I was 12 years old, and unlike previous American presidents, I actually felt a personal connection. Like me, he was Baptist and like many of my relatives, he taught Sunday school.

Unlike Richard Nixon, who left office in disgrace and who seemed to struggle with a host of demons — and unlike Gerald Ford, whose administration was linked to a CIA attempt to destabilize the Jamaican government — Carter seemed well intentioned and decent.

So like millions of Africans, I was elated when in 1978, Carter became the first American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt to make an official visit to the continent (FDR’s 1943 visit to Liberia was a brief stopover to implore President Edwin Barclay to end his country’s neutrality during World War II and expel German expatriates.)

But Carter actually came to Nigeria and hung out awhile. And for those few days, our eyes remained glued to the tube as we watched him, his wife, youngest daughter and entourage of more than 400 tour Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital. My personal connection soared that Sunday when he worshipped at First Baptist Church of Lagos, my grandparents’ and parents’ home church, and a congregation where my grandmother was ordained a deaconess in 1946.

We applauded his decision to place African-Americans like Andrew Young in high-profile positions. We welcomed his efforts to help end white minority rule in Rhodesia. And we were saddened when his political career was cut short by a former California governor named Ronald Reagan, a man many blacks around the world considered insensitive at best.

But over the decades, we watched delightfully as he reinvented himself as a statesman, laborer for Habitat for Humanity, peacemaker, champion of democracy, human rights activist and warrior in the battle against diseases like guinea worm.

Carter’s efforts abroad earned him a well-deserved Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, and he has been persistent in holding countries like Nigeria, Sudan and Haiti accountable on human rights issues.  He has served as an election observer in dozens of countries. He has complimented authorities in those countries when the elections were free and fair. He has been outspoken when they weren’t.

At home, he’s not been afraid to take on the most controversial issues. He’s been quick to point out that much of the malicious criticism against President Barack Obama is motivated by racism. He’s not been afraid to call out Israel for its reckless disregard of the rights of Palestinians.

It’s been an unlikely path for this farm boy from the nation’s most segregated region — a man whose slave owner forebears fled to Brazil after the Civil War because slavery was still legal in that South American country.

Despite this foundation, however, Carter refused to be defined by his culture or his heritage. Like Lyndon Johnson, Obama and Bill Clinton, Carter has earned a place in the pantheon of America’s most progressive presidents on the issue of race in the last century.

Now the world watches nervously as Carter fights the biggest battle of his life: brain cancer. Since making his diagnosis public, he has handled himself with grace, courage and dignity. He seems to be at peace with himself. He even taught Sunday school at his home church in Plains, Georgia a few days after undergoing the first in a series of radiation treatments.

Historians haven’t judged Carter’s presidency kindly. His watch is probably more remembered for a weak economy, the Iranian hostage crisis and the failed attempt to rescue the hostages. In many ways, that’s a pity.

While I suspect that the views of presidential historians won’t improve much in the coming decades, I also believe the perception of Carter by people of color around the world will be markedly different. Blacks around the world will draw little distinction between the Carter presidency and post-presidency. In both roles, he tried to do the right thing.

He just did it so much better after he left the White House.

Wave columnist Lekan Oguntoyinbo is an independent journalist. Contact him at oguntoyinbo@gmail.com.

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And black lives should always matter — even when the killers are not hyper-aggressive cops, white supremacists or other emblems of oppression.

In 2011, the most recent year for which complete FBI data is available, more than 6,000 blacks were murdered — most often by other blacks. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that more than 90 percent of blacks are killed by blacks. Around the world, hundreds of thousands of blacks die at the hands of other blacks as a result of warfare, ethnic and religious conflict and police and military brutality.

In fact, police killings of blacks pale in comparison to black-on-black murders.

Tuesday night in St. Louis, for example, two males were killed in separate shootings and eight others were shot and wounded in six shootings.

A few weeks ago in Detroit, patrolling police officers spotted two men in a car — one who appeared to have a gun. When the cops tried to pull the men over, they sped off and a chase ensued. The driver of the fleeing car nosed his car onto the sidewalk and ran over a 6-year-old child, killing him instantly. He didn’t stop. He ran over and killed another child, a 3-year-old, before being apprehended.

