In the shooting of Ralph Yarl, a reminder of the racist ‘adultification’ of Black children

The shooting of 16-year-old Ralph Yarl in Kansas City, Mo., was a stark reminder of the gnawing anxiety that I often experience as a Black parent.

It’s always there, lingering beneath my calm veneer, just as it does for everyone with Black children — and especially those with Black sons. Please know that I’m also concerned for my daughters, but they’re both adults and because they’re females, they’re not always seen as physical threats.

Black boys, however, are consistently viewed as dangerous. As a result, they are frequently targeted. It doesn’t matter if they are docile, responsible, respectful, or creative. Ralph Yarl, by all accounts, is all of those things.

According to a GoFundMe page administered by his aunt, Ralph, who is a musician, dreamed of traveling to Africa before going off to college. He is beloved by his classmates, who marched for him by the hundreds. And yet, when this talented young man accidentally went to the wrong address to pick up his younger siblings from a play date, he was shot by the white man who answered the door.

Now, at just 16, Ralph has learned the cruelest lesson that America can teach. He has learned that there are those for whom Black excellence will never be enough, because America’s standard is whiteness.

According to a statement Ralph gave to police from his hospital bed, his mother asked him to pick up his brothers at 1100 NE 115th St. However, the boys were actually staying at a home with a similar address — 1100 NE 115th Terrace.

Ralph told police that when he rang the doorbell at the house on 115th Street, he waited a while before a man came to the door. That man, 84-year-old Andrew Lester, who is white, allegedly shot through the door, hitting Ralph in the head. Then, as the teen lay on the ground, Ralph said, Lester shot him in the arm.

And then, as he ran away from a shooting that Clay County Prosecuting Attorney Zachary Thompson says had “a racial component,” Ralph told police that he heard Lester say, “Don’t come around here.”

Lester told police that he began shooting because he saw a large Black man pulling at the handle of his outer door, and the sight of that man “scared him to death.” But in a statement to CNN, Ralph’s aunt, Faith Spoonmore, balked at Lester’s assertion about Ralph’s size. Spoonmore said she doubts the slightly built teen is even 170 pounds, nor is he 6 feet tall.

That doesn’t matter, because when it comes to Black children, their actual age and size are irrelevant. They are often assumed to be older than they are. They are stripped of the presumption of innocence. They will never be what America requires for one to be considered a child. They will never be white.

That reality is at the center of a phenomenon called adultification bias.

“Children in most societies are considered to be in a distinct group with characteristics such as innocence and the need for protection. Our research found that Black boys can be seen as responsible for their actions at an age when white boys still benefit from the assumption that children are essentially innocent,” Phillip Atiba Goff, a professor of African American studies and psychology at Yale, told the American Psychological Association in reference to a study he authored on the subject.

Thankfully, Ralph Yarl survived the shooting that was driven by the racial bias that denies Black people the right to be children. Others have not been so fortunate.

Adultification bias led two Cleveland police officers to assume that 12-year-old Tamir Rice was 20 years old before they shot him. That same bias was at play when many Americans blamed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin when the unarmed teen was shot dead by George Zimmerman, who was later acquitted in Martin’s killing.

However, it is important to know that adultification bias is not just about the assumption that Black children are older than their actual ages. It is also about denying them the privileges of childhood. It is about stripping them of humanity. It is about taking away their innocence.

As Black parents, we know that our children are always susceptible to the prejudgments of others. That’s why we talk to them about how they should interact with police during car stops, and drill them on how to communicate in the world outside the safety of our homes.

We hope they’ll never have to experience the dangers that we warn them about. But if they do, we pray that they’ll be lucky enough to live.