Summary Post: Black Children

In Stacey Patton’s opinion article “In America, black children don’t get to be children” in The Washington Post, Patton argues that throughout history and still being practiced today, there is no difference between black childhood and black adulthood. Patton begins by giving current cases like the killings of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, and even brings it back in time to 1955 with the murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year old black boy who was killed by a group of white men because he “looked like a man.” What these and many more cases have in common is that these young people were not treated as such. Patton says the reasoning of the police officers is similar. It is because “this was not a child. He was a threat… This child, stripped of childhood, is framed as a menace that overrides probable cause.” Patton mentions the words used to describe these teenagers at the time of their murders: “Hulk Hogan,” “demon,” “young man,” “large hands”… Never highlighting the fact that these victims were in fact children. Patton compares these cases to the lynching cases from 1880-1950, where these victims were also around the same ages: 8-19 years old. Patton acknowledges that these ideals were not something new. In the turn of the century pediatric literature, doctors, psychologists, and anthropologists set out to prove and concluded that black babies were different – inferior and even animalistic – as opposed to white babies. Monsters at birth, black children are deemed non-human from the beginning, never giving them a chance to live the childhood anyone their age but of a different shade of skin would have the opportunity to.