In sociology, the term “adultification” is defined as the process or bias where children are treated, perceived, or expected to act as if they are significantly more mature than their actual developmental stage. It involves stripping children of the assumed innocence, vulnerability, and leniency traditionally afforded to childhood.
For Black children in America, this is a painful but daily reality. As noted by the Center For Policing Equity (CPE), “In this country, Black children do not get the luxury of having their innocence presumed and protected by the majority-White society in which they live.” The center references a 2014 study it conducted by co-founder and CEO Phillip Atiba Goff, called “The Essence of Innocence.”
Their study “found that the period of time during which White youth are not expected to be fully responsible for their actions can extend well into their late 20s. By contrast, Black children are often treated as adults by age 13, if not well before, regularly perceived as older, less innocent, and more threatening than their White same-age peers.”
There have been several similar studies conducted over the years that have reached the same or very similar conclusion. As a result of this “adultification” of our Black youth, they are quite often not given the benefit of the doubt nor do they receive sympathy or empathy in the court of public opinion or in America’s so-called justice system.
In the CPE study it also revealed that Black boys as young as 10 may not be viewed in the same light of childhood innocence as their White peers, but are instead more likely to be mistaken as older, be perceived as guilty and face police violence if accused of a crime.
“Children in most societies are considered to be in a distinct group with characteristics such as innocence and the need for protection. Our research found that Black boys can be seen as responsible for their actions at an age when White boys still benefit from the assumption that children are essentially innocent,” noted Mr. Goff.
“One alarmingly frequent outcome is that, in any interaction they may have with the country’s criminal legal systems, Black children are routinely held to adult standards, the study also reported.
History is full of examples that confirm what these various studies have concluded. And unfortunately for young, Black men and boys in America, this “adultification” has led to deadly results.
George Junius Stinney Jr. was wrongfully executed in 1944 in Columbia, South Carolina, at the age of 14 after being convicted, during an unfair trial, for the murders of two White girls. According to records, George was only 5 feet 1 inch tall and weighed 90–95 pounds.
But it did not matter that this young boy was not guilty. He received no due process and no benefit of the doubt. Young George was innocent, and decades later, his conviction was overturned.
Emmett Till, also innocent and also only 14. But the fact that he was a boy did not stop the racist, White thugs from kidnapping, torturing and killing him in Mississippi in 1955. There was no sympathy. He was not viewed as an innocent youngster.
Mike Brown Jr., just 18 years old when he was confronted, shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. Mike Jr. was 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighed approximately 290 pounds, but he was still just a teen.
The officer who confronted and ultimately killed him, tried to use the excuse that because of the young, Black man’s size that he was intimidated and feared for his life. The officer himself was 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighed about 210 pounds.
Tamir Rice was only 12 years old and playing in a park with a toy airsoft “gun” in 2014, when someone called the police saying a “male, probably a juvenile,” had a gun. Police arrived and shot and killed him on site with no hesitation.
How Black youth are treated is not limited to engagements with law enforcement. Fast forward to today. Recently, a South Carolina jury acquitted convenience store owner Chikei Rick Chow of murder in the May 2023 fatal shooting of 14-year-old Cyrus Carmack-Belton.
Chow shot the unarmed Black teenager in the back after chasing him over a suspected water bottle theft after claiming he acted in self-defense. There was reportedly no evidence that Cyrus had taken anything from the store. But, the fact that this young brother, not even old enough to drive, did not matter to someone who saw him not as a child, but as a threat that had to be neutralized.
National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, has consistently warned us that what we see happening in the targeting of our Black youth will continue to happen. He has explained that Black youth have been marked for death by the U.S. government and those who are enemies to their rise.
However, Minister Farrakhan and the Two who back him, have guided him with the solution, if we take heed and obey his guidance.
“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us that one of the things that must be done, in this time, is that we must be separated from our former slave masters and their children—because time will prove that they will become more and more disagreeable to live with in peace,”
Minister Farrakhan said in part 39 in his 2013, 58-week lecture series, “The Time and What Must Be Done,” titled, “Can Black and White Live Together in Peace.”
“Unfortunately, race relations will continue to get worse because the government just cannot provide enough food, clothing, shelter and jobs, or justice, for us. And as we sit around, waiting for somebody else to do this for us—and demanding what we feel are our basic rights as so-called citizens—we are making our former slave masters and their children more angry with us; and thus.
They are becoming more disagreeable to live with in peace. That’s why the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, ‘We must be separated if we don’t want to continue to suffer great loss,’” Minister Farrakhan stated.
As days go by, what the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan have revealed continues to come to pass. We cannot continue to think that our over 400-year enemy is going to do right by us or our children.
Our enemy does not view our children as having a right to exist, thrive and survive. White children can be children, Black children cannot. And as long as we continue to think that integration is the answer, the more our children will suffer.
In the words of Minister Farrakhan, “Separation will prove to be the only answer to the problem between the Black man and woman and the White people of America.”