Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 10, 1993 TAG: 9301100035
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBERT MATTHEWS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ONLY BLACK OFFICER NO `TOKEN'
The word "nigger" doesn't bother Salem Police Officer Kenneth Beaver.He's heard it. He's said it. And he's certainly been called one.
"I've got too many more important things to think about when I'm trying to do my job than worry about stuff like that," Beaver says.
As Salem's only black police officer, Beaver is no stranger to racism. Most of what he has experienced has come not from within the department, but from other blacks.
Shortly after he joined the department in 1981 - after spending seven years in the Army - he stopped a black man for a traffic violation.
"The man said, `Brother, you going to cut me some slack?'", Beaver recalled.
When Beaver declined, the man became belligerent, he said. "He called me an Uncle Tom, two-faced-nigger and white-man's boy."
It bothered him much more than he would have thought. "When it was happening, I kept saying to myself that `I don't believe that I'm hearing this,' " Beaver said.
Nowadays, it is rare for anything like that to happen, he added.
But it took time for some people in Salem's black community to understand that he was not going to show them any favoritism just because he also was black.
Though a native of Floyd County, Beaver called Salem home for years before he became a city police officer. He said he liked to spend time in the city because it was a "nice settle-down community".
He and his wife, Elizabeth, have two daughters, and he said he plans to retire in the city.
After deciding not to re-enlist in the Army, where he was a military police officer, Beaver set his sights on becoming a police officer in Salem.
Three years after he joined, he was named "Officer of the Year" by his colleagues.
The distinction of being the city's only black police officer, Beaver said, is not something he thinks about often - mostly because the department doesn't view him as "the token black."
A recruiter for the department, Beaver said he would like to see more blacks hired. It reflects poorly on Salem when he has to say that he is the only black officer, he said.
Memo: CORRECTION