Criminalizing black youth establishes racial boundaries before adulthood
Evidence
Henning writes, “There is something particularly efficient about treating Black children like criminals in adolescence. Black youth are dehumanized, exploited, and even killed to establish the boundaries of Whiteness before they reach adulthood and assert their rights and independence.” Once again laws vaguely worded with phrases like “disruption of class,” “willful defiance,” and “disorderly conduct” are inherently discriminatory and designed so that “just about any black [can] be arrested.” It was an efficient strategy during convict leasing, and it remains one today. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 426
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Directly links the modern school-to-prison pipeline back to convict leasing, extending the ‘slavery transformed’ continuity thesis of paragraph 430.
Related
- Criminalizing black children establishes the boundaries of whiteness (similarity 0.94)
- Criminality itself is defined through racialized legal power structures (similarity 0.79)
- Perception of Black youth as criminals precedes and justifies their deaths (similarity 0.78)
- Black people still face punishment for conduct whites are allowed (similarity 0.78)