Innocence Erased: How Society Keeps Black Boys from Being Boys
As debate roils around whether Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh should be judged for sexual assault alleged to have happened when he was 17, researchers note that black boys seldom get that kind of consideration for ‘youthful indiscretions.’
By Vanessa Williams
Black children are 18 more times likely to be tried as adults than are white children.
It is a statistic that Phillip Atiba Goff, a social psychologist who studies racial disparities in the criminal justice system, would like to be included in the debate surrounding the allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted a girl when he was a teenager.
Some, including people who say they opposed Kavanaugh’s nomination on ideological grounds, have asked if it’s fair to judge him as an adult for something that he is accused of having done when he would have been 17 years old.
This kind of consideration is rarely extended to black boys, said Goff. He authored a 2014 study that found that black boys “are seen as more culpable for their actions (i.e. less innocent) within a criminal justice context”…
