Black lives matter and blue lives matter. Saying one precludes no one.

Born in 1952 in Fort Worth at the height of segregation, I now have to ask myself how I got my name, Lee. The n-word was never spoken in my home, but I’m ashamed to say I heard it from some relatives, who I could not choose, and a few friends, who I did choose.

As a high school and college student during the Vietnam War, we called police “narcs” and “pigs.” They pulled us over for no reason and put a few of my friends in jail for small amounts of marijuana, a felony in Texas in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the coming years, as I worked with police as a television news reporter, I learned what brave and good people the vast majority of police men and women are. Who else will stand between you and a killer?

My friend, Debra Harris, was raised in the all-Black neighborhoods of Waco, Texas, and worked with me as an assistant news director and newscast executive producer. She is worldly, kind and a graduate of Spelman College.

Of police brutality against Black people, she told me in a voice slowed and deepened, “It happens all the time.” This was the early 1990s. The deepness of her anger and sadness made me question myself. Perhaps I was not as enlightened as I believed.

I do not believe police brutalize Black people all the time, but the evidence is clear, thanks to our video cameras and phones, that needless arrests and beatings happen much, much more to Black and brown people than white people.

White people marching for George Floyd are finally saying, “OK, it really is that bad. We get it. We want to help.”

Let’s realize the work for equality did not end with civil rights laws of the mid-1960s.

Please stop saying “defund the police.” It plays into the hands of racists, the uncaring and the ignorant.

Let’s chant, “Teach the police.” Support the police in learning new awareness and new skills and realize they have to take down the most dangerous criminals in our society before they rob, rape or murder our neighbors, maybe you or me.

Let’s look inside ourselves to understand that in times of extreme stress all of us can make serious and critical mistakes, some potentially tragic.

Let’s respect that most police devote themselves to causes greater than themselves including the laying down of their own lives.

We honor the two Tulsa Police officers who were shot while during their job. Fifteen-year veteran Sgt. Craig Johnson died, and rookie officer Aurash Zarkeshan suffered in intensive care for weeks.

Let’s trust that most police, many of whom are Black and brown, also believe in the ideals of Black Lives Matter.

Was I named after Gen. Robert E. Lee? Not on purpose.

But what beliefs, known and unknown in the heads of my parents, made them pick that name? What beliefs as a society make us not see the legacy of vicious laws enforced and abused against people of color?

Lee Williams is on the communication faculty at Rogers State University and was the former news director at KTUL-Channel 8 in Tulsa from 1997 to 2005.

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