The binary between the figure of the child and the fully human being is invoked with regularity in analyses of race, yet its centrality to the conception of race has never been fully explored. For most commentators, the figure of the child operates as a metaphoric or rhetorical trope, a non-essential strategic tool in the perpetuation of White supremacy. As I show in the following, the child/human binary does not present a contingent or merely rhetorical construction but, rather, a central feature of racialization. Where Black peoples are situated as objects of violence it is often precisely because Blackness has been identified with childhood and childhood is historically identified as the archetypal site of naturalized violence and servitude. I proceed by offering a historical account of how Black peoples came to inherit the subordination and dehumanization of European childhood and how White youth were subsequently spared through their partial categorization as adults.

References

Bernstein, R. ( 2011 ). Racial innocence: Performing American childhood from slavery to civil rights. New York : New York University Press .

Google Scholar

Billingsley, A., Giovannoni, J. ( 1972 ). Children of the storm: Black children and American child welfare. New York, NY : Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich .

Google Scholar

Brewer, H. ( 2007 ). By birth or consent: Children, law, and the Anglo-American revolution in authority. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press .

Google Scholar

Bunge, M., Frethiem, T. E., Gaventa, B. R. (Eds.). ( 2008 ). The child in the Bible. Grand Rapids, MI : Wm. B. Eerdmans .

Google Scholar

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention & National Center for Injury Prevention and Control . ( 2012 ). 10 leading causes of death by age group, United States—2012. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_death_by_age_group_2012-a.pdf

Google Scholar

Clifford Simplican, S . ( 2015 ). The capacity contract: Intellectual disability and the question of citizenship. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press .

Google Scholar Crossref

Coles, R. ( 1964 - 1965 ). Children and racial demonstrations . The American Scholar, 34, 78 - 92 .

Google Scholar

Cooper, K. ( 2007 ). The fall of the Roman household. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press .

Google Scholar Crossref

Drayton, W. ( 1836 ). The south vindicated from the treason and fanaticism of the northern abolitionists. Philadelphia, PA : H. Manly .

Google Scholar

Duane, A. M. ( 2017 ). Introduction: When is a child a slave? In Duane, A. M. (Ed.), Child slavery before and after emancipation: An argument for child-centered slavery studies (pp. 1 - 22 ). Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press .

Google Scholar Crossref

Epstein, R., Blake, J. J., Gonzalez, T. ( 2017 ). Girlhood interrupted: The erasure of Black girls’ childhood. Washington, DC : Georgetown Law Center .

Google Scholar

Fanon, F. ( 2008 a). Black skin, White masks (Philcox, R. , Trans.). New York, NY : Grove Press . (Original work published 1952 )

Google Scholar

Fanon, F. ( 2008 b). The wretched of the earth (Philcox, R. Trans.). New York, NY : Grove Press . (Original work published 1961 )

Google Scholar

Field, C. T. ( 2014 ). The struggle for equal adulthood: Gender, race, age, and the fight for citizenship in antebellum America. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press .

Google Scholar Crossref

Franklin, V. P. ( 1983 ). Review of slavery and social death, by Orlando Patterson . The Journal of Negro History, 68, 212 - 216 .

Google Scholar Crossref

Frazier, E. F. ( 1962 ). A controversial question: Do American Negroes have what Africa needs? Black World/Negro Digest, 12, 62 - 74 .

Google Scholar

Gagen, E. ( 2007 ). Reflections of primitivism: Development, progress and civilization in imperial America . Children’s Geographies, 5, 15 - 28 .

Google Scholar Crossref

Gardner, J. ( 1998 ). Family and familia in Roman law and life. Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press .

Google Scholar

Goff, P. A., Jackson, M. C., Di Leone, B. A. L., Culotta, C. M., DiTomasso, N. A. ( 2014 ). The essence of innocence: Consequences of dehumanizing Black children . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 526 - 545 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Gordon, L. R. ( 1997 ). Her majesty’s other children: Sketches of racism from a neocolonial age. Lanham, MD : Rowan & Littlefield .

