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Police brutality: Time to seek homegrown solutions

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THE British daily, The Guardian, in June 2015 launched ‘The Count’, a project working to count the number of people killed by police and other law enforcement agencies in the US throughout 2015 and 2016, to monitor their demographics and to tell the stories of how they died.
The US Government has no comprehensive record of the number of people killed by law enforcement agents.
This lack of basic data has been glaring amid the protests, riots and worldwide debate set in motion by the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old, in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014.
Before stepping down as Attorney General in April 2015, Eric Holder described the prevailing situation on data collection as ‘unacceptable’.
The FBI runs a voluntary programme through which law enforcement agencies may or may not choose to submit their annual count of ‘justifiable homicides’, which it defines as ‘the killing of a felon in the line of duty’.
Between 2005 and 2012, just 1 100 police departments – a fraction of America’s
18 000 police agencies – reported a ‘justifiable homicide’ to the FBI.
Noted is that these recorded killings are of the ‘criminals’ and where the innocent are killed, that’s not in the books so to speak.
Black-Americans are more than twice likely to be unarmed when killed during police encounters than whites, but it is our sons who are filling up body-bags on the streets.
Excessive force is one of the most common forms of police misconduct in the US and since 2005, for every 1 000 people killed by police, only one officer is convicted of a crime.
Back home (kumusha), when a woman gives birth to a baby boy, it is a cause of overzealous celebration as culturally we have been conditioned to place greater importance in the male child in comparison to the girl-child.
Despite scientific knowledge and awareness campaigns seeking to abolish bias against the girl-child, many a family still afford more opportunities to the boy-child.
Over the July 4 holiday festivities with some vana vekumusha, an interesting notion was up for discussion: In a racially explosive society like the US, the birth of a male child is now dreaded by some.
Whereas any father would want to teach his child ‘how to be a man’, to be assertive, take charge, stand his ground, in the US, a black male child has to be taught the exact opposite.
Contributing to the debate, one pensive father said, racially, relations were emasculating not just the blackman, but the entire community was faced with regressing to the post Civil Rights era due to institutionalised racism.
Imagine each day not knowing whether or not your son, a teenage boy, would return home safe from school; being forced to monitor your child’s every movement in order to ensure that he is unharmed and the constant worry and fear that you will receive a phone call that your child has been shot dead on the street.
These are all realities for many black parents in the US.
There is nothing more degrading to a people, especially those of us from Zimbabwe who are known for standing up against racism, than teaching your child to be docile in front of any white figure in authority because any sign of assertiveness could result in death.
Interestingly, a video doing rounds on social media this past week could be a factor in dealing with police bias against black folk and improving relations.
In the video, a female Atlanta police officer is seen calling on the Lord to watch over a group of boys who had gathered outside of her police department.
She is laying hands on an unidentified boy who is standing patiently as she says a prayer over him.
While it is hard to hear what she is praying over the young man, he was not the only one to receive a blessing that day.
In the background, one of his friends can be heard telling another young man to ‘come get prayed over’.
As more and more of African-American men are incarcerated and shafted by the system, the sisters have become the mothers and fathers in black communities.
The narrative of a strong family matriarch as evidenced in many African-American movies is born out of this fact.
However, there is also a historical context to this narrative, slaves found it increasingly difficult to form families.
Not only did the law forbid interracial wedlock and deny blacks legal rights to marry each other, but the agricultural demands of Southern slave societies also continued to generate a disproportionate population of black men in the colonies.
Some enslaved people lived in nuclear families with a mother, father and children.
In these cases, each family member belonged to the same owner. However, most slaves lived in near-nuclear families in which the father had a different owner than the mother and children.
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education in 2016 released statistics that revealed the fact that black women lead over black men in almost every facet of higher education. Black women currently earn about two thirds of all African-American Bachelor’s degree awards, 70 percent of all Masters degrees and more than 60 percent of all Doctorates.
Black women also hold a majority of all African-American enrollments in law, medical and dental schools.
The sisters have to hold the fort and not only protect the black child, but take advantage of their opportunities to create platforms that address racism in their communities.
Equally, the brothers must be willing to accept this and not continue denigrating sisters who are making it out there.
The attacks on Serena Williams come to mind.

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