For many African Americans, tuning into the nightly news and skimming through social media timelines has become an exercise in maintaining psychological well-being. The barrage of videos in which police officers attack and kill black people, along with ongoing discussions about race-based violence, can elicit fears that they, too, may succumb to an officer’s bullet.
As the rest of the world plays catch-up in the aftermath of Mike Brown,Freddie Gray, Jr., Sandra Bland, and most recently Sam DuBose, questions arise among black activists and community leaders about how to best help people of color maintain sanity amid the chaos — even as many of them want to continue tweeting, marching, and fighting to hold the police, courts, and state and federal officials accountable.
D.C.-based entrepreneur and child advocate Muhsin Umar knows that challenge all too well. Umar, who has a history of bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia, said the graphic video of a University of Cincinnati police officer shooting Dubose conjured memories of an officer’s bullet piercing his own shoulder and jaw in the mid-1980s during a jump-out — defined as an instance when undercover officers descend on groups of people without warning, often with guns drawn.
[For more of this story, written by Sam P.K. Collins, go to http://thinkprogress.org/healt...f-police-encounters/]
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