Author studies the cost of being Black in America

In a convenience store in Brooklyn in 2018, Jeremiah Harvey’s book bag grazed the butt of Teresa Klein, as she bent over the counter. Accusing the 9-year-old of grabbing her “ass,” Klein dialed 9/11 to report a sexual assault. Chastised by onlookers, she maintained they could not shame her for “being a White woman who called the police on a Black child.”

Cell phone recordings of the incident went viral. The store’s surveillance video showed that Jeremiah never touched Klein, who subsequently apologized. None-theless, Kristin Henning reminds us, damage had been done.

“Do you know what rape is?” Jeremiah’s mom asked her son. He did not. But he already understood the meaning of the term “racist.” And, Henning reports, he was traumatized by “his new understanding of what it means to be Black” in the United States.

In “The Rage of Innocence,’’ Henning, a professor of law at Georgetown, who has represented Black youth in juvenile courts in Washington D.C. for a quarter of a century, provides an eyeopening, grim, and compelling analysis of racial disparities in our justice system. 

Although Black children are no more dangerous than their white peers, she indicates, many Americans view them as immoral, predatory and sexually deviant. 

Harassed for wearing hoodies, sagging pants, braids and dreadlocks, and listening to rap music, more likely to be detained, prosecuted, and punished more harshly than whites, generations of young Blacks have been  denied opportunities for free and unburdened play, traumatized by constant surveillance, harass- ment, and the likelihood of abuse by authorities.

And, Henning maintains, tensions between police and Black adolescents are “at an all-time high.”

Data-driven conclusion

Filled with disturbing stories of individual encounters with police, prosecutors, and judges, “The Rage of Innocence” introduces an avalanche of data to demonstrate the pervasive mistreatment of Black boys and girls.

The overwhelming number of individuals stopped by police, we learn, are released with no evidence of wrongdoing. Although Blacks made up 16% of the population age 10-17, they account for about half of the arrests for violent crimes and over 40% for theft of property.

REVIEW

“The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth,” by Kristin Henning. Pantheon Books, $30.

Black girls are 3.5 times more likely than white girls to be incarcerated. A significantly higher percentage of Black youth  are transferred from juvenile to adult court.

The rate of fatal police shootings is much higher for Black Americans than any other ethnic or racial group. Twenty-one percent of the victims were unarmed, compared with 14% of whites.

Controversial solutions

The case for racial disparities is, well, irrefutable. That said, Henning occasionally gets a bit ahead of her skis.

The Columbine shooting, she claims, gave state and federal agencies a “socially defensible justification” to criminalize Black adolescence. School segregation, she writes, is now “achieved and maintained” through exclusions and arrests that prevent Blacks from completing high school.

If we left teenagers alone “and did nothing in response to crime,” Henning suggests, “we would get better results than we do by locking them up with adults.”

“The Rage of Innocence” concludes with proposals to reform a dysfunctional, unjust system. Along with many others, Henning advocates fostering resilience through stable and strong families, community and religious institutions, stable housing, income, education, and recreational outlets, and the development of racial identities.

More controversially, she favors police-free schools and the hiring of many more social workers, psychologists and nurses. 

Police, she adds, should be called in as a last resort for criminal conduct; officers should play no role in “public order offenses,” including disorderly conduct, loitering, dress code violations, insubordination, profanity, petty theft and most school fights.

Police should be trained in deescalation techniques, forbidden to use racial profiling and held accountable (by reducing barriers to civil liability) for inappropriate use of force. And prosecutors should reduce or eliminate the detention and confinement of young people for skipping school, violating curfew and running away from home.

Henning remains convinced that “highly visible protests – good, bad, and ugly – educate the public, energize voters and often create a sense of civil renewal for the community.” 

They also generate a backlash, of course, and Henning’s expression of hope for reform must, alas, be tempered by what appears to be a decline in support these days for activists who change social, political, economic and racial injustice.

Dr. Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He wrote this review for the Florida Courier.