Two and a half years ago, as the drumbeat of national news stories about police shooting and killing unarmed black men had reached a steady cadence, most recently with the additions of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, Santa Barbara resident James Joyce III decided to act on a desire to foster cross-racial dialogues in the community. His brainchild, Coffee with a Black Guy, signifies on Coffee with a Cop, a nonprofit organization that encourages conversation between police officers and members of the community in which they work.
“The cops don’t want to be demonized because of their uniforms,” Joyce said in a brief interview before the latest iteration of the event last Saturday at the Sandbox coworking space, suggesting that there’s a flip side to the coin. Joyce conjured Coffee with a Black Guy with his cousin, Jarrett Brown, who lives in Florida but visited Santa Barbara to attend. Brown said that after police shootings, he heard a lot of people asking why black people would be afraid of cops or suggesting that maybe if they just listened to the police, they wouldn’t be harmed.
“Nobody was stopping to say, ‘Hey, let me hear where you’re coming from,’” said Brown, who livestreamed the event, the largest one yet with more than 100 people attending and the imprimatur of the Lois and Walter Capps Project. The idea behind the event is for people to ask questions and share their experiences in a judgment-free zone.