S7:E8 | Every Black Parent Needs to Know How America Criminalizes Our Youth

Tony and Toni sit down with advocate, author, and defense attorney Kristin Henning to reveal the truth about the juvenile justice system that every Black parent must hear.  A real-life super-shero fighting every day to fight racial injustice in the U.S. penal system.  "We've got to shift the narrative to see and treat Black children as children." Listen to discover ways you can make a difference! 

Sponsored by: The Ms. Pat Show. Season 2 now streaming only on BET+. To learn more, visit BET.plus  Stream Black culture.

Transcript

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Toni

Kris Henning, you are my hero!

[00:00:05] Kris
Is that right? I'll take that. I'll take that. I don't know why, but I'll take that. 

[00:00:10] Toni
Oh, my goodness. Welcome to Black Family Table Talk. 

[00:00:14] Kris
I'm excited that you all are having me on. I've been reading about you all and my publicist told me about you. I was like, wow. Yes.

[00:00:25] Tony

Is that right? 

[00:00:26] Kris

Yeah.

[00:00:28] VO

Welcome to season seven of Black Family Table Talk. We are your hosts, Toni and Tony. Join us on our journey to discover ways to build a strong black family. This season is sponsored by ABTF Travels. Join us as we travel each year beyond borders, off the beaten path to immerse ourselves in cultures that celebrate our Pan African heritage. Each journey is specially curated to provide you with what promises to be a bucket list, transformative experience.

[00:01:03] Tony

I can't wait until we go again. 

[00:01:06] Toni
Me either, Tony.

[00:01:08] Tony
 In the meantime, we have a very special guest joining us at the kitchen table this week. Listen up.

[00:01:16] Toni

Out of all the conversations that we have, I think this is probably the most moving, passionate, important. The work that you do is, I'm telling you, you're a superhero. The work that you do is so relevant to, and critical, and crucial to the survival of us as a people. I want to know how you got to do the work. What's your story, your background?

[00:01:48] Toni

How did you come to be this iconic rescuer? 

[00:01:53] Kris
Well, you know who I'm going to push back on iconic rescuer. Right? Like, for no other reason. That's not why any of us is in this work, right?

[00:02:01] Kris

And, I wish I could rescue all the kids that I work with and all the families that I work with, but I am trying very, very hard to make a difference in the lives of the young people that I serve individually, but then also getting this kind of conversation out into the world, so that folks know what they don't know, right? It's shocking, I'm telling you. Thinking about Black Family Table Talk, I could not agree with you more in terms of a more relevant conversation for us to be having. There isn't one. I mean, there are a lot of conversations we have to have right now, but this is the heart of what it means to be a black family, to be black parents.

[00:02:42] Kris

And so, yes. And so, you know, how do I walk into space? I walk into space as a black woman from the south, right? I grew up in a family of preachers and teachers who have always centered conversations about children at the dinner table, at the church meeting, at the school house. And so, it's just been natural as a part of the conversation.

[00:03:11] Kris

I also come from a family of teachers and preachers. You also come from a family of activists, very vocal on all of these critical issues. So, I think certainly my earliest connection with the work just comes from being in my family. And then beyond that, I had an ‘Aha moment.’ When I was a freshman in college, I had an internship or an apprenticeship, it was called, in Durham, North Carolina, at the local juvenile court. And my assignment was to meet with the prosecuting attorney.

[00:03:52] Kris

And I showed up. I walked into that court building, and just as I turned the corner, heading down to the juvenile courtroom, I see a line of children shackled together at their arms and at their feet and across their bellies. And I'm thinking, I stopped dead in my tracks, thinking, you've got to be kidding. I had no idea that this happened in contemporary America, that we were still shackling children. And so, that was my ‘Aha moment.’

[00:04:23] Kris

And you can imagine in a place like Durham, even when I was a freshman in the 80's, that its disproportionately black and brown children, right? And so, I walk in to finally make my way into the courtroom, and I sit down next to the prosecutor and I point across the room and I say, I really want to be over there. And I was pointing at the table with the defense attorneys, and she was like, yeah, I'll introduce you to them. And that was it. I knew then, I was going to be a youth advocate and I was going to be a defense attorney.