Google Scholar

Government Accountability Office . ( 2011 ). Child maltreatment: Strengthening national data of child fatalities could aid in prevention (Report to the Chairman). Washington, DC : Committee of Ways and Means, House of Representatives . Retrieved from http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-599

Google Scholar

Grant, J. ( 2014 ). The boy problem: Educating boys in urban America, 1870-1970. Baltimore, MD : Johns Hopkins University Press .

Google Scholar

Grogan-Kaylor, A., Otis, M. D. ( 2008 ). The predictors of parental use of corporal punishment . Family Relations, 56, 80 - 91 .

Google Scholar Crossref

Hall, G. S. ( 1904 ). Adolescence: Its psychology and its relations to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, and religion (Vol. 2). New York, NY : D. Appleton .

Google Scholar

Hartman, S. V. ( 1997 ). Scenes of subjections: Terror, slavery and self-making in the nineteenth century America. Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press .

Google Scholar

Hartman, S. V. ( 2016 ). The belly of the world: A note on Black women’s labors . Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, 18, 166 - 173 .

Google Scholar

Hartman, S. V., Wilderson, F. B.. ( 2003 ). The position of the unthought . Qui Parle, 13, 183 - 201 .

Google Scholar Crossref

Holden, W. C. ( 1855 ). History of the colony of Natal, South Africa. London, England : A. Heylin .

Google Scholar

Jacobs, M. D. ( 2009 ). White mother to dark race: Settler colonialism, maternalism, and the removal of indigenous children in the America West and Australia, 1880-1940. Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press .

Google Scholar

Kromidas, M. ( 2014 ). The “savage” child and the nature of race: Posthuman interventions from New York City . Anthropological Theory, 14, 422 - 441 .

Google Scholar SAGE Journals | ISI

Laes, C. ( 2006 ). Children in the Roman empire: Outsiders within. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press .

Google Scholar

Lansford, J. E., Dodge, K. A. ( 2008 ). Cultural norms for adult corporal punishment of children and societal rates of endorsement and use of violence . Parenting: Science and Practice, 8, 257 - 270 .

Google Scholar Crossref | Medline | ISI

Lombroso, C. ( 1895 ). Criminal anthropology applied to pedagogy . The Monist, 6, 50 - 59 .

Google Scholar Crossref

Lorde, A. ( 1984 ). Eye to eye . In Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. New York, NY : Random House (pp. 145 - 175 ).

Google Scholar

Magubane, B. M. ( 1996 ). The making of a racist state: British imperialism and the Union of South Africa, 1875-1910. Trenton, NJ : Africa World Press .

Google Scholar

McClintock, A. ( 1995 ). Imperial leather: Race, gender, and sexuality in the colonial contest. New York, NY : Routledge .

Google Scholar

McCord, C.H. ( 1914 ). The American Negro as Dependent, Defective and Delinquent . Nashville, TN : Press of Benson Printing Company .

Google Scholar

Melish, J. P. ( 1998 ). Disowning slavery: Gradual emancipation and race in New England, 1780-1860. Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press .

Google Scholar

Mill, J. S. ( 1989 ). On liberty and other writings (Collini, S. Ed.). Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press . (Original work published 1859 )

Google Scholar

Mills, C. W. ( 1999 ). The racial contract. Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press .

Google Scholar

Moss, H. J. ( 2009 ). Schooling citizens: The struggle for African American education in antebellum America. Chicago, IL : The University of Chicago Press .

Google Scholar Crossref

Mousourakis, G. ( 2012 ). Fundamentals of Roman private law. New York, NY : Springer .

Google Scholar Crossref

Nandy, A. ( 1984 ). Reconstructing childhood: A critique of the ideology of adulthood . Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 10, 359 - 375 .

Google Scholar SAGE Journals

Ocen, P. ( 2015 ). (E)Racing childhood: Examining the racialized construction of childhood and innocence in the treatment of sexually exploited minors . UCLA Law Review, 62, 1586 .

