Reclaiming Our Stolen Childhoods: The Adultification of Black, Queer Youths

Written By: Demi A.D. @endy__enby

I remember the first time that I was perceived as a threat by an adult. I was eight years old.

I was in school and I was in trouble. I can’t remember the exact reason behind the trouble anymore which is strange because, for me, being in trouble at school was a rare occurrence. The things that I do remember are:

• it involved an inappropriate lunchtime trip to the staff room with my friend, Danielle,

• I felt like I was doing something important and daring in that way that kids often do and,

• I felt very satisfied once we had completed this quest that we had taken upon ourselves. 

  
  

What came next, I remember with much more clarity. 

Lunchtime ended and the entirety of my Year 4 class lined up outside the door to our classroom. This was normal as we had to wait for our teacher to return from his break and give us permission to go inside. When he arrived, however, he didn’t speak. He stood there in silence and all 30 of us mirrored him, unsure what had triggered this change in routine. 

After what felt like an eternity, he called me and Danielle out of the line. At this point, things began to make more sense in my mind but I still wasn’t ready for what came next. With no preamble he proceeded to scream at the two us in full view of everyone. He was famous in our school for his shouting ability: once he’d spent five minutes yelling at you, no further punishment was necessary. Flecks of spit would spatter across your face and you would be engulfed in the stale coffee breath that came as a consequence of his five-mug-a-day habit.

Almost instantly, Danielle burst into tears but… I didn’t. It’s not that I wasn’t upset or humiliated (which were the primary aims of his verbal assault) but I didn’t know how to respond to it. It wasn’t something in my mental bank of known situations and I didn’t know what the correct reaction was. By that point in my life, I was already used to following a script – I would assess the situation and figure out the normal way to behave because it was already clear that something about me wasn’t normal and for that to be known was to be unsafe. 

So, I didn’t cry. In my predominantly white school, where I was one of two Black girls in my class, he hadn’t been able to elicit the reaction from me that he had wanted and something about that scared him. He pointed to the other child, Danielle, who he had yelled at and told me that that was what remorse looked like. 

That day I learned two important things: 

1. the magic of White Girl Tears as a 40-year-old man, charged with my care, called me stubborn and rude, and

2. I was to be treated more harshly, more carelessly, and more aggressively than my white peers.

   
   

But, why did this happen? Why couldn’t I react like a child and why couldn’t he see me as a child?

Queer Adolescence is a well-documented developmental stage in LGBTQ+ adults. For many queer people, their actual teenage years are shaped by the inability to be their authentic selves. They miss out on a lot of the ‘quintessential’ adolescent milestones associated with being a teenager such as first kisses, first relationships, and even having genuine, non-romantic relationships where they are able to be honest and true to themselves [1].

Young, queer people learn from early on to hide elements of their personality and adopt behaviours that don’t come naturally to them. This is reinforced by adult figures who tell them not to dress a certain way or to not take part in activities that don’t match up with typical gender roles. It can also be more subtle messaging such as presuming pronouns when talking about romantic interests and stereotypes of masculinity and femininity distributed through the wider media.

The result is that queer youths spend their adolescence learning to conceal who they are and are more guarded than their straight peers. They don’t get to embrace the wave of new feelings that come with their teenage years because they are too busy monitoring their behaviours to ensure they don’t reveal themselves to be ‘other’.

On top of this, Black children are also the most likely to experience adultification bias. This is a social phenomenon in which young people are assigned more adult-like characteristics. According to Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood, “compared to white girls of the same age, survey participants perceive that Black girls need less nurturing, protection, to be less supported, to be less comforted, are more independent, know more about adult topics, and know more about sex.” This bias affects girls as young as 5 [2].

This perception is deeply rooted in racist ideas going back to the days of slavery where Black femininity was divided into three major paradigms [3]:

1. The Jezebel – a hypersexualised figure who aims to seduce and exploit the weaknesses of men.

2. The Mammy – a nurturing figure who exists to care for those around her, self-sacrificing and asexual.

3. The Sapphire – what we see today as the “angry Black woman”, aggressive, stubborn, and unfeminine (by European standards).

4. 
   

My Primary school teacher’s tirade is one of my earliest memories of experiencing adultification bias (here, I was The Sapphire) but at different points in my life I have been viewed as all three of these caricatures.

I have been The Mammy when the group of middle-aged, white men that I worked with announced me the most responsible and asked me to hold everyone’s money during their pub crawl around London. Again, when a male classmate of mine that I had no prior relationship with sought me out, hijacking my lunch hour, to cry about his relationship woes.

I have been The Sapphire every time I have tried to voice a contrary opinion in a public forum. When, at work, I proposed a change to our management team that had been voted on by all members of staff and was treated as though I alone wished to overturn all prior systems on a whim. 

I have been The Jezebel when walking down the street in my school uniform and having adult men approach me with suggestive words and leering eyes.

You only have to look at the case of 15-year-old Child Q to see the very real damage that this bias can inflict on young people. In 2020, after a night of intense studying, Child Q went into school with red eyes and was accused by teachers of being in possession of drugs. Subsequently, the police were called to the school and, she was subjected to a strip search. In her own words, “Someone walked into the school, where I was supposed to feel safe, took me away from the people who were supposed to protect me and stripped me naked, while on my period” [4].

Research has shown that Black girls have the highest rates of any group for discipline and suspension in schools [5]. When you are not able to be a child in school and when you have to hide your true self at home and with your friends, where is left for the Black, queer girls to be children?

Sadly, many Black, queer youths have their childhoods stolen from them by society and the bias that exists around them, but these can always be reclaimed. Reclamation is at the heart of the concept of ‘queer adolescence’. The very existence of a queer adolescence shows that life stages don’t have to occur in a fixed order and if we are able to have adolescent experiences in our adulthood then why cannot we not also have childhood experiences?

In recent years, I have spent a lot of time learning how to return to my childhood self and honour them. The most important part of that was learning to be at home in my own body and, as a non-binary person, that has been a difficult journey. Oftentimes when trying to decide how to dress or style myself I defer to what my younger self would want and that is usually the right answer.

In adulthood, I am finally free from the effects of adultification bias and I am no longer in an environment where I have to hide who I am. Finally, I am able to be a child.

[1] Cohen, A. J. (2023) The Second Adolescence of LGBTQ+ Adulthood. Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/second-adolescence/202305/the-second-adolescence-of-lgbtq-adulthood (Accessed: 22^nd September 2024).

[2] Epstein, R., Blake, J. J., González, T. (2017) ‘Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood’, Center on Poverty and Inequality.

[3] West, C. M. (2008). ‘Mammy, Jezebel, Sapphire, and their homegirls: Developing an "oppositional" gaze toward the images of Black women’. In J. C. Chrisler, C. Golden, & P. D. Rozee (Eds.), Lectures on the psychology of women (4th ed., pp. 287–299). McGraw-Hill.

[4] Ikomi, S. (2023) ‘Child Q: A Case Study of the Adultification of Black Girls in Schools’, The European Conference on Education 2023.

[5] Hood, A. N. (2023) ‘Dual Status and Adultification: Black Girls' Lives in Context’, Journal of Family Strengths, 23(1), pp. 1-30.