The Adultification of Black Girls
When Jaylah Davis was 11-years-old, a man started harassing her as she walked down the street with her friend. He was making unsolicited comments about her legs.
“Those are some hairy legs,” the man said, sometimes not even addressing Jaylah directly and referring to her as an object to be looked at.
As a child, Jaylah didn’t see anything wrong with pubescent body hair, but that incident changed the way she looked at her body.
“...beginning as early as 5 years of age, Black girls were more likely to be viewed as behaving and seeming older than their stated age; more knowledgeable about adult topics, including sex; and more likely to take on adult roles and responsibilities than what would have been expected for their age.” / Quote and Graph from Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood
In a 2017 study published by Georgetown Law, they found that participants collectively viewed Black girls as more adult than white girls.
As a black woman, Davis has seen the adultification of young black girls in the way they are treated in schools. Between the ages of 12 and 16, Davis reports having received harsher criticisms from teachers compared to other students.
“I’ve always had tension with teachers because it’s just like, they still want you to be in a child’s place, quote un-quote, but they see you as aggressive, or even more troublesome because you’re a black child,” Davis said in regards to her experiences with teachers.
Every black girl that Davis has known has had an instance when a teacher, or adult, has been harsher towards them as a child.
A study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2019, states that “black students are more likely to be seen as problematic and more likely to be punished than white students are for the same offense.”
“What I say to those adults is, like really evaluate your own biases,” Davis said. “We already don’t have enough support … You could at least be that person for them in that moment.”
