FREEDOM TO MOVE, FREEDOM TO BE? Prioritizing the innocence of Black and Brown young people Frankly. is a podcast that explores the health and wellbeing of adolescents from the perspectives and lived experiences of young people on Chicago’s South and West sides. Co-produced by Chicago youth Kaya Thomas and Alizha Vernon and Ci3 at the University of Chicago, Frankly. is a seven-episode series that builds on the findings from Ci3’s Adolescent X study, a project that uses narrative-based methods to explore the messages that young people receive about their bodies, identities, and sexual health. Frankly. centers the voices of young people marginalized by race, gender, and/or sexual orientation as they navigate various social environments, develop their identities, and understand the world around them. Frankly. aims to contextualize the stories of young people by examining the ways in which structural barriers and institutions impede on their health and wellbeing.
The Frankly. Podcast Mixtape is a discussion guide that accompanies the podcast. It is a compilation of links to articles, archival and audio-visual materials, films and documentaries, research institutions, related Adolescent X research findings, and resources that provide more insights into the topics explored in each episode. It will also highlight Chicago-based community spaces that uplift the brilliance and diversity of Chicago’s South and West Side neighborhoods.
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Episode Summary In episode five, we unpack the adultification of Black teens, its historical roots, and how it impacts teens’ mobility, safety, and bodily autonomy within public and private spaces. We link adultification to the normalization of over-policing, sexual harassment, and racial discrimination. A young person who participated in our Adolescent X study shares her experience being stalked by an older man while taking public transportation to and from school. As she recounts her story, she explains the various sources of help she sought to prevent further harassment—friends, family, teachers, security guards. Still, there was little resolution to this issue. Adultification is defined in the groundbreaking 2017 Girl Interrupted Report as the perception of Black girls as less innocent and more adult-like than white girls of the same age. This perpetuates the stereotypes of Black girls as angry, aggressive, and hypersexualized. We hear from Dr. Darnell Motley, psychologist and researcher at the University of Chicago, about why and how adultification manifests in our everyday lives. There are ways that we see Black girls as more sexual, more adult, more sort of mature physically, more accessible than we should. We don't prioritize their innocence. We don't make room for that innocence in the same way we would for someone who was different, who was white, more often than not. -- Dr. Darnell Motley Kaya shares how her body is seen differently because she is a young, Black woman. In this episode, we stress that we cannot have a conversation about adultification without first understanding the history of hypersexualization of Black girls and women in the United States. Hypersexualization is the perception that Black girls and women are sexually deviant. Kaya speaks to the hypersexualization of Black girls and women, which is rooted in the enduring and dehumanizing stereotypes that emerged during the US slavery and Jim Crow eras. This perception still impacts Black teens’ mobility, safety, and bodily autonomy, as illustrated in the Adolescent X participant’s story from earlier. Part of our work, as individuals and within our communities, is to tap into expansive imagination, liberating speculation, and reframing what we perceive to be impossible in order to make it possible. This reimagining also includes asking ourselves: How can we begin to engage in meaningful dialogue about these complex issues so that we can understand how to address them? And, in doing so, we can start to make our school hallways, public spaces, and community spaces safer for those who are most vulnerable.
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FINDINGS ABOUT SAFETY FROM THE ADOLESCENT X STUDY In our 2019 Adolescent X study, safety was the predominant theme that arose when discussing community-level experiences and environments. The adultification of Black and Brown young people directly impacts their level of safety in the world. Our findings also highlighted safety as a gendered issue for young people. Female-identified participants bore the brunt of experiences of sexual harassment and stalking, while male-identified participants bore the brunt of racial profiling and over-policing. They named school and public transit as spaces where they feel the most vulnerable. One male-identified participant described the impact of over-policing on his perception of the South Side of Chicago: Usually my neighborhood is pretty safe so if I go somewhere like 75th or something and I go deep down and… I just kind of get like defenseless I guess. I've been on the South Side my whole life and I grew up around people like that, but it's like say I'm over here and I'm easy going but then it's like I move back to where I was and it's like okay, now I have to put some guard up. Historically and culturally, Chicago is a racially-segregated city, which can be seen and felt throughout the neighborhoods on the South and West Sides. These neighborhoods are seen as more dangerous than North Side neighborhoods due to racial and economic disparities. Experientially, the map of Chicago is overlaid with a map of varying levels of safety for Black and Brown young people. The quotation above illustrates how structural violence and racism impact everyday lives: as this young man travels further South on the train, he feels the narrative of violence seep into his perception, causing him to feel vulnerable and unsafe. Young people build a geographical knowledge of safety that affects their freedom to move freely about the city.
In this episode, we link adultification to the mistreatment of young people of color, and examine and discuss Girlhood Interrupted, Georgetown Law Center in Poverty and Inequality’s 2017 groundbreaking study that explored the gendered racial bias against Black girls. The study asked adults fundamental questions about their views of either Black girls or white girls across three age categories: 0-4, 10-14, and 15-19 years old.