Google Scholar

Ozment, S. ( 1983 ). When fathers ruled: Family life in reformation Europe. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press .

Google Scholar

Painter, N. I. ( 2010 ). The history of White people. New York, NY : W.W. Norton .

Google Scholar

Parkman, F. ( 1994 ). The conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian war after the conquest of Canada. Lincoln : University of Nebraska . (Original work published 1851 )

Google Scholar

Patterson, O. ( 1982 ). Slavery and social death: A comparative study. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press .

Google Scholar

Pierce, C., Allen, G. ( 1975 ). Childism . Psychiatric Annals, 5, 266 - 270 .

Google Scholar

Reade, W. W. ( 1872 ). The martyrdom of man. New York, NY : A. K. Butts & Co. Kiernan .

Google Scholar Crossref

Robertson, S. ( 1992 ). Crimes Agaist Children: Sexual Violence and Legal Culture in New York City, 1880-1960 . Chapel Hil, NC : University of North Carolina Press .

Google Scholar

Rollo, T. ( 2018 ). Feral children: Settler colonialism, progress, and the figure of the child . Settler Colonial Studies, 8, 60 - 79 .

Google Scholar Crossref

Schmidt, J. D. ( 2010 ). Industrial violence and the legal origins of child labor. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press .

Google Scholar Crossref

Schweitzer, A. ( 1931 ). The primeval forest. Baltimore, MD : Johns Hopkins University Press .

Google Scholar

Sexton, J. ( 2010 ). People-of-color-blindness: Notes on the afterlife of slavery . Social Text, 28(2), 31 - 56 .

Google Scholar Crossref

Sexton, J. ( 2011 ). The social life of social death: On Afro-pessimism and Black optimism . Intensions, 5, 1 - 47 .

Google Scholar

Sexton, J. ( 2015 ). Unbearable blackness . Cultural Critique, 90, 159 - 178 .

Google Scholar Crossref

Spillers, H. J. ( 1987 ). Mama’s baby, papa’s maybe: An American grammar book . Diacritics, 17, 64 - 81 .

Google Scholar Crossref

Sundue, S. B. ( 2009 ). Industrious in their station: Young people at work in urban America, 1720–1810. Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press .

Google Scholar

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services . ( 2014 ). Administration on children, youth and families: Child maltreatment 2013. Washington, DC : U.S. Government Printing Office .

Google Scholar

Van Evrie, J. H. ( 1853 ). Negroes and negro slavery: The first an inferior race—The latter its normal condition. Baltimore, MD : John D. Toy .

Google Scholar

Wasserman, S., Rosenfeld, A. ( 1992 ). An overview of the history of child sexual abuse and Sigmund Freud’s contribution . In O’Donahue, W., Greer, J. H. (Eds.), The sexual abuse of children, Vol. I: Theory and research. New York, NY : Routledge (pp. 49 - 72 ).

Google Scholar

Winston, G. T. ( 1901 ). The relation of the Whites to the Negroes . The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 18, 105 - 118 .

Google Scholar SAGE Journals

Wolff, L. ( 2013 ). The child in the enlightenment: The complications of innocence . In Fass, P. S. (Ed.), The Routledge history of childhood in the western world (pp. 78 - 100 ). New York, NY : Routledge .

Google Scholar

Woodhouse, B. B. ( 2008 ). Hidden in plain sight: The tragedy of children’s rights from Ben Franklin to Lionel Tate. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press .

Google Scholar

Wynter, S. ( 1995 ). 1492: A new world view . In Hyatt, V., Nettleford, R. (Eds.), Race, discourse, and the origin of the Americas: A new world view (pp. 1 - 57 ). Washington, DC : Smithsonian Institute Press .

Google Scholar

Wynter, S. ( 2003 ). Unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: Towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation: An argument . CR: The New Centennial Review, 3, 257 - 333 .

Google Scholar Crossref | ISI