The Ebony Alert is scheduled to begin on January 1, 2024 in California. African-American associations have been warning for years about the number of kidnappings among blacks, proportionally much higher than among whites.
The Democratic governor of the state of California, Gavin Newsom, signed a law during the week of October 9 to 15 that gave rise to what is called the Ebony Alert. Ebony is a word that is often used to positively describe black women in the United States. Across the Atlantic, everyone knows the “Amber alert”, launched nationally in 1996. It is the American equivalent of the kidnapping alert: a person under the age of 17 or with a disability must have been kidnapped, who fears for her life, and the authorities then launch an alert with a description which arrives on cell phones, highway sign messages and local media. A system that has proven itself, since in California, children are found in 97% of cases.
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For years, associations have been warning of the fact that the number of kidnappings among blacks is proportionally much higher than among whites. According to national statistics, 35% of kidnappings involve black people, even though they represent only 13% of the American population. Conversely, the media attention is much less when it is a black person who is kidnapped than when it is a white person. And then the police are also less involved. Investigators have often described – wrongly – certain kidnappings as running away, this is what we call, in the United States, institutionalized racism.
Associations are also calling for better training for police officers
Ebony Alert first extends its capacity of action to people between 12 and 25 years old. The objective, for the authorities, is to include black women victims of sex trafficking in these alerts, over the age of 17, therefore. It is also a new tool intended to trigger a trigger within the police, so that they finally pay particular attention to cases involving young black people.
For African-American associations, this is a real step in the right direction, but they insist on the fact that this must be accompanied by more in-depth training for police officers, so that they take seriously any kidnapping that is reported to them in the black community. The associations also hope that the Californian experience, which will begin on January 1, 2024, will inspire other American states.
2023-10-16 12:01:52
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