[00:04:56] Kris

So, I'm actually really one of the lucky ones. By the time I made it to law school, I knew what I was going to do, and that's a luxury that I think a lot of folks don't have. 

[00:05:04] Toni
I have a background in policing, and I worked for the prosecutor's office for four years. My dad was a cop.

[00:05:12] Toni

My mom was a correction officer. So, I know exactly what you're talking about. I advocated for fairness and justice. But, just give us a little bit of background about what is your day to day like in your role as an attorney and a professor? 

[00:05:31] Kris

Yes, so I am a professor of law at Georgetown Law School. But, in that capacity, I teach a clinical course, which means that I take third year law students into our local DC Superior Court, and we represent children who have been accused of crime. And it's everything from simple assault to far more serious carjacking, theft, attempted homicide, robbery, whatever the charge might be. And so, my day to day looks in part like that.

[00:06:03] Kris

Like, what does it mean to go to court and argue, and we're just coming, I don't know that we're coming out of the pandemic, but we're in a different phase of the pandemic. And so, we've been virtual for a couple of years or a year and a half, and now we're going back into that space. It means going out, knocking on doors, interviewing witnesses. It means getting to know your client, building rapport, relationship with clients and with their families, understanding their history and their context, which brought them to the front door of the courthouse in the first place. And I should tell you, Toni, I mean, I have a range of clients, right?

[00:06:39] Kris

I have clients who are entering that court space for what I call normal adolescent behaviors for which no child should be in court. Right? That's a huge part of what I talk about. And then, I have clients who are engaged in the more serious offenses.

[00:06:56] Kris

But the question becomes, how do we as a society respond? Right? Do we engage in a rehabilitative response for young people, or is it a dehumanizing response that serves no one, neither public safety nor the development of the youth? And so, those are the critical questions that I am pushing. But that's just a tiny piece of what I do, if you can believe that.

[00:07:19] Kris

That's just one of my jobs. People say I have, like, five jobs. But in addition to that, I do a lot of advocacy around racial justice reform. And so, I have helped develop a number of initiatives like our Ambassadors for Racial Justice program, where we bring in a cohort of youth advocates and defenders who are specifically committed for a year of their career to fighting racial injustice. We run as a racial justice training webinar, which every one of your listeners is invited to, and we talk about everything from black identity development, which is very much about the family.

[00:07:58] Kris

We talk about adolescent development in black and white. We talk about the traumatic effects of policing. We talk about cops in schools. So, you get the idea. But, we're doing training series.

[00:08:09] Kris

I train judges, prosecutors, defenders, probation officers, social workers. So, I do a lot of that work. I do a lot of research and writing. I have a book that just came out, The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth.

[00:08:24] Kris

So, I write and I give talks and we testify before city council. There's so much that we're doing. This work is all consuming. It's the direct representation, but then it's also the policy work. It's the educating of communities about what's going on.

[00:08:41] Toni

So, how can the community rally behind you? What are three basic things that we can do to save our children? Because right now, this experiment is killing us generation after the democratic experiment is killing us, generation after generation. And as a mom of four kids, how do we save our children from these systems? Because we don't have time to wait for training, education, because it seems like it is the criminalization of black and brown children.

[00:09:17] Kris

Yeah, it's a wonderful question, Toni. Your question sits at that intersection of, is this an abolitionist movement or is this a reform movement or is it some combination of both? And I'm going to tell you, as an advocate who works with children every day in the system, it's got to be both, right? We need that abolitionist track. But, I'm not going to stop the reform work because there are kids tomorrow who've got to show up in court and I got to protect them.

[00:09:40] Kris

But let me back out, and you ask what are three things we as a community, you as your listeners, can do? And, one of the first things that I will say is let me put a macro arch on this thing. We've got to shift the narrative and learn how to see children, black children as children and treat black children as children. We got to get the rest of the world to do that. I'm going to be honest.

[00:10:02] Kris

That's the hardest struggle that we've got right now. And so, how do we slowly or in whatever ways, how do we get there? One of the things is that every single child, I say this in my book, every single child deserves at least one irrationally caring adult in their life. Huge. And every child would do better to have a team of irrationally caring adults.

