Black Kids Don’t Get Childhoods
This afternoon, I was sent the video of Miya Ponsetto attacking a 14-year-old Black boy in New York City. She accuses him of stealing her cell phone. If you haven’t seen the video yet, it is very upsetting. I’ll link it here. She has now been arrested in California and gave an excruciatingly rude interview to Gayle King, which had so many painfully embarrassing moments that even the “daddy” hat that sat atop her head doesn’t make the list of highlights.
Keyon Harrold is the 14-year-old junior of a prominent jazz musician by the same name. He is the child accused of stealing Miya’s cell phone. However, throughout the interview, Miya, 22, refers to him as a “guy” and herself as “a 22 year old girl”. She shows no remorse for what she’s done, even though her phone turned up by an Uber driver who brought it back to the hotel.
Not only does she scream and shout at Keyon Jr., she physically attacks him when he goes to leave the hotel. His dad then intervenes and knocks her to the ground in an attempt to get her off his child, which she mentions more than once during the interview, posing herself again as the victim.
As an educator and coach of Black students it was very upsetting in many ways, but mostly I feel as though the child has been somewhat forgotten in all of this. The stark reality is that Black boys and girls are regularly seen as older than they are. Their childhoods and innocence stripped from them in the eyes of strangers and authority figures regularly.
Miya’s insistence that she, herself, is young and her simultaneous rejection of the idea that she attacked a literal child is fascinating — and devastating.
I know that this is not a new notion, in fact it is painfully old. Throughout history, Black boys have been falsely accused by crying white and non-Black women. In fact, upon reading this story, I can’t help but think of Emmett Till and his accuser, Carolyn Bryant. Bryant accused Till (a 14-year-old boy) of cat-calling her at a convenience store in Money, Mississippi. She told her brother and husband, and four days later, they tortured and murdered Emmett.
She is still alive. In fact, in 2017, admitted that the entire thing had been a lie.
I can’t help but wonder what would have happened to Keyon Jr. had there not been cameras, photos, and evidence. Had they not been in New York City, but let’s say… Money, Mississippi? What would have happened to Keyon Harrold Sr., for defending his child from an assault? If it hadn’t been recorded, or the phone hadn’t turned up, and Miss Ponsetto cried to police that she was actually the one who was attacked… I know that this story could have ended up much differently, and I can’t help but imagine that Keyon Sr. knew the stakes as well.
It should come as no surprise to educators that Black children are regularly seen as older than their white peers. In fact, the American Psychological Association published a study entitled The Essence of Innocence: Consequence of Dehumanizing Black Children. The study found that that “Black boys as young as 10 may not be viewed in the same light of childhood innocence as their white peers, but are instead more likely to be mistaken as older, be perceived as guilty and face police violence if accused of a crime.”
Black boys are routinely placed in special education far more often than their white counterparts. In fact, a devastating 80% of special education students are Black and Latino boys. Black boys are routinely more vulnerable to violence from police officers as well. Black children are 10 times more likely to be shot by police than their white counterparts over a 16-year span of time. It makes sense when considering Black children as young as 12 have been publicly slaughtered by police force in recent years. Publicly, for everyone to see, and still the officer was not charged.
Black children are regularly seen as adults while young white adults see their early twenties as an extension of their teenage years. To put it simply, Miss Ponsetto insisted she must receive the grace for being young, meanwhile not extending that same grace to an actually innocent Black child. She is not a victim. She is not a girl. She is a grown woman who must be held accountable for her actions.
When I was 22, I was a teacher, and certified to teach 1st-6th graders. I was old enough to educate 14 year olds, and had I ever accused a child of stealing my phone and jumped on their backs, physically assaulting them, I would have been old enough to face the consequences of such a brain-dead action.
Miya wants to act as a grown woman when it suits her, but she also can try and play little girl if that suits her. She benefits in this way, flip-flopping whichever way garners her more sympathy. Society has allowed this behavior from white women for a very, very long time.
To quote Miya’s final, astonishingly rude comment to Gayle King: “Enough.”
