How Black Children are Denied Youth

Whether it be in schools or the justice system, black children are often victims of racial bias.

Hello, world. As discussions revolving Black Lives Matter continue around the world, I am reminded of the major struggles that even black children have to go through every day. Whether it be in the realm of schooling, policing, social life, or medical care, black children are treated significantly different in comparison to non-black children: they are often met with undeserved and automatic hostility, held to unrealistic standards in order to facilitate punishment, and are many times not trusted by authority figures. For generations upon generations, black kids have been criminalized from the start of youth.

In schools, where kids should feel the most safe, protected, and understood, black children are instead often neglected, misunderstood, and treated harshly. Racial disparities in school discipline are nothing new; according to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, black American students are shown to be much more likely than white students to be suspended or expelled and are more likely to receive harsher punishments. Black children are not only thought of as bad-behaving, but are also perceived as actual threats. In the eyes of many authority figures in and out of schools, black children become aged in the sense that they are thought of as being capable of the same level of violence and ill-intention as an adult. This is what leads to them being more subject to harsh punishment in schools at higher rates than other students, rarely matching the severity of their actual actions.

Black children are victims of racial bias outside of school every day—just yesterday, on August 26, Nathaniel Julius, a 16 year old that had Down Syndrome and was non-verbal, was shot and killed by police in Johannesburg, South Africa after failing to respond to police questioning. Nathaniel was simply eating a biscuit behind a truck when he was murdered. A biscuit. He was not afforded the same benefit of assumed innocence that white children have to count on in such confrontations. Nathaniel’s disability made him even more of a target to police, seeing as there is little to no patience or understanding for people who have disabilities and are not able to obey certain commands by authority figures.

This is a global issue. Just as Nathaniel Julius was murdered by South African police, unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was murdered by George Zimmerman in Florida in 2012. Seeing as Zimmerman was later found not-guilty in the name of self-defense, we can understand how the “justice” system permits non-black people to police and surveil black children and adults. In the eyes of the law, Zimmerman was doing his community a favor by keeping “violent” black people under his watchful, unforgiving eye.

It must be understood that white children do not face the same assumptions of being threats. The differences are clear, deliberate, and are brushed off by the supposed “justice” system.

As black children around the world face this higher rate of unreasonable punishment both by authority figures and average members of society, they are denied their right to innocence and are exposed to the violent, unforgiving world prematurely. They are forced to mature and bear the weight of struggles that no adult should even have to experience.

Black children around the world deserve the sensitivity, gentleness, care, and compassion that is supposed to come with youth. They deserve much more than fear, hostility, punishment, hatred, and targeted violence. Much more.