matter. And I had seen their hearts and they had also seen mine. Thank you.