A few years ago, Al-Jazeera posted footage online of military personnel in Nigeria, the world’s largest black country, murdering young men on a busy street of a large northern Nigerian city. The men were suspected of being affiliated with the terrorist group, Boko Haram. The soldiers had conducted a house-to-house search in a neighborhood believed to be sympathetic to the group. They pulled young men who fit particular profiles out of their homes, laid them on the sidewalk in full view of passing motorists and shot them dead in broad daylight.

The conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has resulted in the deaths of more people than any other conflict since World War II. To date, more than five million people have been killed. The conflict also has drawn in several neighboring countries. Some analysts have called the Congo crisis the closest thing to a world war in more than 70 years.

In Nigeria, large numbers of people are abducted each year and used as human sacrifices. Children are particularly vulnerable to these predators.

In parts of Tanzania, kidnappers frequently target albinos for ritual sacrifices. The belief is that the gods give you greater rewards if you present them with an albino.

On at least two occasions in the last five years, large numbers of blacks in South Africa have viciously attacked expatriate blacks from other African countries, killing scores and burning down their homes and businesses. Black South Africans see the black expats as an economic threat.

And the list goes on and on.

For the record, I am sickened by stories of police brutality against blacks, by the footage of the killings of Walter Scott and Samuel Dubose and by the gross insensitivity of the Ferguson police who left Michael Brown’s lifeless body baking on asphalt for four hours.

But I am even more horrified by what blacks do to each other in this country and around the world.

Pushing the idea that black lives matter has to involve more than slogans, hash tags and protest rallies. And it must be more complex than urging federal officials to investigate police misconduct.

We have to place a higher value on black lives in our own communities, block by block, city by city, nation by nation. It’s hard to persuade white authorities to respect our human rights and treat us with dignity when many of us don’t do the same.

Until we get just as fired up about black-on-black violence in north St. Louis, in Detroit, on Chicago’s south side, in South Los Angeles, in Lagos, in Kinshasa, in Kingston, in Port Au Prince and in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro as we do about cop killings, the phrase “Black Lives Matter” will remain no more than a pithy slogan.

And the killing of black people will continue unabated.

Los Angeles Wave columnist Lekan Oguntoyinbo is an independent journalist. Email him at oguntoyinbo@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @oguntoyinbo.

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In fact, African-American students lag behind other underrepresented minorities, including Hispanics and Native Americans, according to The Condition of College & Career Readiness report, which was released July 27.

The troubling report also showed that only five percent of the approximately 210,000 African-American students who took the test met all four of the college readiness benchmarks — that’s one in every 20 students.

What the what?

Naturally, the discouraging data elicited predictable reactions like this one from Jim Larimore, ACT’s chief officer for the advancement of underserved learners, who said: “To help African-American students, we need to improve the quality of education they are receiving.”

About 70 percent of African-American students attend schools that are predominantly minority. These schools often lack the funding, facilities and superior quality of instruction enjoyed by their peers at mostly white schools.

But to dwell on that fact alone is to overlook other realities of this academic performance crisis afflicting African-American high school students.

As Larimore himself put it in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education: “The report shows that even when they are doing what they are supposed to — in terms of taking the recommended college-preparatory curriculum and earning a high-school diploma — too many lack sufficient preparation for first-year college courses.”

That, in my opinion, is the heart of the matter.  Here are a few thoughts for addressing this issue:

• Don’t look to the government for solutions. I’ve lived in cities where the state stepped in to run troubled school systems that housed chronic academic underachievers. In most of these instances, the state takeovers do nothing to increase academic achievement. In many cases, in fact, state intervention leaves the school systems in worse shape. Bottom line: government policies and takeovers won’t transform your child into a top academic performer.

