Kristin Henning, "The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth" (Pantheon Books, 2021)

New Books in African American Studies

Drawing upon twenty-five years of experience rep­resenting Black youth in Washington, D.C.'s juve­nile courts, Kristin Henning confronts America's irrational, manufactured fears of these young peo­ple and makes a powerfully compelling case that the crisis in racist American policing begins with its relationship to Black children.

Henning explains how discriminatory and aggressive policing has socialized a generation of Black teenagers to fear, resent, and resist the police, and she details the long-term consequences of rac­ism that they experience at the hands of the police and their vigilante surrogates. She makes clear that unlike White youth, who are afforded the freedom to test boundaries, experiment with sex and drugs, and figure out who they are and who they want to be, Black youth are seen as a threat to White Amer­ica and are denied healthy adolescent development. She examines the criminalization of Black adoles­cent play and sexuality, and of Black fashion, hair, and music. She limns the effects of police presence in schools and the depth of police-induced trauma in Black adolescents.

Especially in the wake of the recent unprece­dented, worldwide outrage at racial injustice and inequality, The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth (Pantheon Books, 2021) is an essential book for our moment.

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