PRESUMED
TO BE ADULT
by Mumia Abu-Jamal, M.A. Col. Writ. 5/22/01
All Rights Reserved
Children have never
been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to
imitate them. - James Baldwin (1924-1987)
The well-publicized spectacle of a newly-minted teenager facing a potential
life sentence without parole in the dungeons of Florida revealed the threats
that thousands of youths are facing in America.
The name Nathaniel Brazill is but the latest of a slew of youngsters who
have been treated, initially, as if they were pint-sized adults.
For the better part of a century juveniles were seen and treated as if they
were young people who were both physically and psychologically underdeveloped,
and therefore incapable of forming the requisite intent that was necessary
to constitute a criminal act. In fact, under many juvenile statutes, offenses
were not considered crimes, and upon attaining adulthood, juvenile files
were sealed. Under those old statutes, young people who committed serious
errors were able to build a life in later years that had some promise. When
many of those statutes were written, it reflected the humanitarian impulses
reflected by social, religious and political movements that saw youngsters
as people who were reformable, salvageable and inherently valuable.
As recent cases have shown us, these days are long gone. As police agencies
engage in the targeting of Black youth, the prison populations became darker
and darker. And as the Nixon-initiated (and George Wallace-imitated) 'law
and order' binges took root, so too did the transformation of age-old juvenile
statues: in essence, kids were to be seen and treated as adults.
This is but the latest manifestation of a coarsening of the relationship
between the state, and its youngest, weakest inhabitants. As scholar and
historian Manning Marable explained: "Growing up black in white America has
always been a challenge, but never more so than today. To be young and black
in the 1990s means that the basic context for human development - education,
health care, personal safety, the environment, employment, and shelter -
is increasingly problematic. To be young and black today means fighting for
survival in a harsh and frequently unforgiving urban environment." (fr. Marable,
M., "Black Radicalism & the Economy of Incarceration," in *States of Confinement:
Policing, Detention and Prisons*, Editor Joy James, , 55.)
The smooth, hairless, prepubescent caramel- colored face of a boy stares
out from a photo, his features stoic and impassive. He knows that those who
view his picture will not see him as a child, so he works as best he can,
to hide that which is childlike, for, if seen, that which is most vulnerable
is that which is easiest to be hurt.
Treated as a man, he strives to be man-like, by hiding his tears, for he
knows the men among whom he must live, who are themselves damaged, will see
tears as weakness.
And the weak become prey.
He knows that the nation into which he was born, just 14 short years ago,
does not love him. He knows that he is not seen as a young citizen, but a
kind of "alien."
He knows, at this young tender age, that he must will himself to be that
which nature itself will not allow him to be, for some years to come: a man.