• Prioritize! Prioritize! Prioritize! When I worked in the Detroit Public Schools system about a decade ago, parental participation — or the lack thereof in this overwhelming African-American school system — was always a huge problem. Sometimes the district’s community relations team members tried to entice parents to attend events or to show up at parent-teacher conferences with food or prizes — and even that wasn’t good enough to get many of them to show up.

There are exceptions, to be sure, but most high-achieving students have parents who diligently monitor their academic progress. Taking the time to carefully review your child’s homework, getting to know the teachers and administrators, and investing in activities like after-school lessons, math and science camps and instructional computer software is essential for making your child globally competitive.

Conversely, buying your children expensive tennis shoes and name brand apparel is a bad investment; it only provides momentary satisfaction.

• Treat this like the crisis that it is. Teachers can’t do it alone and neither can parents.

Many African-American households are single-parent homes, in some cases run by mothers who work two or three jobs just to put food on the table. These mothers often have precious little time to help kids with their homework or take them to museums or summer camps.

This crisis is an opportunity for the African-American community to do what it has historically done best — work as one. That means bringing together churches, community groups, foundations and children’s organizations like the Boy Scouts to invest large amounts of time tutoring, mentoring and preparing these children for college and beyond.

At the end of the day, your child’s future depends on such an investment. And so does our community’s.

Los Angeles Wave columnist Lekan Oguntoyinbo is an independent journalist. Email him at oguntoyinbo@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @oguntoyinbo.

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The president is visiting the East African country for a global entrepreneurship summit, but Kenyans can’t get over the fact that the world’s most popular person of African ancestry — whom they claim as one of their own — is visiting their country.

There is some truth to the Kennedy comparison, but the differences are much deeper.

First, Obama is a first-generation American. His father, Barack Obama Sr. — who attended college and graduate school in the U.S. in the 1960s and who was briefly married to Obama’s Kansas-born mother — was born and died in Kenya. On the contrary, Kennedy was a third-generation American.

Second, the Obamas are Luos, Kenya’s third largest ethnic group, famous for originating several musical styles. In African tradition, you belong to your father’s ethnic group or tribe regardless of where you were born, where you live and how long you’ve lived there.

For example, I was born in the United Kingdom to Yoruba parents. I have lived in the United States for two-thirds of my life, but I am still Yoruba. And my 6-year-old son — who was born in North Carolina, has never visited Nigeria and whose mother is not Yoruba — also is Yoruba.

By this definition, which I wholeheartedly embrace, Obama, a native of Hawaii and part-time resident of Chicago, is a Luo. So are his daughters, Sasha and Malia.

Who says you can’t be both?

Third, like their African-American brethren, African immigrants and their children still suffer from regular white supremacist treatment of “otherness.” In America, a University of Connecticut sociologist once told me, blacks are still considered “the ultimate other.” This “otherness” is perhaps the underlying reason for the silly questions about Obama’s birthplace.

This “otherness” also explains why the question persists even though there are still many people in Hawaii who remember his birth and even though the courts have never ruled that a person born to one American parent outside the United States is not eligible to be president.

It also explains why it was not an issue for Mexico-born George Romney, a child of Latter-day Saints missionaries, when he ran for president in 1968, and why it is not an issue for Ted Cruz — the ultra conservative Cuban-American senator and Republican presidential candidate — who was born in Canada. Irish immigrants and their children were subjected to “otherness” as well but it hasn’t lingered anywhere as long as it has for blacks.

But there are some similarities with the JFK experience. Like blacks around the world, the Irish suffered oppression, subjugation, genocide, occupation and discrimination for hundreds of years (in their case mostly at the hands of English overlords). When they started arriving in the United States in large numbers in the mid-1800s, they were consistently subjected to discrimination in employment, housing and education, a trend that persisted for more than 100 years.

Kennedy’s victory inspired oppressed people everywhere. It showed citizens of the still impoverished and only four-decades independent Republic of Ireland that anything is possible. It radiated hope — just like Obama’s victories have done for people of African ancestry around the world.

On the surface, Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency of the world’s most powerful nation is the quintessential parable of the American Dream: child of an occasional goat herder from Kenya who came to the United States to go to college sires a son who more than makes good. It shows what is possible with hard work, persistence and a good name in the land of make believe, Disney World and Hollywood.

