Ma'Khia Bryant’s Family Dynamics

Ma'Khia Bryant was a daughter, sister, granddaughter, friend, and honor roll student. She was also a foster child. In two years, Ma'Khia was placed in five different homes. Due to confidentiality reasons, we may never know why Ma'Khia and her sister were placed in foster care, but multiple dysfunctional homes did play a role in this incident. According to an article by city-journal.org, she and her sister were removed from the care of their mother in March 2018. Police responded to an incident at the Bryant residence with clear evidence of abuse and unsupervised children.

As any grandmother would, Ma'Khia's grandmother took temporary custody of her grandchildren. But because their mother failed to comply with court-ordered mental health counseling and visitation orders, Bryant's grandmother was then forced to return her grandchildren to foster care. Fast forward to foster care. CNN reported police records show multiple 911 calls in the last three years to all of the foster homes Ma'Khia lived in.

Now, can you see the level of dysfunction and emotional chaos Ma'Khia had to live with? For roughly two years, she may have felt unsafe, unwanted, and unprotected with the lack of stability in the home. As a result, this may have caused Bryant to engage in violent behaviors like pulling out a deadly weapon to survive, given the events that led to her death.

America’s Foster Care System Failed Ma'Khia Bryant

In an article by The Grio, American journalist and author, Dr. Stacey Patton, shares her personal experience in the foster care system. Patton calls the American foster care system traumatizing; being placed in foster care can cause stress and additional trauma to a child based on the type of home or agency the child is placed in. She states statistics regarding Black children and foster care.

"According to federal data, Black children are placed into foster care at twice the rate of white children. They are more likely to be placed into foster care than receive in-home services even when they have the same problems as white children. Black children stay in foster care longer, receive fewer services, are more likely to be given psychotropic medications to control their behaviors, and increasing numbers are being funneled through the foster-care-to-prison pipeline."

"This is not a system that is designed to heal, empower, or prepare children to become healthy, thriving and productive adults. When Black families and communities fail their children, they are placed at risk for an entire ecosystem of negative outcomes."

What people don't know about the foster care system is that it can be very damaging to a child. According to the New Jersey Herald, it was Ma'Khia's parents and the foster care system that created a girl so mad she wanted to kill someone. Bryant wasn't born angry, they teamed up to put the knife in her hand. Did you know that according to the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (NCCPR) foster care is considered unsafe for children? This same agency has reported the rate of sexual abuse to occur four times higher than the rate in the general population. In group homes, there was more than ten times the rate of physical abuse and more than 28 times the rate of sexual abuse as in the general population.

Now, can you see the type of environment Ma'Khia Bryant may have been living in? Can you see how a system neglected this child? If you ask me, a social worker should have been called to the scene too. Maybe then, the police officers called to the scene would have made an informed decision as opposed to reacting to a perceived threat. Then maybe more than one life would have been saved that day.

But based on laws, Ma'Khia still may have been arrested for a criminal act and placed in the juvenile justice system. There was only one victim that day and it was not her.

Ohio’s Foster Care System Failed Too

It has also been said that families and children fall through the cracks when people are not performing their job adequately. To be a civil servant is to protect and serve. The assistant director, Scott Britton, of the Public Children Services Association of Ohio, disclosed Ohio's foster care system struggled to help families with a high turnover rate or loss of caseworkers in recent years. It wasn't until recently Ohio State created an advisory panel to find ways to improve their foster care system which included recommendations of additional support and oversight.

In addition to system racism or police brutality in shooting deaths like Ma'Khia Bryant, we must also examine the home.

Accountability starts and ends in the home.