[00:10:27] Kris

So, what in the world does that mean? It means the recognition, guess what? Children are children. Teenagers are teenagers. They're going to make mistakes. And that doesn't mean that I'm not going to hold them accountable, but it means that I'm not going to ostracize, criminalize, embarrass, and dehumanize, but that instead I'm going to support, guide and redirect and I'm still going to love you and still going to care for you.

[00:10:50] Kris

So, we've got to have irrationally caring adults for all children. So that's one thing, and I think that's really important because it puts our black children in proximity, or I should say it differently, it puts the rest of society in proximity with black children. There's so much, the bias, right, leads so much of America to believe what they see in the media, to believe that old 1990 super predator myth that black children are going to rape, maim, and kill all of America, right? And so that the only way really to get through that, is not the only way, but one of the important ways is to create that proximity, creating opportunities and telling stories, right, that show that black children are children. And so in my book, The Rage of Innocence, I spend a lot of time, not just talking about data and research.

[00:11:44] Kris

I talk about the children. My goal is to get readers to see themselves in those stories and say, you know what? I did that when I was a kid, or my teenager is doing that right now, and they didn't go to prison for being a kid. So, that's one big piece is like creating these rationally, caring adults.

[00:12:03] Kris

The second thing that we have to do right away is radically reduce the footprint of police in the lives of all children, but especially black and brown children who are so disproportionately targeted, right? So, that means everything from decriminalizing normal adolescent behaviors to police-free schools. It means reducing the size of juvenile court jurisdiction by at least 80% at most 20% of the kids might belong there. And I actually don't even say that this is my non-abolitionist answer, right? But, if we abolished all of juvenile court and converted to a public health, mental health response, we wouldn't need juvenile courts at all.

[00:12:44] Kris

But we're not there yet. At a minimum, we need to reduce the size of our current legal system by at least 80%. And then, I think we got to replace it with a public health response to school safety and community safety, which means a public health approach is attentive to healthy relationships and nurturing relationships between adults and children. It is trauma responsive, it is restorative, and it's racially equitable, right?

[00:13:13] Kris

And on the ground, that means we need to replace police officers with a continuum of mental health providers, with social, emotional learning in the school curriculum, with restorative justice programming, peer intervention strategies. Right? And even in schools where there is real violence, violence interrupters, credible messengers, there's a range of evidence and best practices that have been proven to work better than these traditional law enforcement responses. So, we've got a lot of work.

[00:13:44] Kris

Every person listening can take a stand, speak out at city council, learn more about what's happening, be that irrationally caring adults for some child that's not their own, right? That's what we're called into this space to do. 

[00:13:57] Toni
That was a lot. Wow.

[00:13:59] Toni

And I try to just break it down to everyday practical because you're super smart, you've got a law degree, you're a professor at Georgetown. But, I want to break it down for everyday parent who's just trying to work, raise their kids, send them to a good school, hoping that they get the education. Because at the end of the day, that's all we want. We just want our kids to just do well, be happy, be productive. 99.9% of the people who have children want that for their kids.

[00:14:30] Toni

But what does it mean? Like, what do I do tomorrow when I wake up? And, I have some answers in my head. Getting involved with city council, definitely. And you're talking about local advocacy.

[00:14:43] Kris

That's right. 

[00:14:45] Toni
What does that translate to in terms of what I do after I've worked all day? I'm trying to get dinner on the table and I'm trying to get these kids to do their homework. What does that mean? 

[00:14:58] Kris
You know what, that's such a good question.

[00:15:00] Kris

And I think it means a lot of things, right? I'm going to do two things. One is, what does it mean to be that exhausted parent who comes home after a day of work and trying to figure out where they have time or space to enter? So, there's that.

[00:15:12] Kris

Then, there's this other thing about how do we have conversations with our children and how do we prepare our children to do and to have space to engage on this level? Let me talk about that, because I think that's where there's a lot of power, and that is, I have been so incredibly impressed with youth activism today. I have been quite blown away. Been in city council hearings where I turn around and there's like 200 kids behind me ready to talk because their social studies teacher brought them, or we figured out a way to get the word out.