But the Obama story is also the paradox of a nation still anchored to its white supremacist roots, a nation very stubbornly divided along racial lines; so divided, in fact, that in both presidential elections, most people of color voted for Obama and most whites didn’t.

Outside of the United States, though, most people still see the fabled America. And, racial divisions notwithstanding, that’s the America that Kenyans will celebrate next week when Air Force One touches down at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

Los Angeles Wave columnist Lekan Oguntoyinbo is an independent journalist. Email him at oguntoyinbo@gmail.com.

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For decades, thousands of Haitians have crossed over into the more affluent Dominican Republic to seek better economic opportunities.  Over the years, some of these Haitians stayed, had families and made new lives for themselves.

Now hundreds of thousands of people of Haitian descent are in danger of being expelled. While some of these so-called Haitianos are undocumented residents, many of them were born in the Dominican Republic and have little or no ties to Haiti.

Race-based government reforms over the last decade have endangered the lives of an estimated 460,000 Haitian migrants who live in the Dominican Republic, most who are now are in danger of becoming stateless. Thousands of Haitians have fled back to Haiti. Haiti’s prime minister has warned that the actions of the Dominican Republic’s government risk triggering a humanitarian crisis.

The issue has been percolating for more than a decade. Like the U.S., children of immigrants born in the Dominican Republic are automatically granted citizenship. But in 2004, the government changed its migration law to exclude children of Haitian migrants from citizenship. And in 2013, the Dominican Constitutional Court revoked the citizenship of anyone in the Dominican Republican born to those the court deemed “foreigners in transit.” The court’s decision made the term “transit” retroactive to 1929.

The Dominican Republic’s plan to expel the Haitians is another sad and nasty chapter in the history of race relations between natives of these two countries.

It’s hard to imagine today, but Haiti was once the envy of the Caribbean and much of the non-white world. In 1802, a band of gallant slaves defeated the French army – then the world’s most powerful – and Haiti became the world’s first black republic. For a brief period, the Dominican Republic, which would not gain its independence from Spain until 60 years later, was under the dominion of Haiti.

But over the last 70 years, for various reasons including natural disasters, mismanagement and punitive financial measures from western powers – who never quite forgave Haiti for besting Napoleon’s army – Haiti has become the most impoverished nation in the Americas.

Today, Haitians are mostly treated like lepers by their Dominican neighbors.

The irony is that, by American standards, the overwhelming majority of Dominicans are black – or at least they would be classified that way here in the United States or in Canada. In fact, here in the United States, a growing number of black studies programs are incorporating Dominican studies into their curricular.

But in the Latin world, the yardstick for race is considerably more complex, with more attention paid to characteristics like skin hue and hair texture. Bottom line: in the Dominican Republic, light skin makes life so much easier. In many respects, it’s just like the United States. But unlike the U.S., overt racial discrimination is an accepted practice.

Indeed, a report by two United Nations experts found evidence of systemic racism and discrimination in the Dominican Republic, particularly against people of Haitian ancestry.

In recent years, there have been numerous reports of Haitians or Haitian-Dominicans being lynched for alleged offenses that range from robbing stores to burning a Dominican flag. Several Haitian-Dominicans have had their homes torched – and in most of these cases, police have been reluctant to investigate. According to news reports, in large cities like Santiago and Santa Domingo, there are some bars that refuse to admit blacks – or at least people who look black.

The Dominican Republic’s plan to expel Haitianos, meanwhile, has drawn the fury of the international community. New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio, whose city is home to 400,000 people of Dominican ancestry and 100,000 Haitian-Americans, has weighed in, as have many major international human rights groups. Foreign investment in the Dominican Republic also is down as a result of the conflict.

In response to this pressure, the government appears to have backed down – at least for now.

The goal for the coming years must be to sustain public pressure so that the Dominican Republic is forced to treat ethnic Haitians with the dignity and human rights they deserve.

LA Wave columnist Lekan Oguntoyinbo is an award-winning journalist. Contact him at oguntoyinbo@gmail.com.

