Good riddance to TPD’s ‘thin blue line’ sticker. ‘It’s about a divided society’
On one side: order.
On the other side: chaos or anarchy.
Standing guard in the middle, separate from the fray: the “Thin Blue Line.”
It’s simple and stark imagery, dating back decades. Originally a representation of the role police play in maintaining societal order, the “thin blue line” was popularized in the 1950s by famed — and in many ways infamous — Los Angeles Police Chief William Parker.
Historically, the thin blue line has often been associated with sacrifice, professionalism, solidarity, family and even the precarious power balance fundamental to policing.
Today, of course, it can represent much more than that — which is one of many reasons why the Tacoma Police Department’s decision to remove all “thin blue line” flag stickers from its patrol cars was long overdue.
“Tacoma Police Department is mindful of any symbolism that creates division and controversy with the citizens its officers are sworn to serve,” spokeswoman Wendy Haddow told The News Tribune.
While controversy surrounding the thin blue line might be recent, the truth is that the classic imagery — a thin blue line cutting through a black background — was always divisive by design, according to University of Washington political science professor Michael McCann.
“The image itself — a line … it’s about a divided society, just given the nature that there’s a blue line that separates the good people from the bad people,” McCann said.
McCann, whose areas of expertise include civil rights and race politics, has been teaching about the thin blue line for three decades.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, McCann said, students would look at him with blank faces when he first introduced the thin blue line. Few, if any, had heard of it before.
Now — largely because the thin blue line has been popularized, commodified and politicized — that’s not the case.
The image and various interpretations have increasingly been employed as a tribute to fallen officers, which McCann described as a development that has become “much more prominent in the last 10 years.” The same holds true for the “thin blue line” American flags.
Still others have used thin blue line imagery as a rebuttal of the Black Lives Matter movement, associated it with American patriotism or, most problematic of all, tied it to white nationalism. In particular, while Andrew Jacob, the president of Thin Blue Line USA has said that the flag has “no association with racism, hatred, bigotry,” McCann also noted that, even so, the image can be seen as “less stark in the above-below line emphasis of two Americas, and more stark in identifying policy with Americanism or nationalism.”
This, McCann said, “makes it easier for white nationalists to make a claim on it. “
Today, what’s abundantly clear is that the thin blue line “means many things, varying among groups and at different times,” McCann said.
Still, one thing the classic “thin blue line” has always denoted — since its inception — is a literal division. There’s just no avoiding it.
Good versus evil. White versus black. The wealthy versus the poor. The code of silence.
“Two Americas,” as McCann puts it — with police in the middle, granted the power and authority to uphold the hierarchy, through violence if necessary.
“What strikes me as significant is the clear line between order and chaos, between the good people and the bad people, between the prey and the predators,” McCann said of the classic “thin blue line” imagery. “The image expresses a willful insistence on the ‘innocence’ of people above the line, erasing the historical and continuing violence of racism, slavery, capitalism (and) imperialism by the ‘good’ America.”
“In that sense, the black above the line is ‘blank,’ while the black below the line merges with a phenotype of darkness,” McCann continued. “The divisions one can impute are many, but they all reinforce divisions among people and the role of police in enforcing them, often violently.”
Obviously, discussing all the things wrong with what the thin blue line stands for won’t be easy — particularly in our highly polarized world. The debate sparked by Tacoma’s decision to remove thin blue line flag stickers from patrol cars is not unlike conversations happening in police departments across the country.
Understandably, to many people the thin blue line is an important image. It’s one police officers and law enforcement supporters proudly display in honor of officers killed in the line of duty or in acknowledgment of the sacrifices police officers make.
To a vast segment of society, however, it justifiably represents something very different.
Most importantly, the message sent to those historically “below” the line is what truly matters, particularly as we finally grapple with all the ways policing in this country must change.
“All the meanings (of the thin blue line) underline the solidarity of police culture, which promotes an ‘us vs them’ mindset,” McCann said of the classic “thin blue line” imagery.
“One doesn’t have to be highly critical of police to say that’s a problematic relationship.”
This story was originally published July 8, 2020 at 5:10 AM.
