Adultification and intersectionality
What adultification and intersectionality are and why they're important to Brighton & Hove’s efforts to become an anti-racist city.
About adultification
Adultification bias is a form of racial prejudice. It's where children and young people from diverse or minority communities are treated as older than they are.
An example of this is when a young Black or minority person's true age is questioned by an authority figure. The young person then faces more severe consequences for their misbehaviour, whilst a young White person would have their young age considered.
About adultification
Intersectional thinking, or intersectionality, invites us to explore:
- how people experience the world
- how this impacts the way we interact with others
- the extent to which we feel able to share our lived realities
These experiences are shaped and influenced by aspects of our identity, such as our:
- ethnicity
- age
- gender
- sexual orientation
- class
- abilities
Everyone has their own unique experiences of discrimination and oppression. We must consider everything and anything that can marginalise people.
Our experiences are multi-layered because these different components of our identity are interrelated.