the.com/adultification
treating a child's behavior as a grown-up choice, then punishing them like one.
means a bias where kids, disproportionately black girls and boys, are perceived as older, less innocent, and more culpable than they actually are.
from named in academic child-welfare research through the 1990s-2000s, but it exploded in 2017 after georgetown law's center on poverty and inequality published girlhood interrupted, quantifying how adults consistently judged black girls as needing less nurturing and protection than white peers starting around age five.
starting agebias against black girls measured as early as five
school disciplineblack girls suspended six times more than white girls
courtsblack youth more often tried as adults for same offenses
boys tooblack boys perceived as older and less child-like by age ten
for instance
tamir rice case — 2014 cleveland shooting, 12-year-old described as looking older
school discipline gap — us dept of education civil rights data, nationwide pattern