海角大神

How do I think about identity? How do I create change? How should I respond when faced with prejudice and hate?

In America鈥檚 reckoning on police violence and race, these are three fundamental questions. In today鈥檚 story by Kalpana Jain, we glimpse how one man answers them. Michael Cox is commissioner of the Boston Police Department. In 1995, as a plainclothes officer for the same department, he was mistaken by fellow officers for a gang member and beaten brutally.聽

Mr. Cox would later say that he didn鈥檛 think of himself as a Black officer at first. 鈥淗e was the young man from a middle-class black family who believed character and hard work meant more than race,鈥� wrote the author of a book about the beating. 鈥淚n many ways he was color-blind.鈥�

But Mr. Cox was beaten because he was Black. He could let it go, or he could fight for change. He filed a lawsuit. He was called a 鈥渢roublemaker鈥� and threatened. But everything he has done, he said at his swearing-in as commissioner, has been to change policing.

Ask those around Mr. Cox to describe him, and many find the same words: 鈥渟oft-spoken鈥� and 鈥渢enderhearted,鈥� someone who carries himself with 鈥渄ignity,鈥� and 鈥渁 gentleman all the time.鈥澛�

The triumph of now running the department he once sued does not guarantee success. Yet the triumph is still profound. Mr. Cox entered the job he loved wishing only to be seen as a human 鈥� an agent of good. That desire evolved; it hardened; it fought. But it never yielded. Whatever lies ahead is a legacy for all to serve and protect.聽