ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that conceptualizing the conflict that #BlackLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter hashtags represent–through the more constructive vocabulary of the metaphor of network–provides a fundamental intervention into antiracist police training programs. Networks, online fora woven from amphibolic threads, express the ambiguity, the frailty, and the irrationality of the human condition. A networked conception permits unraveling and provides a forum for reworking the social fabric. A networked conception of the police force also binds officers to the communities they serve, to one another, and to the criminal justice system. An amphibolic understanding of network directs critical attention toward tenuousness. Networks provide iterative spaces to acknowledge the exploitation of queer women of color’s communicative labor. Reconceptualizing the fora enabled through network as spaces for resilient democratic iteration provides perceptual safety nets for training in the hopes that stamina with interracial confrontation acquired online might translate into greater offline security for both Black and Blue lives.
