We Owe Black Girls Their Innocence: Four Ways We Can Give It Back- Part 1

By Andria Nacina Cole

In June of 2017, the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Georgetown Law published the first study focused on the “adultification” of Black girls. The study, “Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood” reveals data indicating significant bias toward Black girls. A snapshot of the findings appears on the report’s executive summary page and notes the following adult perceptions of Black girls:

Black girls need less nurturing.
Black girls need less protection.
Black girls need to be supported less.

Black girls are more independent.
Black girls know more about adult topics.

Black girls know more about sex.[1]

The report goes on to suggest that that these perceptions are linked to disproportionate rates of punitive action and disparate treatment of Black girls in public systems, specifically education and juvenile justice. Throughout, the writers remark on the report’s scope, noting its limitations and challenging other researchers, educators and adults in close proximity to children to continue to unpack adultification, to consider the impact of their own implicit biases and to move to address them in ways that will help return to Black girls the innocence they are owed.     

Girlhood Interrupted is an important study. Undoubtedly, it presents new information to some; allows others to name their own backward feelings and behaviors toward Black girls; and, prayerfully, emboldens others to get to work on what they’ve known to be true all along. And while we are all on our own journeys, and the pace of those journeys must be respected, this article here is for those ready to pull up their sleeves and apply the study’s findings in meaningful ways.

But first, a story.

I am a Black girl who survived adultification. No doubt that survival was better guaranteed by my light skin, loosely defined hair, Eurocentric-like features (well, my lips have a little plump to em—thanks for coming through with the chunk, Mommy), working middle class status and multiple functioning support systems, but more on colorism and all the other isms designed to punish me degrees less another time. Just promise me to amplify my story by ten, twenty, thirty, shoot forty, for dark skinned Black girls, poor Black girls, fat Black girls, homeless Black girls, transgender Black girls, abused Black girls, drug addicted Black girls and all those bearing the weight of any combination of imposed, unearned burdens.   

I had a presence about me at not even 10. I was smart, smart (book for sure and the common wasn’t lacking, either). Sharp. Quick. I talked back (every time, honey) and listened only if the speaker had earned (I mean earned) the right to be heard. I saw gaps clear as day in adults’ thinking. I knew an unprepared teacher when I saw one. I could spot a shady uncle five miles out. I had memorized the way my mother moved when she was the best and not so best versions of herself and used that information to co-construct the atmosphere of our household. Lucille Clifton has a poem in which she defines wise in the title. It reads: “wise: having the ability to perceive and adopt the best means for accomplishing an end.”[2] I thought I was that. Never mind my still-developing brain. I moved according to my heightened perception of myself—because don’t teenagers just know everything?

Now when I say I was smart, smart, I mean valedictorian, full ride to college smart. My school was a middle school and high school both and not only recorded the highest averages of its students on a quarterly basis, but hung their photographs on a wide, high wall at the front of the school. My picture appeared on that wall no less than thirty times from to ‘87-’95 (you betta ask about me). It made obvious sense that I apply to the National Honor Society (NHS) when the time came, then. Now this was years ago and I made it a point to tuck these memories into the recesses of my heart because they hurt, but I’m pretty sure I applied to the NHS at least twice. However many times I applied, I was denied. Reason cited? Attitude. Apparently, your teachers had to vote you in and I just couldn’t garner the support. I had gone to intellectual battle with 80% of the staff, after all. I remember the adult whispers after my senior year rejection: “If Andria presented differently…if she wasn’t so combative…if she didn’t always talk back, she might have made it in.” But the king of all the whispers in the land was: “That’ll teach her.”  

My identity at the time was deeply tied to my academic performance. I took the dilemma to the same mother who had blessed me with at least a little plump in my lips. Momma Kim said, “Let them have that National Honor Society, if that’s what they want. They can’t take that highest average from you, though. You’re still and always will be their valedictorian.” But remember, I was smart, smart. Even without the king whisper, I knew the gesture was a reminder to stay in my place.   

It was a small loss in the scheme of things. It in no way shifted the trajectory of my life and maybe even sharpened my destiny. But I took those jabs all throughout my childhood. Had I not possessed the gift of literacy and found myself and paths out of my pain in books, I might have believed that teacher vote. Had I decided to own their warnings to “stay in my place,” I just might have.    

And yet, for me, the stakes were fairly low. Not so much for the high school girl slammed and dragged (all while seated at her desk) by a South Carolina police officer; or for the 14-year-old viciously beaten by police in Florida last October; or for the young girl famously thrown to the sidewalk for attending a pool party in McKinney, Texas.

The impact of adultification is subtle until it ain’t. There are the insipid pushes to shut your Black girl mouth (because who do you think you are using that brain in your head?), and then before you know it, you’ve dropped out of school, been arrested multiple times, and are somehow magically in deep, intimate relationship with America’s criminal justice system.      The Girlhood Interrupted report is “a key step in addressing the disparate treatment of Black girls in public systems,”[3] but literary giant and cultural critic Zora Neale Hurston reminds us that “all clumps of people turn out to be individuals on close inspection.”[4] Our racist, sexist, classist (insert all the other other ists here) systems are nothing more than clumps of individual people making big and little, innocuous and flat out dangerous decisions. And they can therefore can be dismantled. Please refer to Part 2 of this blog to learn some personal and practical ways you can begin to give back Black girl innocence.      

[1] Epstein, Rebecca, et al. Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood. Georgetown Law, Center on Poverty and Inequality, 2017, pp. 1, Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood.

[2] Clifton, Lucille. “wise: having the ability to perceive and adopt the best means for accomplishing an end.” Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969 – 1980. New York: BOA Editions, Ltd., 1987. 79. Print.

[3] Epstein, Rebecca, et al. Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood. Georgetown Law, Center on Poverty and Inequality, 2017, pp. 1, Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood.

[4] Boyd, Valerie. “Mama’s Child.” Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston, by Valerie Boyd, Scribner, 2004, pp. 25.