[00:15:44] Kris

We've seen kids protesting, active in Black Lives Matter, taking a knee in their high school, the march in response to gun violence, and children speaking out about immigration rights, and DACA, and police-free schools. You guys, I mean, children are on point today and powerful. And so, maybe part of what this looks like for a parent, right, is at the dinner table, right? Or, at the Saturday family gathering. It's talking about creating space for children to share with their parents how they're feeling.

[00:16:19] Kris

If they had an opportunity to change any one thing in their school and their community, what would that be? So then, let's talk about how we get there. And trying to not only, I think it's healthy, right, for children who are experiencing these types of racial trauma, the traumatic effects of policing, the traumatic effects of criminalization, to have a healthy, safe space to talk about that, there's that. But then, empowering them to act on it in ways that are safe and healthy and saying, hey, look, maybe it's in the church space. Can we mount a campaign?

[00:16:56] Kris

And it could be a small campaign. Brainstorm with me, son, daughter. How do you fix it? What do you want to do? Do you have a couple of friends who might be in this with you?

[00:17:07] Kris

Do you have a teacher who might be an ally or partner with you in this? Can you pull the kids together for pizza night? And let's talk about what we can do. It's creating spaces, sharing with them videos. Wow, that powerful,

powerful video. Did you all see that one out of Michigan? That 13 year old girl who stood up in city council after a shooting, and she is man tearing city council apart just recently. This is all over social media right now. Just search for that, and I mean powerhouse and like showing your young people some of those videos and saying, where are the spaces in which you could speak?

[00:17:43] Kris

What can you do? I think, that's the way it marries, right? Like, what a powerful bonding moment for parent and child, but it's also an empowering moment when parents at some point, the fight has got to transfer to the younger generation, anyway.

[00:17:57] Tony
 As I hear you talking, Chris, it reminds me of a time I worked for this nonprofit organization some years ago called the Ready Foundation. And Ready stood for rigorous education for deserving youth.

[00:18:08] Tony

And, I essentially was a, quote unquote, social worker, but I was a community activist that worked with children and after school programs. And one of the things we did was work with the parents and the teachers. I was the advocate to bring both the school system and the parents together. And if the parents had needs, they needed GED, they needed job, or they needed England as a second language, I was the person that will go out and connect them with the social services that was needed to help the family, so the family can have a structure to work with.

[00:18:42] Tony

And then, if the child needed tutoring, after school programs, and advocate with the teacher, I did that as well. So, something tells me there's a breakdown in our society where we don't have that tribal atmosphere anymore, where we're part of a tribe and we all in this together, and we're going to help one another. If it's an uncle, a cousin, or a grandfather, someone, we bought into this thing that we got to figure it out on our own. I don't want to share any information with anyone, and no one wants to help anybody anymore. We used to have a time neighbors have helped each other, so I don't know what happened, but we got away from looking out for each other.

[00:19:23] Tony

My brother's keeper, my sister's keeper, we got away from that, and it's been for yourself. You got to figure it out, and no one's here to help you. And now, we're going to have to change things with schools and policing to fix a problem that typically it was in house stuff that we can deal with and work with one another. Your comments or thoughts on that? 

[00:19:44] Kris
Yeah, so here's what immediately comes to mind. My immediate thought is we have to check our own biases ourselves. And that, part of this deterioration, I think intra race deterioration, comes from the fact that many black communities, many black folks, have bought into this sense that black children are dangerous. That's what I'm saying. So, like, ask yourselves.

[00:20:11] Kris

I tell people all the time, and I'm having conversations about implicit racial bias. It's not just across race, it's an intra race. So, if you walk through a park and you see five black kids with a black hoodie on, are you afraid? If your answer is yes, you got biased, right? And so, that some of what you're seeing is that, and so part of the work, not all, part of that work is checking our own biases and understanding why it is that we can't see our own children, our own black children, as children.

[00:20:43] Kris

There's an inordinate amount of fear of black kids put on us, to be quite frank, through the media, through society, through civil rights era super predator myth. All of those have been an extension, and we bought in subconsciously. So, there's that. Then, the second thing is even when crime goes up in a community, and you know, as we're coming out of this pandemic, we are seeing a little uptick in crime, and people are afraid even within your own neighborhood.

