Can you do self-insemination at home ?
My daughter is five years old. She is a lively, bright-eyed girl with curly hair, a beautiful mix of Black and South Asian heritage. As I think about her teenage years, I can’t shake the fear of becoming a grieving mother standing over her body, her life cut short, just like Aisha Carter’s was.
Can you fathom the anguish Aisha’s family is enduring? Another Black child, another life extinguished by police violence. In situations like this, law enforcement often trots out a multitude of justifications: “This wasn’t racially motivated,” or “The officer felt threatened,” or “He was acting to protect others.” My personal favorite, “Let’s wait for all the facts to come in.” What more do we need to know? A 16-year-old girl is dead. The police are taking Black lives as if it’s routine.
That’s not their role.
Police officers are sworn to protect us, regardless of our race, background, or whom we love. Their responsibility is to provide assistance and support to those in need. When someone like Aisha dials for help—if indeed she was the one who called 911—they should respond with care, not create more harm. Each time an unarmed Black individual is killed by police, it affects us all deeply.
We should be furious that yet another child has been lost—let’s not forget Adam Toledo, Tamir Rice, or Michael Brown. The ranks of law enforcement are filled with officers who shoot first and ask questions later. Many view skin color, the vehicle someone drives, or the music they listen to as indicators of criminality before knowing anything about the person. These assumptions are deadly. We need a fundamental shift in the guidelines surrounding police use of force.
We don’t fully understand what transpired the day Aisha was shot. Perhaps she was frightened; perhaps she wielded a kitchen knife to protect herself from a perceived danger. But we will never know, because the officer acted without hesitation. He fired at a Black girl holding a kitchen knife who was not advancing towards him. A 16-year-old was shot four times in the chest simply because she didn’t obey his command.
The reality is that it doesn’t matter what led to the confrontation. The officer took the life of a child. He had only been on the scene for 10 seconds before pulling the trigger. Imagine if this had been a white girl in a similar scenario—would the officer have fired four shots? The answer is a resounding no. Such an outcome would be unimaginable in an all-white setting. Why? Because white individuals do not experience the same systemic racism that we, as Black people, do.
Between 2015 and 2020, a study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health examined racial disparities in police shootings. The findings were disheartening. Within that five-year period, 5,367 police shootings occurred, with 1,265 of those victims being Black individuals, who were killed at a rate 2.6 times higher than that of white individuals. Yes, we have a gun problem in this nation, but we face an even more significant issue: rampant racism. The fear has evolved from worrying about Black men to Black women and now to our children.
What can we do to change the perspective of racist officers? Lives have been lost, communities shattered, and officers reassigned to “administrative leave”—yet nothing seems to change. Daily, we as Black people grapple with the fear that our lives are at risk, as the news cycles through yet another report of an unarmed individual killed. This is our grim reality.
I hope Aisha’s tragic death leads to a shift in the hearts of those who prioritize skin color over human life. She could have been my daughter. Until there is change, this fear will keep me—and every other Black parent—up at night.
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In summary, we must confront the systemic issues within our policing system that lead to the unjust loss of Black lives, especially those of our youth. The tragedy of Aisha Carter is a stark reminder of the work that still needs to be done.