Study shows black girls are seen as less innocent than their white counterparts starting at age five
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When we think about racial injustice in this country, much of our attention is drawn specifically to the plight of black boys and men. Statistics are repeatedly cited to drive home how police violence and mass incarceration disproportionately impact them anStudy shows black girls are seen as less innocent than their white counterparts starting at age five
When we think about racial injustice in this country, much of our attention is drawn specifically to the plight of black boys and men. Statistics are repeatedly cited to drive home how police violence and mass incarceration disproportionately impact them and efforts to improve socio-economic disparities are hyper-focused on what is needed from the perspective of making things right for boys and men in order for black people to overcome the legacy of racial oppression. This is not new. The entire civil rights movement was built around black men as its voice and face (remember the images of men holding “I am a man” placards from the 1968 sanitation workers strike?), even though black women did the silent and unrewarded labor of organizing, feeding and caring for the movement and its activists. But it’s worth asking, what about the black girls and women? No matter what we may believe, the girls are not all right. In fact, a recently released study indicates that black girls are viewed as less innocent than white girls—beginning at age 5. “Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood,” released on Tuesday by Georgetown Law’s Center on Poverty and Inequality, shows that society’s perception of black girls leads to their “adultification.” The report shows that adults believe that black girls seem older than white girls of the same age, and think that black girls need less nurturing, protection, support and comfort than white girls. It also found that people assume black girls are more independent, know more about adult topics and know more about sex than young white girls. This “adultification” has tremendous implications for the life experiences of black girls that go beyond childhood and the impact can be felt well into their adolescence and even into their actual adulthood. It is rooted in racist stereotypes about black women that served to erase black girls’ innocence and, as a result, is likely to put them into contact with the juvenile justice and criminal justice systems. Read more