Since pre-k, my biracial daughter has been adultified with adult skill sets applied to her normal childhood behaviors and differences and nefarious intentionality ascribed to her behaviors. She is not afforded the presumption of childhood innocence or the right to the childhood developmental expectations. She has repeatedly been removed from her classroom, received lunchroom and
When I was 19, I decided it was time to go to the OBGYN for the first time. I had lost my virginity to my boyfriend and wanted to get on birth control. The doctor was an older white man. He came into the room and started asking me questions about my sexual history. What
I don’t really remember how old I was but it was in elementary school. All the boys & girls were being ‘fresh’ as most boys & girls do around that time. I remember a boy approaching me in class to be what flirtatious was at that age and the teacher yelled at me. The boy
One time in 6th grade at a pool party at my affluent White friend’s house (where I was the only Black person), my friends and I were in the hot tub with our “crushes”. Meanwhile we did not know that all of the moms (my mom was not present) were in the kitchen watching us.
I couldn’t have been more than 13 years old. While I had a door key, it was rare that my grandmother wasn’t home when I came home from school. This particular day, she wasn’t home. We had an alarm system that she would set and I just needed to punch in the code. It gave