The Inner Monologue

There is a bitter irony in American history that few wish to confront: that the sons and daughters of those who once suffered under the batons and boots of white police officers during the civil rights era now wear the same uniforms, enforcing the same kinds of policies — only against a different minority. It is not a matter of moral failure on their part, but of institutional inertia — the ability of systems of power to persist by simply changing the color of their enforcers.

In the 1960s, many Black and Latino parents lived under the constant threat of police violence. They marched for equality, endured fire hoses, and watched the world debate whether they even deserved dignity. The promise of the following decades — integration, opportunity, upward mobility — offered their children a different path. Education, law enforcement, and government service were presented as gateways to legitimacy, as ways to serve the public and prove their place in a nation that had long rejected them.

And so, in a cruel twist, many of those children grew up to become the face of authority. Their presence in uniform was once heralded as progress: evidence that America’s institutions could evolve, that diversity could reform even its most repressive structures. Yet, decades later, we see images that are difficult to reconcile — Latino ICE agents detaining Latino migrants, Black officers enforcing draconian immigration or protest laws, and communities once united in suffering now divided by the illusion of order.

The tragedy lies in how power absorbs resistance. Institutions like ICE, local police departments, and federal enforcement agencies do not change simply because the demographics of their agents do. They are designed around obedience, hierarchy, and the preservation of control — not justice, not empathy, and certainly not redemption. When one joins such a system, one inherits not just its authority but its logic. You can wear the uniform out of pride, out of duty, or out of necessity, but you cannot escape the weight of what it represents.

This cycle exposes a deeper failure in the American narrative: the belief that inclusion equals transformation. We thought that if more minorities were hired, promoted, or elected, the system would become fairer. Yet representation without reform merely spreads the burden of complicity. A more diverse police force does not necessarily become a more just one; it merely reflects a wider cross-section of the society it polices. And so, the promise of progress becomes the camouflage of continuity.

The story of ICE embodies this paradox perfectly. Many agents are first- or second-generation immigrants themselves — their families once crossed the same borders, their parents once lived in the same fear of raids and deportation. Yet now they are charged with enforcing laws that criminalize the very journey that brought their families here. For some, it may even feel like a kind of redemption: to serve the country that once doubted them, to prove loyalty beyond question. But in doing so, they often become participants in the same machinery of exclusion that once threatened their kin.

This is how oppression sustains itself — not by force alone, but by convincing its victims to police each other in the name of belonging. It is the genius of the system that it no longer needs to be visibly racist to perpetuate racial harm. It simply recycles trauma into policy, prejudice into procedure. The baton passes quietly, and the beat goes on.

But there is a way out of this irony — though it is neither comfortable nor quick. It begins with the courage to look inward, to recognize that no uniform, badge, or title absolves one from moral responsibility. It requires that institutions be stripped of their myth of neutrality. Law enforcement is not an abstract good; it is a human act carried out by people who can choose empathy over obedience, compassion over compliance. Reform must mean more than hiring quotas or diversity training — it must mean reimagining what justice itself looks like when it is untethered from fear and control.

Imagine if those same minority agents, instead of being sent to detain, deport, or punish, were empowered to mediate, to protect, and to heal. Imagine a system where the descendants of those beaten in Selma and raided in Los Angeles could use their authority to prevent the repetition of that pain — not perpetuate it. That would be true progress, not cosmetic reform.

America’s history is full of ironies, but few cut as deeply as this one. The dream of equality was never meant to end with a Black or brown face behind the badge. It was meant to end with the badge itself no longer being a symbol of fear. Until that day comes, every generation will face the same test: whether to serve power as it is, or to transform it into what it should be.

The irony that began with survival must not end with submission. It must end with awakening — a realization that justice, like freedom, cannot simply be worn. It must be lived, and it must be demanded, even by those who wear the uniform.