In 2020, a black girl named Child Q was searched by officers after she was wrongly suspected of smuggling cannabis into her school in East London. The parents were not contacted, and the 15-year-old girl was searched completely, without the presence of another adult and knowing that she was menstruating. On the The keeper, guy black, Ahmed talks about how he became a victim of sexual abuse at the age of 12. When the police found out about this, they interrogated him for hours at school, without the presence of adults, asking about the details of the violence, without protecting him in any way. Then, again, according to Guardianthere is the story of an eight-year-old black boy who was forced to clean up his five-year-old sister after she got dirty at an after-school in North London. All of these episodes have one thing in common: racism.but in its own special form, growing up.

This term explains Guardianappeared in the United States around 2008, but its use is also growing in the United Kingdom. “It’s a form of racism that has a disproportionate impact on black children.” explains researcher Janine Davis, “They are seen as more responsible and resilient, and therefore more capable of defending themselves.”. According to professors Michael J. Dumas and Joseph Derrick Nelson, this attitude has its roots in slavery. “Black boys and girls were considered agile and were often recruited to work at the age of two or three,” they explain in the report. Interrupted Childhood: Erasing Black Girls’ Childhood, “They were subjected to the same dehumanization as black adults and were rarely seen as in need of play. They were severely punished if they showed normal childish behavior.”

From here they flow many stereotypes still present as the idea that they are more independent, but also less obedient, more aggressive and even dangerous. Their transgressions are seen as deliberate and malicious, rather than mere signs of immaturity. In the US, the data says that black guys get frisked more often, arrested and even killed when he was stopped by the police. “In the report they wrote about me after the interrogation,” Ahmed says, “I saw that they used words like ‘manipulator’ to describe me. Now I’m thinking, “How could they talk about a child like that?” I was treated like an adult”.

If due togrowing upmales are perceived as more cunning and uncontrollable, women tend to suffer from a completely different set of stereotypes. Report Interrupted girlhood defines at least three: girl “Sapphire”strong, aggressive, angry, stubborn and not very feminine; “Jezebel”hypersexual, seductive and ready to take advantage of weak men “Mommy”, loving, asexual, ready to sacrifice herself, working for others. According to the report, these racist and colonial classifications subconsciously affect girls’ lives, how they are perceived, their education, and the harassment and abuse they experience. “Ultimately,” the study says, “growing up is a form of dehumanization that robs black children of the very essence of what distinguishes childhood from all other periods of development: innocence.”