In another clip, the officer, whose badge reads D. Thomas., stands there with a smirk on his face as Minadeo continues to throw the racial slur at him repeatedly, taunting him to have a reaction. Instead of giving him the satisfaction, Officer Thomas stood there with a smirk, trying not to laugh at the pathetic attempt to spark a controversial moment.

Understandably, not everyone is unbothered by that slur. We’ve seen countless videos of people flipping over chairs and throwing punches as soon as the word leave the lips of a racist. However, my Black Literature teacher gave me a different outlook on it. Professor James said the n-word, by definition, isn’t a Black person but a construct of nasty stereotypes about a Black person, a figment of imagination that doesn’t actually exist. Therefore, if someone hurled the slur at her, she’d look at them like, “I know you not talkin’ about me.”

Advertisement

Officer Thomas must’ve held his composure under the same impression.