Gun Violence among african american community

Introduction
The Violence Policy Center (2020) notes that African Americans are only 13% of the US population yet they represent more than half of all American homicides; but what is worse is that 87% of African American homicides are killed by guns. It is evident from these statistics that gun violence among the African American community is a real problem. This paper will provide an overview of the problem, who it affects and why it is important for social workers to address it.
Overview of the Problem
Who is Affected
According to FBI data, in 2016 there were 7,756 African American homicide victims in the US. This equals to a homicide rate for African Americans of 20.44 per 100,000 (Violence Policy Center, 2020). 6,505 out of 7,442 victims were killed with guns. 17% of the killings were gang related. Nearly half of the killings were a result of an argument between the victim and the offender. 71% of the killings were totally unrelated to any other crime being committed (Violence Policy Center, 2020). These statistics show a community that is being destroyed by gun violence but also by violent attitudes. This problem, moreover, is cultural.
The culture of the African American community has been hurt by a number of factors. Candace Owens has pointed out the three biggest problems facing black America today are father absence, lack of adequate education, and abortion. The problem is that the African American community is suffering from socio-economic challenges that are seemingly insurmountable. The lack of stable families and communities that can provide the kind of value people need to develop fundamentally leads to more people on the street getting into trouble. Violence is the outlet they choose to settle their disputes. They learn violence on the streets. It is the culture they grow up in.
Why the Issue is Important
This issue is very important because there is an entire population of African Americans that is coming under violent assault. This community needs help addressing its issues and providing a culture of peace and understanding. It needs more stable communities and families, better schools and a more accommodating socio-economic system. But if the violence continues, the communities will just get worse and worse and the population will end up back in chains even though the US ended slavery more than a century and a half ago.
How It Fits with the Agency Mission
This social welfare agency’s mission is to serve the community’s needs and bring about a sense of social justice in the community while maintaining a Christian worldview. Because there are not many approaches being implemented in the social work area to address this issue, the agency needs to take more action. In the recent past, some cities like New York have been proactive by implementing Stop and Frisk laws to try to reduce gun violence among the community. However, this created problems of racial profiling of African Americans (Carbado, 2017).
It is important that social workers advocate for alternatives to Stop and Frisk to reduce the risk of racial stigmatization while also addressing the issue of gun violence. Policy alternatives to Stop and Frisk that social workers could advocate for include: 1) focused deterrence, 2) proactive policing aka community-based policing, 3) gun buybacks, and 4) gang intervention and prevention programs.
The specific goals that these alternatives would help to meet are: 1) the reduction of crime within the community; 2) the removal of guns from the streets; and 3) the effect of peace throughout the city. From the Christian worldview perspective and the global perspective, these goals would promote peace and community among diverse people and would allow individuals of multiple backgrounds to mix more freely, securely and with a sense of pride and safety in their own communities, parks, streets, and markets. They would make the African American community safer, and help to promote a more positive culture by showing that law enforcement officers want to work with community members and social workers to help redirect people away from lives of violence towards more positive and wholesome outlets like education, careers, athletics and religious meetings to help keep them on the right track.
Who Defines the History of the Problem
African Americans themselves have defined the history of this problem. Since the time of Malcolm X the issue of violence has been addressed. Martin Luther King sought a non-violent approach to problems of oppression, but the problem of violence has crept into the black community and has become part of the culture. That culture exploded with the rise of gangsta rap and artists like NWA rapping about the realities of violence on the streets. Other hip hop artists like Tupac Shakur, however, adopted a different tone and perspective on violence and tried to bring a more positive message to the streets: Like Malcolm X, Tupac believed African Americans could do better: “We don’t part the Red Sea, but we walk through the ‘hood without getting shot. We don’t turn water to wine, but we turn dope fiends and dope heads into productive citizens of society. We turn words into money—what greater gift can there be? So I believe God blesses us, I believe God blesses those that hustle. Those that use their minds and those that are overall righteous” (Brown xxi). Tupac wanted to stop the senseless gun violence he saw all around him; ironically, he himself would be gunned down.
How the Problem is Related to Social Work Values
The first ethical principle from the NASW Code of Ethics is that social workers should challenge social injustice. Social injustice applies to this issue because the African American community has been treated poorly in the US for many decades and it is always facing some form of oppression that prevents its communities from growing and recovering from issues like this. Therefore the recommendation for this first principle is that social workers advocate on behalf of the marginalized population of African Americans and work with local law enforcement agencies to stop gun violence through proactive programs that are community and culture oriented.
A second ethical principle that comes from the NASW Code of Ethics is that social workers respect the inherent dignity and worth of the person. This ethical principle means that social workers should be mindful of the communities they serve and of the human dignity and value of the people. The African American community often faces a lot of distrust and suspicion because of the implicit bias that people have towards it. But this type of bias needs to be eradicated because it unfairly leads to the marginalization of the population. This principle of respecting the population and the worth of the person helps social workers to show that conflict and tension should be eradicated through policies of understanding and acceptance. The social worker is there to help not just the individual but also other agencies who are stakeholders in the community. This means working with police to help stop gun violence. It means pursing a course of social justice by advocating for the community and for policies that are alternatives to approaches like Stop and Frisk.
Critical Analysis and Discussion
The key to stopping gun violence among African American communities is to work with other agencies in a collaborative spirit and to advocate for policies that are respectful of the community and the African American person. For that reason it advocates for focused deterrence, for proactive policing, gun buybacks and gang prevention programs. Social workers should be go-betweens with the community and law enforcement and other leaders and stakeholders.