These questions were intended to measure perceptions of innocence and included questions such as: “Do Black girls [or white girls] need comforting?” and “Do Black girls [or white girls] need to be protected? Check out this video, END ADULTIFICATION BIAS VIDEO, highlighting some of the stories discussed by Black women and girls during focus group research conducted by the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty's Initiative on Gender Justice and Opportunity.
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CONVERSATION STARTERS Conversation Starters are prompts that aim to encourage deeper reflection about the topics discussed in each episode. These prompts help readers get the ball rolling on contextualizing the stories from young people and insights from adult experts regarding consent. Readers can reflect alone or share them with family, friends, or classmates. ●
This episode talks about the concept of adultification and how adultifying Black and Brown young people has dehumanized people of color over time. What stories stuck out to you from the episode? Why?
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How is the adultification of Black and Brown young people connected to the history of slavery in America?
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Near the end of the episode, listeners are invited to think about the ways that our thinking is limited. What would we do differently if we focused on reducing violence and oppression at the source (instead of teaching young people how to cope with or avoid violence and oppression as if it is inevitable)?
Questions that started our own conversations To give readers a sense of how the Frankly. team framed this episode, here are the questions that prompted us into deeper reflection on consent, coercion, and bodily autonomy. We were able to construct a narrative arc in this episode with these driving questions. ❖ What happens when the very people tasked with helping young people thrive turn a blind eye, victim-blame, or inflict harm? ❖ What is rape culture? What is the history of rape culture? How is rape culture perpetuated in our society? ❖ How are young Black and Latinx folks affected by gender and racial violence (adultification, dehumanization and criminalization, misogyny, etc.)? ❖ What are silencing tactics that adults use? What are the effects of these tactics on the lives of young people? ❖ What are other options? How can we imagine and act to create better futures? ❖ Where do young people feel safe and free? How do young people envision the future?
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RESOURCES + LINKS WAYWARD LIVES, BEAUTIFUL EXPERIMENTS BY SADIYA HARTMAN (BOOK) Beautifully written and deeply researched, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments examines the revolution of black intimate life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. In wrestling with the question of what a free life is, many young black women created forms of intimacy and kinship indifferent to the dictates of respectability and outside the bounds of law. They cleaved to and cast off lovers, exchanged sex to subsist, and revised the meaning of marriage. Longing and desire fueled their experiments in how to live. They refused to labor like slaves or to accept degrading conditions of work. Here, for the first time, these women are credited with shaping a cultural movement that transformed the urban landscape. Through a melding of history and literary imagination, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments recovers these women’s radical aspirations and insurgent desires. Now more than ever, it's important to look boldly at the reality of race and gender bias -- and understand how the two can combine to create even more harm. Kimberlé Crenshaw uses the term "intersectionality" to describe this phenomenon; as she says, if you're standing in the path of multiple forms of exclusion, you're likely to get hit by both. In this moving talk, she calls on us to bear witness to this reality and speak up for victims of prejudice. - The Urgency of Intersectionality by Kimberlé Crenshaw | TedTalks
ARTICLES: Listening to Black Women and Girls | Georgetown Law Why Won’t Society Let Black Girls Be Children? | NY Times How US Schools Punish Black kids | Vox The Debate Over Police in Chicago Public Schools | WTTW Betrayed: Chicago Schools fail to Protect Students from Sexual Abuse and Assault, Leaving Lasting Damage | Chicago Tribune
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Production Team Melissa Gilliam MD, MPH Ireashia Bennett Valerie Reynolds Kaya Thomas Erisa Apantaku Liz Futrell Alizha Vernon Robin Cogdell Crystal Tyler Erin Garcia Soo Young Lee Adriana Brodyn Melissa Sherwin
Creator, Ci3 Founder and Director Co-Host, Executive Producer, Sound Engineer Senior Producer, Story Editor Co-Host, Ci3 Fellow, Producer Podcast Consultant Project Manager, Producer Ci3 Fellow, Producer Lead Graphic Designer Story Editor Story Editor Story Editor, Researcher Story Editor, Researcher Story Editor
Back Cover Frankly. is a seven-episode podcast that explores the health, wellbeing and lived experiences of Black and Latinx young people on Chicago’s South and West sides. Frankly. centers the voices of young people who have been marginalized due to their race, gender, and/or sexual orientation as they navigate various social environments, develop their identities, and understand the world around them. The podcast engages young people in conversations about their unique experiences with consent, healthy relationships, over-policing, sexual harassment, sex ed, and health equity. Additionally, Frankly. aims to contextualize these stories by examining the ways in which structural barriers and institutions impede young people’s overall health and wellbeing.
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The Frankly. podcast a Ci3 initiative. Ci3 is a research center at the University of Chicago, addressing the social and structural determinants of adolescent sexual and reproductive health. At Ci3, we envision a world in which all youth emerge into adulthood with agency over their bodies and futures. Ci3 is committed to empowering young people, conducting innovative research, and uncovering opportunities for policy and systemic change. For more information visit: ci3.uchicago.edu
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