Child Q and The Desensitization Americans Feel Towards the Brutalization of Black Bodies Across the Globe

The case of police misconduct a young Black girl in London fell victim to, and the outcry from the community that followed, forces one to examine the ways in which Americans deal with racial injustice

Hundreds of protesters attend a rally in front of Hackney Town Hall to demonstrate their support of Child Q in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Jenny Matthews /In Pictures via Getty Images)

For weeks protests have raged across the United Kingdom in support of “Child Q”, an alias for the 15-year-old Black girl who was pulled from an exam and strip-searched by police at her school on suspicion of marijuana possession. 

A report by the Child Safeguard Commissioner details the incident, revealing that no other adults were present as Child Q was being strip-searched. Child Q was menstruating at the time of the search and made to remove her sanitary products to fully expose her private areas. The experience was so harrowing that after her mother learned of the search, from which no evidence of drug use or possession was found, she immediately took her daughter to their family doctor who recommended therapy. 

The third-party report concluded that “racism (whether deliberate or not) was likely to have been an influencing factor in the decision to undertake a strip search”.

When I first read about the case of Child Q, I was struck not by the horrors of what police had subjected another Black child to, but by the outcry from the community that followed. Protests erupted across London, backed by government officials calling for action marching alongside hundreds of everyday people both Black and white. They demanded apologies alongside action from both the school board and local government to ensure an incident like this could never occur again. 

The people of London came together for a girl they did not know, and whose face they’d never seen.