By NUWC Division Newport Public Affairs
As part of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Division Newport’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration, Din Jenkins Sr., deputy chief, Boston Housing Authority’s Police Division, shared his experiences with racial injustice in a presentation to the workforce on Jan. 4.
The talk, “Where we’ve been, where we are now and where go from here,” highlighted the need to have difficult conversations around diversity and inclusion. Jenkins, who is also president and CEO, chief facilitator and collaborator at “Supply the Why,” a podcast that breaks down barriers, also highlighted the need to address issues ranging from police use of force to race relations.
“Why am I here?” Jenkins asked. “I am passionate about these discussions because of my path. The great Dr. King laid the groundwork to make my life possible and many of your lives possible. My path to get where I am was a difficult one, so I’ll talk first a little bit about my upbringing, ‘where we’ve been,’ so to speak.”
Jenkins grew up in Stoughton, Massachusetts, a town that now has approximately 30,000 residents and a 15-18% Black population rate. The Boston suburb is considered one of the most diverse towns in the state.
“When I came up in Stoughton, I was one of a very few [Blacks],” Jenkins said. “At that time, the town was probably 1% Black, so I want to talk to you today about my experience of being ‘the only.’”
His first experience being ‘the only’ was when he was just 10 years old and was asked to play George Washington in the town’s Fourth of July parade. Through the lens of a child, this was exciting, and Jenkins was ecstatic about the role. The color of his skin never crossed his mind when he was asked, he said.
But during the parade, while riding on a float, he heard someone in the crowd say, “I didn’t know George Washington was Black,” a comment that was followed by laughter. In that moment, he realized that as a Black man, he would likely continue to experience such comments and have experiences and feelings that his white friends would never understand.
Years later, Jenkins grew interested in law enforcement and came to love the job and helping others. Hired as a special housing police officer in Boston, Jenkins had full police powers, but only in certain areas of the city, mainly, the areas defined as “bad,” he said.
“I grew to learn the layout and grew to form relationships with some of these people that were caught in difficult situations, many of which, looked like me,” Jenkins said. “I realized how important it was to have people in the police force advocate for you and understand what it can be like to have the police ‘weaponized’ against you.”
Police are “weaponized” when they use law enforcement against people they do not like, whether it be someone who practices a different religion, has a different skin tone, or has different beliefs.
Jenkins experienced this firsthand as a teenager, when he was hanging out with his two white friends, he said. The teens were walking through a condominium complex, when three police cars came racing in their direction. Instantly, Jenkins said he knew that they were there for him. The officers threw him to the ground and searched him for burglary tools or weapons, he said, but found none. Meanwhile, another policeman was talking to his two white friends about the Red Sox game.
The police told Jenkins they had gotten a call about a burglary occurring in the complex and that he “matched the description” given to police. In reality, he knew that someone called because they didn’t want a person of his color in the neighborhood.
“The pain I felt — nobody picked me up, nobody dusted me off, there was no apology, and they just left,” Jenkins said. “That stuck with me ever since and I bring that with me every day I work. I brought that with me as a patrolman and that is the important piece that you need in this line of work. To have compassion, to have the ability to have a conversation with people and to dig deeper when you are called to certain situations.
“Let’s talk about race in America, and where we are now,” Jenkins said. “It is undisputable that the U.S. has come a very long way since the time of Dr. King, but that does not mean that we are where we need to be. There is still work to be done.”
The term “white privilege” has many different definitions. Jenkins defines it as, “simply being on the right end of the benefit of the doubt.”
Racism and white privilege are just a couple examples of topics that some people don’t feel comfortable discussing, he said. This is the reason why Jenkins is sharing his experiences —to create an open, honest and judgement-free environment to talk about it with each other.
“If someone asks a question, and it’s something that mildly offends you or something you don’t understand, I’m hoping that you know that that is the reason why I am here, so we can have these conversations. They have to happen, folks. We can’t just turn each other off. I can’t just shut people off. You have to ask questions,” he said.
One key skill that Jenkins has developed, personally and professionally, is having the ability to stay calm and composed when encountering racism. For example, a fellow white patrolman, once asked him why Black people have such a propensity toward violence. Instead of reacting impulsively to the question, Jenkins took time to process his thoughts before responding.
“My initial reaction was to take this man and shake him, but I had to think about it and I had to stop and ask myself, was that question meant to hurt me? This was a gentleman [who] worked with me, did he ask me that question to hurt my feelings? Probably not.”
Jenkins then answered his co-worker’s question with another question: “Let me ask you this, if you only deal with people, regardless of color, sexual orientation, religion, any of that, on the worst day of their lives, which is what we do as police officers, how can you base an entire group of people off of our small groups? Why wouldn’t you base your experience off the people you spend the most time with and have normal interactions with?”
The patrolman nodded and thanked Jenkins for giving him a new perspective that he had never considered before.
“That is the importance of having these conversations. That’s why I bring up an example of a question that, at its surface, is infuriating and insulting. But if I didn’t peel back a few layers of the onion to think about who this person was, and if their intent was to hurt me, I would have missed an opportunity to change this person’s thought process in life.”
This is how we, as a country, can continue to make progress toward an end to racism, Jenkins said. To ask those questions, to become more educated, and to have compassion for others.
“It’s an ugly part of human nature, putting people in boxes and categories and separating people,” Jenkins said, “but we need to acknowledge that we have it, and work on managing it.”
The presentation was followed with a question-and-answer session, giving employees a platform to express concerns and share their own experiences.
Division Newport Technical Director Ron Vien concluded the presentation with some sentiments.
“I just want to give a quick thank you here to Mr. Jenkins for giving an outstanding brief,” Vien said.
“I have to tell you, I always find value in these [presentations], hearing what different leaders have to say, but it’s important to have conversations of this kind of matter. The two key words that stick in my mind is that it’s not a matter of changing you, but of helping you understand things better.”
David Rhodes, lead, of the Equal Employment Opportunity Office’s Special Emphasis Black Program, organized the event and reached out to Jenkins to speak at Division Newport.
“Supply the Why” facilitates these conversations in custom-crafted training sessions and information can be found on social media and in several media outlets.
NUWC Newport is the oldest warfare center in the country, tracing its heritage to the Naval Torpedo Station established on Goat Island in Newport Harbor in 1869. Commanded by Capt. Chad Hennings, NUWC Newport maintains major detachments in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Andros Island in the Bahamas, as well as test facilities at Seneca Lake and Fisher’s Island, New York, Leesburg, Florida, and Dodge Pond, Connecticut.
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