By Khadijah Cunningham
Guest Column
In the last three months, I have heard so many stories of Palestinian children being killed either by bombardment or by gunshot and it feels eerily
familiar. As a Black person living in America, we see how Black children
are treated.
While white children get the talk about the birds and the bees, Black children get the talk about how the world around us treats and looks at black people. On numerous occasions, I have had this talk with my parents about how when I go into a predominantly white institution not to act up to not give these white folks a reason to do something. Why is that?
It’s because it could be the end of our lives. I’m 22 years old and I have
seen multiple instances of Black children being gunned down by the police
for simply being children. I learned of the Emmett Till story when I was
like eight years old and how he was killed because of a lie. I remember being a little kid and hearing of the story of George Stinney who was 14 when he
was executed for a rape and murder that he did not commit.
I am seeing so many instances like this when it comes to Palestinian children. I have seen Palestinian children be gunned down for throwing rocks at Israeli tanks. I have seen children get arrested and come out tortured and traumatized. I have seen so many dead children that came from rubble and yet I don’t see any sympathy for them? This is because of the adultification of children of color.
Children of color are not given grace to be children. This is another tactic of dehumanization suggesting that a black child or a Palestinian child is a grown adult capable of being a threat. Meanwhile, an actual grown white adult can go into public places shoot it up and have the excuse of “well he’s a young man.” We know that the 10,000+ children that have died in this ‘war” most likely had nothing to do with Hamas.
These children are innocent yet the news media treat them as adults stripping
them of their innocence, childhood, and humanity more than they already
have. We’ve seen so much sympathy for innocents in the Ukraine but none for
Palestinians because they are not white. This adultification of Palestinian
children and dehumanization of Palestinians as a whole needs to stop and
should be a reason to vote yes on the ceasefire resolution.