Karen Hunter and Dr. Danielle Hairston say the Karmelo Anthony case is not just about the courtroom outcomes but also about whether Black children are ever fully allowed to be children.
On a recent episode of Hunter’s SiriusXM show, the two discussed Anthony, a Texas teen Hunter said had been convicted of murder and sentenced to 35 years. Hunter said the case has stayed with her because of how quickly some people seemed to strip him of childhood.
“When I look at Karmelo Anthony, I see a little boy,” Hunter told Dr. Hairston. “I don’t see a grown man. I see a little boy. And I don’t think the world sees him that way, and that’s so sad to me.”
Hairston, a psychiatry residency director at Howard University, said that kind of adultification has followed Black children for generations and that many Black psychiatrists began talking more openly about it after the killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.
“This is clearly a 12-year-old little boy who has a toy,” Hairston said. “This was a kid,” before noting that Black boys are often read as older, bigger and more dangerous than they are, while Black girls are also denied innocence.
“When we look at Black youth, they’re treated as adults,” Hairston continued. “They’re looked at as adults. You don’t even see the innocence, and that has an impact on them. Their mental health is traumatizing.” Hunter then asked how families are supposed to protect children who may attend “great” schools but still feel watched, judged or isolated.
“What’s going to happen to him mentally when he is the other?” Hairston added. “There’s no community. They don’t have a sense of belonging.”
According to Dr. Hairston, accountability and compassion are not opposites.
“Both can be true,” she said. “There’s a loss of two lives.”
But she added that brain development matters.
“Scientifically, your brain is not even developed. Karmelo Anthony’s brain is not even fully developed at 17.”
Watch the discussion below.
