Consequences When African-American Boys Are Seen As Older

NPR:

But first, we’re going to take a closer look at some new research about the way some boys are viewed by adults. This work was recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. And it found that African-American boys as young as 10 years old were significantly less likely to be viewed as children than their white peers. The report suggests that this could have serious implications for the way African-American boys are viewed by the criminal justice system and by society as a whole.

The title of that report is “The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children.” Phillip Atiba Goff is that one of the lead authors of that research. He’s also an assistant professor of social psychology at UCLA, and he’s with us now. Welcome. Thanks so much for joining us.

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And we describe the misdemeanor like vandalism or getting into a scuffle at school or they were suspected of felonies like car theft or something like that. We have that next to the picture and just people how old does this person look. And replicating previous work by Sandra Graham, Brian Lowery, Jennifer Eberhardt, other folks who had found similar kinds of things, people saw the black children as much older than the white children of the same age suspected of the same crime.

Read the whole story: NPR

See Phillip Goff at the 26th APS Annual Convention.