Children in cuffs: Black girlhood in the wake of enslavement in North America

Children in cuffs: Black girlhood in the wake of enslavement in North America

Abstract

Interdisciplinary approaches to examining temporality in childhood reveal the tensions that surround Western childhood ideals. To reflect the reality of some children, childhoods must be analyzed within the spatial conditions in which childhood is experienced. Using the examples of five Black girls who faced the discrimination of adultification bias, I examine the elusive notions of protection, innocence, and being and becoming for Black children. Drawing on theoretical framing of Black geographies, to underpin the examination of Blackness and being, this article explores childhood experiences of Black girls in North America and their contemporary link to enslavement.

Tensions of Black childhoods in North America

Contemporary childhood scholarship explores and critiques some of the concepts and themes in the early theorizing of childhood. Some of the initial discourses consistent within scholarship suggested a type of ideal childhood that included concepts such as "innocence," "protection," and "being and becoming" within a Western context. Historically, discourses commonly reflected expectations of children and childhood that are inequitable and inaccessible for many children. Childhood theories such as Uprichard's view of children as both "being"-persons in and of themselves, and "becoming"-children developmentally transitioning into adulthood, expand childhood discourses and serve to support the understanding that childhood, as theorized, is not a universal experience. However, even in the attempt to consider childhood more broadly in scholarship, some of the perspectives still appear to be slightly out of touch as they do not relate to the specific lives and experiences of racialized children living in the West.

As contemporary scholarship continues to challenge some of the traditional childhood theories, scholars must place specific emphasis on the marginal experiences of racialized children. Childhoods, particularly of those who are descendants of formerly enslaved people, are complicated. When compared to any normalized standard for white, Western children, there is often an omission of experiences that adequately describe circumstances that shape Black children's lives in North America. Drawing connections between colonialism, enslavement, and contemporary childhoods is therefore essential to any practical examination of temporality and the childhood experience.

Framing childhood as this time of innocence, a time when a child has the opportunity to experience both being a child and the space to grow up to become an adult, is unattainable for Black children who, throughout history, have been commonly adultified-treated as an adult-starting in early childhood. Herein lies the issue: there is limited literature that explores the day-to-day lives of Black children in North America, both pre- and post- emancipation. Details of the lived realities of Black children today could help to illustrate how they are regularly denied what is often theorized and considered as entitlements of a Western childhood experience. Advancing more inclusive representations of childhood and accounting for the lives of Black children requires an understanding of theoretical frames within Black studies that position Black life in context to the spatial (North America) and temporal (childhood) constraints that continue to shape Black lived experiences in the West.

In In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, Sharpe vividly illustrates the circumstances surrounding Blackness and being in North America. Capturing the severe realities of Blackness, Sharpe describes being Black as existing in "the afterlife of property." Transitioned from centuries of physical bondage in North America, Black people, including children, remain permanently confined and controlled by structures and narratives of colonialism and white supremacy. Blackness and being represent the inherently inequitable experiences of Black people who, even centuries after emancipation, struggle to exist and live their lives free from the levels of oppression experienced by their ancestors during enslavement. As a result, Blackness and being in North America today means still "living in the wake" of slavery.

The lived realities of what Sharpe describes as Blackness and being in North America bring me to these critical questions on childhood and the time used to frame this period. Is there space to adequately and effectively examine Black childhood experiences in context to commonly associated expectations in childhood? If so, how can Black studies assist in illustrating the harsh circumstances of Black children, who, as an extension of their Black parents, remained trapped in "perpetual position[s] of non-being," which exclude them from these expectations? Understanding that the circumstances that often shape childhood experiences are not neutral for most children, it is essential to emphasize how history and its racist legacies impact Black childhood in North America. Failure to acknowledge and account for the tensions experienced by Black children during their childhood propagates an incomplete and inaccurate account of temporality and its relationship to childhood.

By centring the experiences of Black girls, this article outlines and describes five situations that demonstrate how the mistreatment and anti-Black racism experienced by Black girls in North America quickly disrupts or "(re)routes" their childhood. To substantiate this claim, I detail the story of a six-year-old girl from the Greater Toronto Area who was restrained and handcuffed by police at her school; a sixteen-year-old girl from Surrey, British Columbia, who was restrained by police, tackled to the floor, and handcuffed on the street; a nine-year-old girl, from North New Jersey, who had the police called on her own street; a nine-year-old girl from Rochester, New York who a police officer pepper-sprayed; and an eight-year-old girl, from San Francisco, California, who also had the police called on her in her neighborhood. These examples draw distinct parallels to what Chinn describes as "stirring incidents," which marked a particular occurrence in an enslaved child's life, separating them from childhood. The contemporary, ongoing, violent circumstances that consistently impede and threaten the childhoods of Black children are not new or novel. These accounts serve to evidence of how childhood and Western ideals that are associated with the period continue to be obstructed for Black children across North America.

The goal here is to emphasize how contemporary theoretical positions on the experiences and lives of children, though moving towards more inclusive perspectives in childhood scholarship, have not sufficiently illustrated the inordinate inequities that Black children continue to endure throughout their childhood. Anti-Black racism's social and institutional impact on children and childhood has, throughout history, resulted in the ongoing criminalization of Black girls and Black children in general, making common notions and expectations of childhood, such as innocence, protection, being and becoming, a mere illusion in the lives of many Black children.