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Drawing on critical childhood studies, Michael J. Dumas and Joseph Derrick Nelson argue that Black boyhood is socially unimagined and unimaginable, largely due to the devalued position and limited consideration of Black girls and boys within the broader social conception of childhood. In addition, the "crisis" focus of the public discourse on Black males-focused as it is on adult Black men-makes it difficult to authentically see young Black boys as human beings in and of themselves. A critical reimagining of Black boyhood, the authors contend, demands that educators, policy makers, and community advocates pursue pedagogical and policy interventions that create spaces for Black boys to construct and experience robust childhoods. Further, a (re)commitment to critical research on Black boyhood should inspire inquiry that asks young Black boys who they are, what they think, and what they desire in their lives now.
When twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed while playing in his neighborhood park, the police officer who fired the gun radioed in, "Shots fired. Male down. Black male, maybe 20" (Izadi & Holley, 2014). The officer imagined the toy gun in Tamir's hand as real and a threat, at least in part because he presumed the boy to be a man with violent intent rather than a child deeply engaged in make-believe play.
Similarly, neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman could not imagine Trayvon Martin as a boy who might reasonably be sauntering home, who might reasonably be frightened at being pursued by an adult. Instead, Zimmerman's defense for killing Trayvon-and the public discourse surrounding the inci- dent-centered on constructing the seventeen-year-old as an adult man with suspect movements, threatening physicality, and malevolent intentions (EvansWinters & Bethune, 2014; Fasching-Varner, Reynolds, Albert, & Martin, 2014; Love & Bradley, in press).
We argue here that Black boyhood itself has been rendered both unimagined and unimaginable. For us, Black boyhood is the material and discursive social phenomenon of childhood for Black boys. Rather than a developmental phase on the way to Black manhood, Black boyhood is a social experience in the now-not merely for some future existence or accomplishment-in which Black boys possess their own agential subjectivity and impact the world even as they remain vulnerable to the material effects of racism, the narrow constructions of masculinity...