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Fifteen-year-old Latasha Harlins walked into a shop in South Los Angeles on March 16, 1991. After one of the store owners, Soon Ja Du, accused Latasha of stealing a bottle of orange juice, the two fought. Harlins, who’d had the money in her hand the whole time, returned the bottle and walked away. Then Du shot the girl in the back of the head.
On May 28, 2023, 14-year-old Cyrus Carmack-Belton entered Rick Chow’s gas station in Columbia, South Carolina, where Chow and his son, Andy, accused him of stealing four water bottles. Surveillance footage shows that Cyrus returned the water to the cooler. Still, the pair chased him outside for130 yards before Rick Chow shot him in the back.
The court let Du off easy with a suspended 10-year sentence, no jail time, a $500 fine, and five years of probation. This month, Chow was acquitted on all charges. In the U.S., the court and carceral system work hand-in-hand to criminalize Black children.
Research shows that around age 10, Black boys lose the presumption of innocence extended to other children. Their ages are often overestimated by an average of 4.5 years. They’re more likely to be perceived as guilty and face police violence. And as early as five, Black girls routinely begin being adultified: overpunished and oversexualized. Prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and the media use these caricatures to frame Black children as aggressive and undeserving of protection.
To fight for justice for Latasha and Cyrus, and for our future, we have to protect our children from anti-Black criminalization and dehumanization by stopping it, and its perpetrators, in their tracks.