Do Black Children Have (No) Childhood?

Notes on the Adultification Debate in the USA

Abstract

This article takes up the debate that is being conducted in the USA with regard to Black children and other children of colour under the keyword ‘adultification’. The term refers to the fact that these children are not perceived ‘as children’ with the characteristics usually attributed to childhood, but as persons who are more like adults than children. This attribution has serious, mostly negative and sometimes even fatal consequences for the young people. The studies that rely on the theorem of adultification to explain racist discrimination initially referred to boys, but for some years now they have also been looking at girls and the discrimination specific to them and its consequences. This article deals with the theorem in its various meanings and discusses other possible explanations for racist discrimination and violence against Black children. The central question is how childhood is conceived, especially with regard to ‘innocence’ as a supposedly universal characteristic of this age phase or age group.