Thesis Christ: Xixi Dukes on Black Law Enforcement Officers
What is your thesis about, generally?
How do Black cops navigate the social dissonance of being both Black and a cop?
What is your motivation?
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Gigi found themselves, alongside the rest of the nation, asking longstanding questions with renewed intensity about the nature of policing in America. She recalls how we were “in this space where the idea of being a cop [was] coming into question.” In particular, Dukes had questions directed towards the people she knew who were Black, yet worked in law enforcement. How did they resolve the dissonance required to dedicate some part of themselves to institutions which degraded and devalued them and their communities? Still, five years later, it seemed to her like America did not come to a satisfactory conclusion with regards to these questions. And so, when the thesis decision rolled around, adding to the conversation seemed like a topic worth committing to.
Now that the topic was set, Dukes had to reckon with the question of how this work should relate to the community. She wondered “if this should be a prescriptive text, or if it should just be ‘I wrote this book, read it as you will’” Regardless of the precise answer, she believes that that “Knowing (although not the full battle) is at least part of [it]” Therefore Duke’s aim is to help people understand the situation, and hopefully, their place in it.
Dukes became interested in creating a work of academic value which is also accessible to the layperson, and, specifically, to a Black population which has been blocked from accessing institutional discussions on the issues which impact them most. She described how many of her friends, when entering their thesis, (understandably) sought to prove that they could write at the level of high academia, thus trying to validate their place in the system which has historically excluded them. Dukes, on the other hand, wrote with a different audience in mind. She wants to “write it in a way that I know the people who I’m trying to reach can read it.” Consequently, the piece is intentionally constructed with a friendly, reader-to-author style. Dukes avoids jargon in favor of non-academic, conversational language so that the work can hopefully be utilized, not only by those with resources sunk into higher education, but by the communities it was designed to be in dialogue with.
What preliminary research did you do?
Before Dukes was able to move into the field, she had to work through the (difficult, but necessary) step of preliminary research. One book of interest they showed me was “In Defense of Uncle Tom” by Brando Simeo Starkey about racialized ‘betrayal’ within the Black community. The other interesting book was “Penal Theories” by Michel Foucault (terribly stream-of-consciousness, Dukes declared with good evidence). Dukes also analyzed some recent media for her thesis. Particularly, she referenced Spike Lee’s The BlacKkKlansman (2018) in a discussion on codeswitching.
But eventually the reading was done and she was ready to write her own works. “Once I went into the field, I took notes!” Dukes showed me the cover of her field notebook (a sketchbook she had had since high school), and noted that it was a vital tool in her collection.
What was your experience in the field?
Once preliminary research was undertaken, the bulk of her effort was put towards interviewing Black cops and their friends and family. Dukes has conducted more than 16 interviews with people who knew her, or her parents, or from “people who just wanted to help me out.” She also visited the Philadelphia PD district office nearest to her house. At this location, they sat down with a very kindly middle aged Black man, and immediately noted how community based the district was. Other locations were less friendly: The NYC precinct she tried immediately declined her request for an interview.
At another location in Philadelphia, she noticed a much more hierarchical and heavy-handed authority. She described how she was ‘assigned’ a high ranking sergeant, and as they toured the facility, he would “point at random Black officers, and just [tell] them to interview with me.” This ‘voluntolding’ struck Dukes as a violation of the consent which is necessary to conduct an interview. When, during an interview, “the one femme officer said that the manager would get mad at her if she didn’t [interview]” Dukes offered that if she didn’t feel comfortable participating in the interview, they were more than welcome to sit in silence for the allotted time so that they wouldn’t get in trouble with the manager. In the end, the officer read the consent scripts, and decided to go ahead with the interview.
Dukes discussed that one of the most important skills she developed while working in the field was “knowing when to pull back on a question.” Because of the inherently sensitive nature of her investigations, she got “very close to that line… of a question that’s getting me into trouble.” She noted that even asking, “How do you do this job?” is one of those questions they had to work up to.
Dukes found that the interviews were very humanizing for both participants. She interviewed one cop and asked, “Do you think your brother hates you for being a cop?” She described how “then he was silent for a minute before he cried.” Afterwards, he consented to keeping that on the record, saying that he believed it was an important part of the conversation. Dukes said that, “there are times where, by proxy, my humanity gets called into question… where I have to show some humanity, when I like, pass some tissues. [When I say] ‘you might feel better if we talk about this off the record.’”
Another location Dukes visited for research was the Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania (began operation 1829). This piece of penal history is remarkable as one of the first instances of the panopticon concept being applied in real life. It now has a gift shop and gives tours. Of the prison, Dukes noted that there was a certain majesty in the architecture. She showed me images of the castle-like walls and “maw of a gate.” It had been abandoned for some time up until the 1970s, and the state of disrepair made the tiny cells with no windows all the more haunting.
The final place Dukes devoted time to visiting was the location of the 1985 MOVE bombings in Philadelphia. She explained the erased wound in the cities history as follows: in the 1980s a group called MOVE (which was either an eco-cult, a Pan-African group, separatists, or just a group of sovereign citizens, depending on who you ask) had their neighborhood residence aerially bombed by the Philadelphia police force after an escalation and shootout. The bombings killed 11 MOVE members, some of whom were children, and destroyed 61 homes. Dukes explained how after the bombings, the University of Pennsylvania removed two bodies of children from the scene to show how archeology is done to students. The extent of the excessive use of force causes Dukes to claim “that it [wasn’t] really about destroying the eco cult, it was more about extermination.” These horrendous actions were carried out under the direction of the city's first Black mayor, and a historical marker was only put up in 2017 after the petitioning efforts of a group of third graders.
Dukes realized that most of the cops she interviewed were teens or children at the time of the bombing, and she struggled to understand how someone would willingly join a system when, “that could have been you, could have been your kids.”
Throughout her interviews, it seemed that the most frequent answer to this question is that ‘it’s just a job.’ In a neutral way, most cops and their families acknowledged the contradictions and conflict, but admitted that the need for a good job was more important. Within most families, Dukes says, it was a ‘don’t ask don’t tell situation’: either an active point of contention between close relations, or just an unacknowledged awkwardness. She also noted one interlocutor, the brother of a cop, whose other brother had been shot by a different officer. He said in an interview “I hate the half of him that is a cop,” unveiling the complicated dynamics at play in these relationships.
Any advice for thesising, or soon to be thesising students?
Dukes had a creative perspective on time management. She said, “I have an issue with future and past Gigi,” in that past Gigi will decide not to do something, and then future Gigi will want to go back and strangle past Gigi for not having done it. Present Gigi recommends: “Don’t do this. If you’re out of energy in a genuine way, then it’s okay… but don’t put it off.” To avoid this, (particularly for people with ADHD like her) she prescribes constant reminders on tasks that are broken up into very small chunks, as well as an advisor who will keep you accountable.
In addition to time management skills, Dukes also realized that, of the people she’s met thesising, the people who are enjoying it are the people who are excited about their topic. She recalled that in choosing her topic, she initially had a lot of hesitation. She worried for her own physical safety, worried the department might not approve it, worried that someone would have already answered the question, or just worried they would get bored of the subject. But none of these fears came to pass. Dukes instead recommends that you “really understand who you are and be honest with yourself.” What’s most important is finding the “question that [you] want to answer.”
Anything else you’d like to share with the Reed student body?
“Take snack breaks! God, I love a good snack break… There’s two pounds of candy corn on my desk right now.”