Focused deterrence is also known as pulling levers policing because it is a policing strategy that focuses on swift response, severe punitive measures, and high conviction rates to send the message to the community that crime will not be tolerated. It combines facets of policing with efforts from social services and community organizers mobilizing to get the message out. From a Christian worldview perspective, the rationale for focused deterrence is like way in which peace was pursued during the Christian Middle Ages: the threat of war was used as a means of securing peace, as the consequences of war were deemed too great to risk disturbing the peace. The law was severe but its severity deemed necessarily for social stability.
Focused deterrence aims to meet the goals of crime reduction, gun removal and peace in the community by enforcing the laws strictly and responding promptly whenever there is a report of crime. The method of efficient policing and swift and severe enforcement of the law is meant to send a message to criminals that their activities will not be tolerated and that they will be taken to jail. This type of work can bring together social workers with community organizers, leaders in the community and law enforcement to find effective measures that will support the community and reduce the risk of gun violence. It is a very proactive but also supportive approach to solving the problem.
Proactive policing is also known as community policing and focuses on preventing crime by having police offers be more visible in communities and neighborhoods. Police walk the beat and interact with members of the community as a way to get to know them and learn about their problems. By engaging with the community, trust is built and crime is discouraged through the positive influence and example seen (Jones, 2014, p. 33).
Proactive policing aims to meet the goals of crime reduction, gun removal and peace in the community by creating a culture of trust, responsibility, friendship and commitment between law enforcement officers and the community.
The policy of gun buybacks is one in which the police department gets guns off the street by buying guns from people in the community, no questions asked. Since the policy of Stop and Frisk is aimed at removing guns from the streets, it is similar to this policy in terms of having the same goal. Gun buybacks remove the consequence of offending minorities, who typically feel targeted from Stop and Frisk and it gives the department a way to remove guns from the street in a way that is more sensitive.
Gang intervention and prevention programs focus on redirecting youths away from gang membership towards more positive engagement with other activities, such as sports, education, and work. These programs have had success in other cities, such as Mesa, Arizona, where one was implemented to reduce gang membership growth and crime (Spergel, Wa & Sosa, 2005, p. 1). This policy would aim to meet the goals of crime reduction, gun removal and peace in the community by focusing on preventive strategies with youths and redirecting them away from crime culture towards more positive cultural outlets.
Llewellyn, Archibald, Clairmont and Crocker (2013) note that “the inclusion of dignity requires attention and respect for the diversity of ways of being that become clear when one approaches individuals in all their embedded and relational complexity” (p. 299). This is something to keep in mind when forecasting the consequences of these policy alternatives, for if they do not lead to an increase in dignity, respect and peace throughout the community they will ultimately be ineffective.
Community is based on respect, appreciation for diversity, and sense of purpose. If a community is robbed of its identity because of a perception of oppression on the part of the police, the community can become antagonistic. Thus, Community policing is recommended overall, and it is a standard policing concept that focuses on putting police on the streets so that they can interact with community members on a daily basis, get to know them, make their presence known in a friendly and familiar manner, and thus reduce the risk of crime and violence through their positive, social and professional presence in the community. To implement it requires having teams of police—typically two officers per section of blocks, depending on need—rounding the blocks continuously and engaging members of the community in a friendly manner. Social workers can work with community police to help ensure that the right social values are being expressed that that the goal of social justice is being pursued while gun violence specifically is being targeted and reduced.
The principles of the black perspective are 1) to respond to oppression and discrimination experienced by minorities and 2) to maintain sensitivity to all experiences of the oppressed (Howard University, 2020). Social workers can help ensure that the oppressed communities of African Americans are not further antagonized by policies like Stop and Frisk in law enforcement officers’ attempts to stop gun violence. While it is important to stop gun violence, this issue should be addressed in the right way. That means sensitivity has to be maintained at all times and so the social worker can advocate on behalf of the community with law enforcement to consider the alternative policies suggested herein.
Conclusion
The guiding philosophy of Howard University is to always consider the black perspective and to not allow the black community to be oppressed any longer. For the issue of gun violence, which is destructive to black communities, a more culturally competent approach is needed. The social worker who advocates on behalf of this community should be mindful of the needs of this community and of the way that policies like Stop and Frisk can be harmful. For that reason, social workers should work with other community leaders and law enforcement to try gang prevention programs, gun buybacks, focused policing and community policing. In the end it is about helping the culture to thrive and that takes a community to come together for the sake of social justice for all. The social worker can help to make this happen by being a strong go-between for these stakeholders.
References
Brown, J. (2005). Tupac Shakur, (2-Pac) in the Studio: The Studio Years (1989-1996). Phoenix, AZ: Colossus Books.
Carbado, D. W. (2017). From Stop and Frisk to Shoot and Kill: Terry v. Ohio's Pathway to Police Violence. UCLA L. Rev., 64, 1508.
Howard University. (2020). PHD in social work. Retrieved from https://socialwork.howard.edu/admissions/programs-study/phd-social-work
Jones, N. (2014). “The regular routine”: Proactive policing and adolescent development among young, poor black men. New directions for child and adolescent development, 2014(143), 33-54.
Llewellyn, J. J., Archibald, B. P., Clairmont, D., & Crocker, D. (2013). Imagining success for a restorative approach to justice: Implications for measurement and evaluation. Dalhousie LJ, 36, 281.
Spergel, I., Wa, K., & Sosa, R. (2005). Evaluation of the Mesa Gang Intervention Program (MGIP). School of Social Service Administration, The University of Chicago.
Violence Policy Center. (2020). Black homicide victimization. Retrieved from http://vpc.org/revealing-the-impacts-of-gun-violence/black-homicide-victimization/