You are only getting part of it.
I grew up hating Swedes. My father hated Swedes. My Grandfather hated Swedes. It goes back to the old country, and as far as I can tell to at least the 1600’s and farther back.
Why? One of our ancestors got kicked out of Gotland for fighting and drinking. If you knew our family, that kind of fit. I would bet the fighting was SEPERATE from the drinking.
Now take it to an African American in say, Atlanta. The Klan is still a going concern today (with about as much impact as the shag carpet preservation society). Their grandparents may have been alive to experience Segregation, and everything they were told all of there life was that all Whites owned slaves, hate people of darker skin, and want to kill them.
Hell, I have black family members who grew up hating Swedes like me, go off into the world and be told that they “Have to choose!” Either they get on the hate whitey train or they will be excluded from they community.
The Serbs and Croats hate each other. The Saxons and Swedes hate each other. The Franks hate everyone (and everyone hates them back). The North Italians view the South Italians and Mongols, and the south views the north as barbarian invaders that ended civilization.
And that doesn’t even take into account the cultural divisions in the USA (Ever run into a New Yorker in Texas?)
So I totally believe this guy is certain all cops want to kill him. He was told that, just like many African Americans have been, because in the Bad Old Days of Dixie, the white overseers and slave hunters DID kill them.
Humans are funny things. Grudges get passed down with care for millennia. While hustlers are a part of it, that ignores the vast majority of the fact that most have no relation to current reality or their causes remembered.
That is the the conversation that needs to be had. You can tell this guy “I don’t hate you because your black!” all you want be he will probably never believe you. All the authority figures in his life have told him otherwise.
Being affected is not the same as being afflicted, and people do not inherit the suffering of their forebears, nor the guilt for that matter. Every man’s suffering is uniquely their own, and it dies with them.
To teach it as if you could pass it on is not simply illegitimate, unfounded, it is to actually become the one inflicting harm on the child. It is simply wrong to nurse hatred across generations of people no matter who does it, and no matter what their reasons.
Remember: we are told to forgive.
That people do nurse hatred across generations is simply an expression of the fallen nature of human beings, which Paul called the body of death for those who are redeemed (still present, obviously still wanting to be in charge, as anyone may attest who, though saved, has spiritually fallen flat on their face shortly after bragging to themselves “I’ve got this” ... never brag like that, it goes badly ... raises hand in confession).
It is a very good thing, then, that the Lord can do stuff like make a proverbial camel to pass through the eye of a needle ... because we all need that gift, which we cannot either earn or merit.