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A short piece that’s been particularly popular among English-speaking Africans on social media for months, reads:

“You [whites] asked us to wear [suits] under the hot sun and we did. You said we should speak your language and we obediently dumped ours. You said our ladies should wear dead people’s hair instead of the natural ones the Lord gave to them and they obeyed.

“You said our decent gals should wear catapults instead of conventional pants and they obeyed. Now you want our men to sleep with fellow men and our women with fellow women. … We will not agree with you this time. If you like, keep your [monetary] aid.”

Yes, same-sex relationships get significantly less buy-in from blacks around the world.

In the wake of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling effectively legalizing same-sex marriages, there’s been a lot of talk about the possibility of a global ripple effect. Twenty countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark, Argentina, Spain and South Africa already had laws on the books sanctioning gay marriages before the high court ruled.

But none of these countries carry the global clout of the United States.

Still it’s hard to see how that clout will influence the African continent and the Muslim world, where attitudes toward homosexuality are just as hard.

According to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey, Africa is less accepting of same-sex relationships than any other continent. In Sub-Saharan Africa, nine of 10 people believe homosexuality should not be accepted by society. In Nigeria, 98 percent frown on it, 96 percent in Ghana and Uganda and 90 percent in Kenya.

In South Africa, which is reputed to have the most progressive constitution in the world, 61 percent say it should not be accepted. And that figure is relatively low only because acceptance is significantly higher among whites and Asians in the rainbow nation.

Over the years, leaders of many African countries have blasted gays. Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe once described gays as “worse than dogs or pigs and worse than organized addicts or even those given to bestiality.”

In a 2013 address before the United Nations General Assembly, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh called homosexuality “very evil, anti-human and against Allah.”

More than two-thirds of African countries have laws on the books criminalizing homosexual acts or same-sex relationships. Six years ago, Uganda’s parliament proposed a bill calling for the death penalty for anyone who engaged in acts of “aggravated homosexuality.”

In 2013, Nigeria’s legislature passed a bill banning same-sex marriage and the formation of gay rights organizations. In 2010, a court in Malawi sentenced two men to 14 years in prison for sodomy. The men were pardoned a couple of weeks later during the visit of United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Here in the United States, blacks are less likely than whites and Hispanics to support gay marriage and are typically less accepting of homosexuality. A recent poll showed that 59 percent of whites support same-sex marriage compared to 41 percent of blacks.

Many academics have offered an assortment of theories to explain these racial differences in attitude, including religion and disparities in income and lower levels of educational attainment. But such explanations come off as simplistic. The majority of the most vociferous opponents of gay relationships in black communities around the world are highly educated and well heeled.

Such simplistic explanations also fail to take into account other factors — custom, tradition and deeply held views among blacks about family and procreation — views that were once widely held in western culture and are still deeply entrenched among groups like evangelicals, Latter-day Saints and ultra orthodox Jews.

In the economic sphere, many African countries are finally starting to come into their own. Nearly half of the 15 fastest-growing economies in the world are in Africa. Several African countries are strategic allies of the United States, France and Britain in the war against terrorism.

Successfully fostering relationships with these African superpowers, therefore, will require understanding and, most important, respect of the culture and traditions of people of African descent.

Cultural imperialism does not make for good partnerships.

Wave columnist Lekan Oguntoyinbo is an independent journalist. Contact him at oguntoyinbo@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @oguntoyinbo.

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— Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

 Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old white supremacist high school dropout charged with the murder of nine black worshippers at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, last week, likely acted alone.

But there are lots of people with blood on their hands, including white nationalist groups and conservative activists and politicians who have colluded with these groups to sustain a climate of hatred.

According to the Guardian, three 2016 Republican presidential candidates — former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky — have received contributions from Earl Holt III, president of the Council of Conservative Citizens, an organization with a long history of promoting white supremacy.

