I want to talk about adulthood as it’s currently configured for minority communities in white supremacist countries such as the United States.

White communities (more correctly, white middle class communities) tend to see emerging adulthood as a loss of innocence offset by burgeoning adult opportunities.  In minority communities (black communities especially), however, childhood is often seen as a training ground for submission to adult authority, eventually graduating to adult penalties, often to the detriment of other children’s independence (i.e., a vicious circle of generational abuse).

I don’t want to generalize about all black families.  I’m simply pointing out the familiar “You’re out of here when you’re eighteen” threat so many black children hear.  It’s rarely a promise of independence, especially the way white middle class boys primarily and girls secondarily may see it.  Black adulthood is also haunted by new, more actionable, harmful, and deadly suspicions.  It’s not all promises of independence and agency, unless the black person in question is also able to obtain counterbalances of money, education, relationship support, decent housing, and relative safety from incarceration, discrimination, beatings, rape, and murder (including that carried out by police forces for the last three).

And no, white and non-black bigots, this is not proof that we’re less responsible and more crime-prone than other races.  It’s proof that white supremacy affects us much more detrimentally than you (Native Americans and other indigenous people exempted).

And double no, black abuse defenders and deniers that think [1] we should come down on black children even harder and [2] don’t think abuse is really abuse, I’m not on your side, either.