Solomon Jones is a columnist for The Phila-delphia Inquirer, and, according to his biography blurb at the bottom of his column, “is the author of ‘Ten Lives Ten Demands: Life and Death Stories and a Black Activistʼs Blueprint for Racial Justice.’ Listen to him weekdays from 7 to 10 a.m. on WURD 900 AM.” Amusingly enough, the amazon.com blurb for his book calls it a “manifesto,” with these demands to “rectify racial injustice.” Copyrighted in 2021, I do wonder if, given the current Democratic candidates for Mayor of Philadelphia, whether he still adheres to his demand to “Defund the police and move funds to trained social workers, mental health professionals, and conflict resolution specialists.” Even Helen Gym Flaherty no longer says that, though I would not be surprised if she didn’t move in that direction if she wins.

Unfortunately for Mr Jones, his latest column is a masterpiece of lousy timing.

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

When it comes to Black children, they are often assumed to be older than they are. It is another way that they are stripped of the presumption of innocence and denied the privileges of childhood.

by Solomon Jones | Friday, April 21, 2023 | 7:54 AM EDT

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.

There’s more at the original.

Young Mr Yarl was, we are told, a fine young man, everything we would expect and want of a 16-year-old boy, and I have no reason at all to doubt that. His mother asked him to pick up his brothers at 1100 NE 115^th Street, but erred on the address; they were actually at 1100 NE 115^th Terrace. Mr Yarl pulled up to the incorrect address, rang the doorbell, and was then shot by 84-year-old Andrew Lester, who said he thought that the young man was a serious threat:

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.”

None of us can read Mr Lester’s mind, and I have no reason to doubt that he saw young Mr Yarl just as he described him, though Mr Yarl’s aunt said that he was under six feet tall and 170 lb. Sometimes people don’t really see what they see.

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.

Why did I state that Mr Jones column was a masterpiece of lousy timing?

Dadeville Update: Six Suspects Now in Custody for ‘Sweet 16’ Massacre

By Robert Stacy McCain | Friday, April 21, 2023

When we last updated on Wednesday, two teenage brothers from Tuskegee, Ty Reik McCullough, 17, and Travis McCullough, 16, had been charged in last weekend’s mass shooting at a “Sweet 16” birthday party in Dadesville, Alabama, that left four dead and dozens injured. Late Wednesday night, Wilson LaMar Hill Jr., 20, of Auburn was added to the list of those arrested and charged in the shooting, and then yesterday, authorities announced the arrest of Johnny Letron Brown, 20, of Tuskegee, and Willie George Brown, 19, of Auburn. Later, it was announced that a sixth suspect, also from Tuskegee, was under arrest, but because he is only 15 years old, we don’t yet know his name.

As I said Wednesday, the biggest mystery is the motive. What would inspire six young men, ages 15 to 20, from out of town to grab their pistols and head to Dadeville to kill a bunch of people? Auburn is 25 miles from Dadeville, and Tuskegee is 35 miles away, so what was it that made Dadeville their target? Among those killed in the massacre was Phil Dowdell, a local football star who had a scholarship to my alma mater, Jacksonville State University. Dowdell’s sister was the birthday girl at the party, and it occurs to me that this deadly incident might have grown out of some kind of overheated high-school football rivalry.

There’s more at the original.

So, of the six suspects in the Dadeville mass shooting, three were adults, and three others were juveniles, aged 17, 16, and 15. Perhaps, just perhaps, the actual ‘adultification’ isn’t in the minds of people like Mr Lester, but in the actions of goons and gang-bangers on the streets. When 15-year-olds are running with 19- and 20-years-olds, perhaps the legal bright line of 18 doesn’t mean quite as much in the real world.

Kansas City had just seen its second deadliest year on record, and the vast majority of victims, 57.99%, and known suspects, 69.92%, were black males, all in a city in which only 12.85% of the population are black males.^[1]The math: The Census Bureau guesstimates that 26.5% of the population of Kansas City are black, and 48.5% are female. I multiplied 26.5% by 0.485 to arrive at 12.85%. If Mr Lester claimed that he was “scared to death” of a black male stranger at his door, might that not be, perhaps on the extreme end, but nevertheless a natural reaction given the news in the city?

With a homicide rate of 33.24 per 100,000 population,^[2]The math: 169 murders divided by 5.08394., which is Philadelphia bad, is it unreasonable that there are some scared people in that city?

As a Philadelphian, and someone who pays a lot of attention to the news, Mr Jones is most certainly aware of the homicide and shootings rates in the City of Brotherly Love, and he is just as aware that the vast majority of the victims, and known suspects, are young black males. The Inquirer, Mr Jones own newspaper — or, at least I assume that he reads the newspaper in which he is published — very certainly knows that, in the Inky doesn’t really cover homicides in the city unless the victim happens to be an innocent, someone of some note, or a cute while girl . . . and he knows why.

The last item in Mr Jones ten demands was to “End racial profiling.” But racial profiling exists because separate racial groups have built their profiles, and, at some point, even Mr Jones would have to admit, even if it’s only to himself, that young black males have built a reputation for being dangerous, for being criminal. It may be unfair, in a way, because the gang-bangers and thugs and criminals are a minority among them, but they have made themselves, through their outrageous actions, the most visible and prominent members of their group.