It's the whole white-supremacist movement, no matter what they call themselves - be it Klan, Nazis, alt-right, skinheads - the basic ideology is the same. They consider themselves superior to others because of their white skin, and we should not sleep on that.
― Ron Stallworth explaining why white supremacy should not be ignored in any way.
The media all too often unwittingly creates the very news it reports because of its zeal to get a story. This only benefits the person or subject being covered and gives them or it a power neither deserves.
― Ron Stallworth.
When you're undercover you try to stay as true to your identity as you are. You know who you are, and you know how you normally function. If you try to put on a pretense, such as assuming a fake voice, you have to put on that fake voice all of the time. And you can't afford to slip out of it. It's too dangerous.
― Ron Stallworth.
I was playing a role and acting. But it was different than Spike Lee's movie. Spike can say 'cut' and move to the next scene. But I was pretending to be a white supremacist, one of them. I had to act like them to make the ruse a success.
― Ron Stallworth, after using his "supremacy" persona to deceieve and defeat the Klu Klux Klan.
Ron Stallworth (born June 18, 1953) is a retired American police officer who infiltrated the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in the 1978. He was the first African-American rookie detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department.
Biography[]
He moved to Colorado in 1972 (from his hometown of El Paso, Texas) to take the test in order to join the police cadet program at the age of 19. Once he joined the police force, he had one motivation in mind: to become an high school PE teacher. After a year of working, he realized that he was making twice as much money as he would in the teaching profession, and he was having too much fun as a coach (which he stuck it out for 32 years and with no regrets).
With the knowledge he has, he was also very determined to make a difference, he bravely sets out on a dangerous mission: infiltrate and expose the Ku Klux Klan, and he did this by phoning them and Klan poobah David Duke and posing as a white supremacist in order to fight the racism in the group and to make a fool out of them into defeat.
In March of 2013, he started writing, and has been writing for nine months. While he didn’t have a junction to write the story, thought it was very surreal of him writing the story of how he exposed the Klu Klux Klan to submit in a book, nor did he ever see himself as a "hero", he was willing to be honest enough to share the story from a neutral viewpoint. He gained this understanding once he said that he used to keep abreast of it when he was once working with street gangs in Utah. He also stay read-up on the subject and to show that he is aware of what’s happening in the country for the most part.
Personality[]
Even though he can come across a little buttoned-up and tactiturn, he has still shown to shown be wise, rational, intelligent, modest and have a deep commitment to bringing justice anywhere, and has a understandable, fiery hatred towards racism and oppression. He believes it's much better to work within a broken system in order to improve it, rather than tearing down the system altogether (his motives to pursue and explose the Klu Klux Clan were seen as another investigation to him since he saw an ad in the newspaper in relaton to the KKK and he followed it as an investigator to find a natural conclusion to it).
In a prejudiced world, Ron learned to turn the other cheek and keep his frustrations in check; which was best shown when Ron had a goal in mind, he goes after it with single-minded focus, sometimes not thinking through the full consequences of his actions, but still learns from his actions and becomes more wise over time. He is also a disciplined person since Ron’s father was in the military and raised his son strictly, which helped Ron becoming thoughtful, responsible and meticulous in his words and actions.
He is also noted for his bravery as a detective exposing a hate group like the Klu Klux Klan without support from the brass, he chose to ignore the naysayers who said it couldn’t be done, and that I shouldn’t do it. In doing this, he put his career in jeopardy by going above the chain of command directly to the chief of police, which he did in order to get support from the cief. So he would say to the police force that "You have a decision to make, how important is it to you to carry out that assignment, and are you willing to accept the consequences of doing so? I was, and any cop today that finds themselves in a similar position would have to come to that decision for themselves", which highlights how he is a upstanding citizen who will stand up to any form of oppression when it's absolutely needed.
His acts for tricking the Klu Klux Klan into thinking he was a supremacist before exposing them for their hate crimes, makes him display a creative side of being suave, sly, crafty, and resourceful in regards to play-acting in order to achieve something positive within a society.
Trivia[]
- The 2018 film BlacKkKlansman version of himself is based on his experience infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan, where he is portrayed by John David Washington.
- He was also treated as a celebrity for his story with exposing the Klu Klux Klan. He thought it was hard to get used to, because he didn’t see himself as a celebrity, and when people went to him and ask for his autograph and everything; he finds it funny that people wanted a autograph from him.
- It's not helping that he does not see himself as a hero, but only a cop with just another job to do and he did what he did to the best of his abilities and with the resources he had. He didn’t find anything heroic about anything he does, and he knows other people have said that he did something heroic and live-saving, and he thanked them for that, but it’s nothing he attached to himself.
- In reality, David Duke did not find out about Stallworth being black for 10 years until Stallworth went public with his investigation in 2006, making Stallworth's act of trickery to be legendary and surprising to find out later.
- Stallworth stated he wished he could have gone public sooner to expose the KKK and that it might have prevented Duke from becoming as influential as he did.