[00:21:10] Kris

I'm a black person. I want to be safe, too. I want to be able to send my kids to school safely too. But the question is, how do we get there? And this comes back to your point about my brother's keeper and how do we as a community rally around and come up with answers.

[00:21:24] Kris 

And, what we're doing is that we take the only tools that are given to us. So, if the state says to you, all right, I hear you, you're telling me your community is grappling with violence, then the tool I'm going to give you is police officers, and that's the tool we accept, right? Instead of demanding something else, instead of demanding those alternative best practices that are consistent with public health. And so, that part of it is to check our own bias but demand what works. And demanding what works is not the overpolicing and the criminalization of black children for those things that don't need to be criminalized.

[00:22:02] Kris

And so, what we see happening is, yes, there'll be an uptick in carjacking or an uptick in shooting for a season. And so then, we bring in all the troops, the military troops want to come in, and we want to shut down kids for just being kids. No, that's not the target population, right? I need you to come in with laser, maybe I don't need you to come in. I want you to partner with me.

[00:22:25] Kris

You, whatever state resources you can give me, partner with me, so we can solve this problem together, right? Whether it's credible messengers which come from the community, give me the resources to have a well-established, well-resourced, credible messenger and violence intervention, violence interruption program that is community-based and led by folks in that community and then, yes, state, you can provide some supplemental resources, right? But, it's not you come in and over-police our black children and put them all in jail because actually the research shows by over-policing and over-criminalizing, we actually reduce public safety instead of increasing public safety, we increase crime instead of reducing crime, because kids live in a stressed out, traumatized environment, and that's what produces additional crime. So, I hope that's sort of helpful in thinking about this.

[00:23:16] Tony

Yeah. What are your thoughts on the political will to put the structure in place for that to happen? I mean, are we doing enough as politicians or are they doing enough to raise the issue?

[00:23:31] Kris: 

So politicians, you know, my answer is no, by and large. And, what do I mean by no by and large? I think that takes a couple of things. It takes courage. It takes courage to stand up to the entire constituency and say, I hear you that you are worried about crime in your neighborhood.

[00:23:48] Kris

But. I'm telling you, if we stay the course and use best practice public health approach, we will solve crime. People want immediate ultimate responses and what's visible, what is an immediate response? Have the whatever, the riot squad come in in their blues and their guns, so it takes courage to stand up and say, I know that's what you want, but it's actually not the right answer. We need to go this public health approach, which may not look the same immediately tomorrow, but it will work over the long term. So I think one, there's a lack of courage, and to be honest, I get it, right?

[00:24:25] Kris

They're trying to appease their constituents. It also takes resources. Well, guess what? I think we have the resources, but it requires a reallocation of existing resources. So, when we talk about police-free schools, there are reports that talk about, I believe it's the ACLU report, how there are millions of students who go to school with police officers present in their school, but with no counselors, right?

[00:24:49] Kris

And, with no mental health providers. That's the problem that we have to fix. That means it's a shifting of dollars from these traditional law enforcement responses, metal detectors, police presence, cameras in the school, and replace that with this continuum of mental health services, trauma-informed responses, social-emotional learning, smaller class sizes, those kinds of things. That takes time. It takes resources, and it takes courage. And, that's where you see the shortcoming on the political side. 

[00:25:18] Toni
I so wholeheartedly agree. I can tell you a time when I worked for the prosecutor's office, a short story where this detective had there were two perpetrators and one victim. Two kids were white, one was black. The black kid and the white kid went to set up the victim who was white, to rob him of his stereo equipment.

[00:25:40] Toni 

So, they set the pretense that they were going to buy the stereo equipment from this white child. And, when it got down to it, they stole the equipment. One white child and one black child stole the equipment. But, the only one that was arrested was the black child. And when I, as a prosecutor's investigator, called up the detective and asked him, why wasn't the white kid arrested? His response to me, wait for it. Listen, he said, that white kid came in with his dad. He's a good kid. So, I let him go. 

[00:26:13] Kris
My God.

[00:26:15] Toni

Now, if I were white investigator in the prosecutor's office, that guy would have been gone free, and the black kid would have been, and they were all about the same age. The black kid would have been taking the responsibility for that crime. I wrote it up, and I wrote it up as I saw it, as I investigated. It went to the grand jury and they ended up indicting both the black kid and the white kid. And then, the prosecutor, who just happened to be white, came over to me and lauded me for seeing the whole, entire picture for what it really was. But at the end of the day, that's how the system works against our kids.

