To reiterate: Capt. Johnson is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi, a black fraternity that was formed in 1911 at Indiana University in Bloomington, and the hand sign you see in the pictures below is a Kappa greeting. The Kappas are part of the Divine Nine or the National Pan-Hellenic Council, the nine historically black fraternities and sororities that include Delta Sigma Theta, Alpha Kappa Alpha, Alpha Phi Alpha, Omega Psi Phi, Phi Beta Sigma, Zeta Phi Beta, Sigma Gamma Rho and Iota Phi Theta, none of which are gangs.

The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake reported a new Pew poll revealed considerably more African Americans than whites say the shooting of an unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer “raises important issues about race” (80 percent of blacks compared with 37 percent of whites). Given such differences in the perception of a national news event, there’s some glaring cultural illiteracy when the top law enforcement officer installed by the governor of Missouri is being accused of throwing up gang signs. This actually makes Johnson not unlike Brown himself — the publication of a photo of Brown flashing the peace sign, which was also misinterpreted as a gang sign, is what sparked #IfTheyGunnedMeDown. Part of the conversation surrounding Brown’s killing centered on black Americans being treated as foreigners in their own country or, in sociology-speak, being “othered.” Some would say black folks must constantly prove their humanity or, at the very least, explain black American culture — sometimes a comically Sisyphean task. Case in point: having to state that Missouri highway patrol captain Ron Johnson is not a gang member.