Pediatrics: The Harms of Structural Whiteness on Weapon Carrying, Policing and Child Health

This is from the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Pediatrics:

“We live in a country that “adultifies” and criminalizes children simply for not being white. “Adultification” is the process by which certain children are perceived as older than their actual age and, as a result, are regarded as less innocent and subject to callous and sometimes violent treatment. This misperception of Black children begins as young as age 5 for Black girls and age 10 for Black boys and is far from benign.

Misperceptions of children that deny them the presumption of innocence affect the ways we, as a society, protect children, legally and socially. Consequently, when children of color are routinely misperceived as older, the protections typically afforded all children as a function of their age and developmental stage can come to uniquely benefit white children as a material advantage of their whiteness. This process has two related effects: it absolves white children from scrutiny, and it contributes to the inordinate policing of children of color.

In this issue of Pediatrics, Jewett et al examine patterns of weapon carrying in US schools among white, Black, and Hispanic boys. Using data from the Youth Behavior Surveillance System from 1993 to 2019, Jewett et al compared self-reported weapon carrying in US high schools by race and/or ethnicity, age, and school climate. Their results expose troubling patterns of weapon carrying in white boys that impugn the common justifications used to disproportionately punish and police Black and Hispanic children. …

A simple answer to both questions is gun control. …”