Many of the themes championed by the council mirror those in Roof’s 2,500-word manifesto that was published online. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a child of immigrants from India, had a woman with ties to the council on her campaign re-election advisory committee. Haley later had this woman removed after her ties to the council became public. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has also received contributions from Holt, who is said to have given nearly $60,000 to Republican candidates.

To be sure, politicians have aided and abetted white supremacists from the earliest days of the republic. America, after all, was built on a foundation of racial hatred.

But the Guardian’s revelations describe a pattern that dates back more than 50 years. Republican politicians have turned racial pandering into an art form.

For example, Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the same town where three civil rights workers were murdered less than 20 years earlier for having the gall to attempt to register blacks to vote.

George H.W. Bush ran a campaign with the picture of a black ex-con who had raped a white woman upon his release. The former prisoner, Willie Horton, had been released as part of a statewide program in Massachusetts to decongest prisons.

Bush’s not-so-veiled message to whites: Expect wanton rape of your wives and daughters if my opponent, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, is elected.

The message was right out of D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” a 1915 film that glorified the birth of the Ku Klux Klan and lamented the death of slavery and the period of reconstruction (South Carolina native Lee Atwater, the architect of this notorious campaign, apologized to black folks a few years later as he lay dying of cancer).

But the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.  Bush son George W. Bush borrowed a page from daddy’s playbook by kicking off his campaign for the 2000 South Carolina Republican primary at Bob Jones University, an institution that forbade interracial dating (until recently). Later, during the South Carolina primary, Bush campaign workers reportedly spread rumors that John McCain had fathered a black child (actually he had adopted a Bangladeshi child).

And in this so-called post-racial Obama age, conservative politicians have been in rare form. They have worked hard at casting President Obama as the quintessential “other,” first labeling him as a Muslim and then working hard to convince the American public that this Hawaii native and son of a woman from America’s heartland wasn’t even born in this country.

John Sununu, a former governor and White House chief of staff, called him lazy. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin accused him of “shucking and jiving.” During the 2012 election, candidate Santorum said he didn’t want to continue giving blacks “other people’s money.”

Newt Gingrich angled for an invitation to the NAACP national convention so he could lecture black folks about the merits of hard work. Following the 2012 presidential election, Mitt Romney claimed he lost because of the alleged gifts Obama gave to minorities.

To be sure, some good has happened in the aftermath of this tragedy. After waffling for a couple of days, Haley and some other Republicans have called for the confederate flag to be removed from the dome of the South Carolina capitol. Alabama’s governor took the bold step of ordering confederate flags removed from state capitol grounds this week.

Still, when I hear people like presidential candidate Rick Perry try to explain away the church murders as an accident by a doped-up gunman, I wonder how long the voices of reason and good sense can prevail.

Some, it seems, insist on seeing us perish as fools.

Wave columnist Lekan Oguntoyinbo is an independent journalist. Contact him at oguntoyinbo@gmail.com.

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These officers are bound by tight restrictions, Sir Peter Fahy, chief of the Greater Manchester Police, told the Washington Post recently. Shooting at moving vehicles, at suspects fleeing a scene or at those brandishing knives is forbidden except under very limited circumstances.

In much of Britain, police officers have to walk the beat unarmed for years before they can apply to carry firearms. Most get rejected. The screening process for firearms possession is rigorous and almost daunting.  There are fitness tests, psychological evaluations and endless drills on even the most seemingly routine scenarios.

“They rehearse those situations like a SEAL team trying to get into Osama Bin Laden’s compound,” Lawrence Sherman, a Cambridge University criminologist told the Post.

On average, cops in England and Wales open fire an average of five times a year. In the United States, cops open fire that many times a day — at least

I know what you’re thinking: it’s insane to compare to the United States with the United Kingdom. After all, the U.S. is a violent nation with some of the loosest gun laws on the planet. The homicide rate in Detroit, a city of fewer than 700,000 people, is nearly equal that of Canada, a country of 30 million people.  Flint, another troubled urban center with approximately 100,000 residents, had 52 homicides in 2013. New Zealand, a nation of about four million people, had fewer than 50.

No one is suggesting that we reduce the number of police officers authorized to carry firearms in the United States. But there are several similarities between the two countries.

