The College Fix

ATLANTA, Ga. — I watched on a recent Friday a young black boy from downtown Atlanta and a white cop in uniform hit a tennis ball back and forth to each other.

They smiled, laughed. Neither were very good at the game, but that didn’t matter. What did was the bond that formed, the paradigm shift that occurred in that moment for the boy — and the cop.

We can like each other. We can trust each other.

Over the past two years, tension between the black community and law enforcement across the nation has reached unprecedented levels after a number of high-profile killings of African-Americans by police officers.

Yet as that anger and confusion unfolds, I witnessed a ray of hope emerge as Emory University men’s varsity tennis team helped host Atlanta police and inner-city youth in a “Volley Against Violence” event.

The entire team, led by Head Coach John Browning, drove into a predominantly African-American district of Atlanta and met up with underprivileged youth for a tennis clinic with Atlanta police officers.

The goal, according to organizers, is to “create a community/police engagement initiative designed to utilize tennis to bring youth and police together for physical activity, informal mentoring, relationship building, and the seamless delivery of life-skills curricula.”

Yet those stiff, formal words don’t begin to describe what really happens. Walls break down. Stereotypes are smashed.

“You could see how much fun the kids were having to get to learn and play,” Browning said. “It really just brought everyone together.”

On the tennis court that day, there was no preconceived dislike from the young kids toward the cops or vice versa. It was just humans enjoying each other’s company, people who have a lot more in common than at first glance.

The event offered a small but vital healing clearly needed between the Atlanta black community and its police, one piece of a much larger and complex puzzle.

“It really is great for us to be out here and interacting with these kids and establishing trust,” Officer Brian Webber told The College Fix.

The vast majority of officers in the country are exactly like Officer Webber: They sign up to protect and serve.

For the sake of our country we must establish some level of trust between the people who risk their lives to protect us every day and people in the inner city who feel their country is against them.

In just a few hours the Emory men’s tennis team did more to unite the inner city with police than any refusal to stand for the National Anthem ever did.

Instead of rioting and destroying property like we’ve seen in Charlotte, Baltimore, Ferguson, and other cities, Americans should stop stereotyping all cops, and try to understand what it takes to be a police officer, and trust they want to help us amidst a difficult job.

On the flip side, police must see every interaction with their constituents as they might with those kids on the court — they have names, families, dreams.

Individual police officers can make mistakes — and when they do they should be held accountable — but as a society we should promote initiatives that unite our communities, like Volley Against Violence, instead of furthering the divide.

Editor’s Note: Josh Goodman is on the Emory University men’s varsity tennis team.

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