I am a sheriff’s department lieutenant in a mid-sized city in the northeast. I have been a police officer for nearly 30 years, and served in many specialties: patrolman, gang officer, SWAT operator, bomb squad technician, narcotics detective, street team supervisor, and patrol lieutenant.

As part of my regular duties, I and the four other lieutenants attend city council meetings. We wear Class A uniforms (long-sleeve shirts and tie). Our newest lieutenant is black. The four white lieutenants together have over 85 years of experience in this county. Our newest lieutenant has worked here for two months.

Many counties and cities — including my predominately white county — are working overtime to “fix” communities that aren’t broken. This includes making every effort to elect a “person of color” to public office. Recently, my county succeeded in this and “cured” the city council’s “lack of diversity.”

At a break in her first council meeting, the newly elected “person of color” trotted up to the five uniformed lieutenants standing together. She put her hands on her hips and pushed past the white lieutenants. She gushed over our newest lieutenant in a fawning display, full of “cultural” signals and greetings. It was as if the rest of us weren’t even there. She did not greet us or introduce herself (none of us had formally met her).

When the meeting finished, I was walking towards an over-the-top liberal, kerchief-wearing, beta-male council member. We made eye contact and I figured he was going to introduce himself to me. After a fake smile and nod, he walked right past me to the black lieutenant and exclaimed, “Haaaay! How’s our county treating you?” He didn’t acknowledge me or any of my other lieutenants.

I was at a community meeting at a civic center with the black lieutenant. Everyone there was tripping over himself to walk up to him, saying (because of his service stripes) “Wow, you’ve been at it awhile,” and asking what type of gun he’s carrying or how he “likes the county.” Mind you, I’m wearing the same uniform, and have been a lieutenant five years longer than he has, and therefore have more service stripes — plainly visible on my sleeve. I could have been invisible.

The media have succeeded in brainwashing the very people they need to control to maintain power: weak-willed whites dying for any opportunity to prove they aren’t racist. If communities continue to vilify and hamstring their police, no white man will ever sign up for this job. The country will find out what a “diverse” police force really means.