Like the United States, Britain is a diverse nation where law enforcement personnel frequently battle urban unrest, gang violence, religious extremism, racial extremists and terrorism. In 2011, riots broke out in London after a black man was shot dead. For many years it was impossible to find a trash can on the London underground for fear that a terrorist might plant a pipe bomb. In the 1980s, then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by agents of the Irish Republican Army.

Still, there are some policing lessons we could import from the U.K. They include:

• Gun control: Getting a permit to own a gun in the U.K. is extremely difficult and it is next to impossible to legally own an assault weapon. Consequently, police officers there are not as jumpy or frightened about getting shot as their brothers in blue across the pond. They are also considerably less aggressive. The hyper aggressiveness of American cops is often bad news for civilians, particularly the most vulnerable like people of color. It is quite likely, for example, that Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old child who was shot dead in a park last year by a jumpy Cleveland police officer while playing with a toy gun, would be alive today if he lived in the United Kingdom.

• A refined mindset: In the United Kingdom there is a huge emphasis among law enforcement officers on human rights. They believe in what one retired police chief there described as “policing by consent,” which is to say they see themselves as working with the public or for the public rather than as agents of a faceless state or municipal agency. British officers are also terrified of getting it wrong. That mindset of social responsibility and teaming up with the community to solve problems, particularly in predominantly minority communities, hasn’t quite sunk in here — in spite of the prevalence of phone cameras and social media. That may explain why David Eric Casebolt, the McKinney, Texas, police officer who savagely slammed a black teenage girl to the ground, thought nothing of pointing his gun at a group of unarmed black teens who gathered nearby to monitor him.

• Uniform standards: Great Britain has considerably more uniformity among its police departments. They each have a minimum of 100 police officers. There are oversight boards that monitor the activities of local law enforcement agencies and there is considerable transparency in cases in which civilians are killed or even shot.  Such a system breeds community and lowers the levels of distrust.

In recent years there has been a great deal of talk about the increased militarization of our law enforcement agencies and the blatant lawlessness of our lawmen. Unless — and until — we make concerted efforts at legal reform, we will continue to bury more children playing with toy guns.

And our cities will continue to burn.

Lekan Oguntoyinbo, an independent journalist and communications consultant, is a featured columnist for the Los Angeles Wave. Contact him at oguntoyinbo@gmail.com.

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Kudos to the city’s police chief for swiftly opening an investigation into this incident and for placing the officer on administrative leave.

But like many of the other high-profile conflicts between people of color and police, there are some things about the aggrieved parties that concern me.

The facts of the case are still trickling in, but this is what has been reported so far: residents called the cops after seeing a party at the neighborhood pool get out of hand. Apparently, the use of the pool is restricted to the subdivision’s residents, who are only allowed to have two guests at a time. After the party began, there were reports of dozens of other kids of color jumping the fence to join the party, followed by disturbances that ultimately led to the cops being called.

I’m starting to sense a pattern:

• Eric Garner, a middle-aged father, was killed by a team of NYPD cops during a scuffle last year. The cops apparently had tried to arrest Garner on charges of selling individual cigarettes on the streets. He resisted and the officers subdued him with a chokehold that led to his death.

• Michael Brown, the Ferguson, Missouri, teenager who may have punched a police officer before being shot dead, reportedly had robbed a convenience store before the confrontation with the police officer.

• Walter Scott, the South Carolina man who was shot in the back earlier this year while fleeing a police officer, also had scuffled with the cop before taking off.

• Freddie Gray, a Baltimore man who died in the custody of Baltimore police, also fled officers after spotting them, even though he apparently wasn’t doing anything wrong the night he was arrested.

See the point?

For the last half-century, much has been made much about police brutality and about teaching cops how to work with minority communities. And that is as it should be. After all, we live in a nation built on hate.

But if we are to improve relations between cops and communities of color, if we are determined to save more lives, we, too, must learn how to work with officers of the law and navigate this legacy of hate that is all too alive and well.

When teaching members of our community how to work with law enforcement personnel some talking points must be standard. Points like: Don’t put your hands on a cop, don’t resist arrest, don’t run, don’t mouth off, live a life beyond reproach.

Of course, heeding these suggestions alone won’t guarantee immunity from harassment, beatings or shootings by cops who bring their own biases to the job. Nearly every person of color has a story about being treated unfairly by a police officer even when they were doing the right thing.

A few months ago, a friend of mine was taking a leisurely pre-dinner walk in his affluent subdivision in suburban Atlanta when several patrol cars suddenly surrounded him. The officers jumped out with guns pointed at him. They claimed they’d gotten a report about a black male walking through the neighborhood and acting in a menacing manner.

In 2004, a day after giving an electrifying keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, a young Chicago politician with a promising future was pulled out of the boarding line at the airport and searched extensively in what was clearly a case of racial profiling. His furious white aides started to make a stink, but State Sen. Barack Obama gently directed them to leave it alone.

No, doing the right thing consistently won’t end our community’s problems with cops. But it will give us the moral high ground.

And in these kinds of battles, those with the moral high ground always win.

Lekan Oguntoyinbo, an independent journalist and communications consultant, is a featured columnist for the Los Angeles Wave. Contact him at oguntoyinbo@gmail.com.

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But any visions of a future with Janet vanished shortly after we started dating.

As an infant, Janet had had her genitals circumcised — and as an adult, she paid dearly. Although she said sex occasionally gave her pleasure, most of the time it was a grueling and excruciatingly painful experience that left her crying for a long time.

I thought about Janet recently when the barbaric practice of female circumcision — more commonly known as female genital mutilation — made big headlines again recently.

Late in May, the Nigerian government took the bold step of outlawing the ancient practice, which was intended to keep women chaste. By circumcising females, the thinking went, they would not enjoy sex and would be less likely to have sex before marriage or to have extramarital relations. Defeated incumbent Goodluck Jonathan signed the act into law before stepping down as Nigeria’s president last month.

Some day, historians may see this law as the most important legacy of Jonathan’s otherwise disappointing presidency.

Often mischaracterized as an Islamic practice, female genital mutilation has absolutely no health benefits. According to the United Nations, it typically involves the partial or total removal of external female genitalia. It often is performed by a traditional village “surgeon” with the use of a crude razor blade. Sometimes the girls are infants; other times, they’re prepubescent girls.

It is physically and emotionally harmful and can lead to complications, such as severe bleeding and problems urinating. It also can lead to cysts, infections,infertility, complications in childbirth and a heightened risk of newborn deaths.

The World Health Organization says about 125 million women and girls have been subjected to female genital mutilation, mostly in Africa, the Middle East and in western countries with large immigrant populations from those areas.

By passing this law, the Nigerian government has struck a big blow for women’s rights in the developing world. While that’s a laudable step, however, it is still just a step. Child marriage remains a scourge in much of Africa.

According to the International Center for Research on Women, of the 20 countries considered hot spots for child brides, 14 are in Africa. The others include countries like India and Bangladesh. Under this practice, girls as young as 9 are married off to adult men. Some of these girls start having babies shortly after marriage and suffer lifelong health issues as a result.

A few weeks ago, a Kenyan lawyer announced plans to approach Barack and Michelle Obama about marrying their 16-year-old daughter, Malia. The lawyer, Felix Kiprono, said he had his eye on Malia since she was 10. He has offered to pay a bride price of 50 cows, 70 sheep and 30 goats for her hand.

Most people would argue that a man who ogles a 10-year-old girl is a pedophile. But it is common practice throughout much of the developing world.

Nigeria is Africa’s political, economic and cultural giant. Despite its many troubles as a nation, it’s always been a major force in leading change on the continent and throughout the region.

By criminalizing female genital mutilation, Nigeria has taken a big step for women’s liberation. Attacking child marriages would be another giant step in protecting women’s rights and ensuring that there are fewer Janets suffering in silence.

Wave columnist Lekan Oguntoyinbo is an independent journalist. Contact him at oguntoyinbo@gmail.com.

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