[00:27:02] Toni

That was just one example. So, we need more prosecutors, black prosecutors. We need more black investigators in the district attorneys and prosecutors' office. But we also need to vote, right, that's what I was waiting for you to say.

[00:27:19] Toni 

We need to vote and not only vote on a national level, we need to vote not for the next Barack Obama. We need to vote for the next judge, the next school board, the next district attorney and prosecutor, the next mayor. And that's where the focus should be on, and that’s what the solution is.

[00:27:41] Kris 

That’s one of, I mean, absolutely it is. Absolutely. Thank you, Toni. I often do talk about this idea of paying attention to local elections and that I actually often talk about, I actually wrote an article, I talked about the prosecutors are the most powerful people in these court systems because they hold the door, they actually open and close the front door to juvenile court jurisdiction, to criminal court jurisdiction.

[00:28:05] Kris

So, all of those are appropriate. But then, even beyond those elections though, you all, we have to continue to support them so that they don't lose the political will, right? Because their constituents are saying, I'm going to vote you out the first time there is a severe shooting by a child, what's their stand? What kind of pressure are they going to get from their constituents?

[00:28:27] Kris

And how can we back them up? So, what does that look like? Right? That means even when this is going to be hard, this is a hard sell. So, you elect the right prosecutor in the office, prosecutor gets raped over the coals by the community after some serious shooting by a child, guess what?

[00:28:42] Kris

I need the black community and the white community who's woke to stand up and support that decision, and saying, look, there are humane and alternative responses. Okay? So in your scenario, Toni, absolutely. Seeing that both children were equally implicated. But even beyond that, if somebody thinks that this white child is a good kid, did we ask the same question of the black kid? Is the black kid a good kid?

[00:29:09] Kris

Such that neither of them could maybe be in the system, such that we could refer both kids out there? Maybe not in every situation, but part of what I'm getting at is we are willing. This is huge. I talk about this a lot in my book, this notion of the difference between adolescents in black and white. Right?

[00:29:26] Kris

White adolescents are allowed to make mistakes. No child is defined by the worst thing that they've ever done. It's just not right. And so kids like, look at Kyle Rittenhouse, right? Killed two people, severely injured another, and there's a whole mass of the community who sees him as a child, who sees him as a child. A 17-year-old who got in over his head, was impulsive, reactive, going out with his peers, doing what kids do stupid, gets in over his head, and quote unquote, has to defend himself. Child. A black child, similarly situated 17 years old, hanging out with his black friend. Somebody gets shot, supposedly in self-defense.

[00:30:09] Kris

Guess what they label him? They label him as a gang. He's a gang member. We cannot see that exact same child getting in over his head, getting caught up in peer influence, and he becomes the demon. He's the game. He's the same kid as Kyle Rittenhouse. They just, the circumstances, the context may look different, but it's the same motivating behavior. Like, literally.

[00:30:32] Kris

They're like applauding. He's supposed to child now. Kyle Rittenhouse is the poster child for the conservative wing, and then our black kids are demonized even for the most serious offenses. That's why I want to talk about this, right? I talk about the criminalization of normal adolescent behaviors.

[00:30:46] Kris

But, even the way we respond to the most serious offenders, even who have killed people, who have taken people's lives, guess what? They're still children. Very, very few children in this world cannot be saved. And I am not naive, and I'm not being polyamorous. The research shows that adolescents are resilient.

[00:31:07] Tony

It's a lot that has to be done, and this is probably a topic for another day and discussion, but there needs to be a manual for black folks in particular on how to navigate the legal system, how to navigate politics. We just think, pulling the lever, that's the end all for politics. You have to raise money, you have to show up to meetings, and example Toni gave earlier, you may be overworked and things, but everybody can play a role in a lane. Identify partners, identify roles. You can do this. I can do this. We all in this together. We can figure this thing out. But, there has to be a manual to show how you can be effective in politics.

[00:31:49] Toni

It's civic engagement. Just civic lessons. 

[00:13:52] Kris 
That's right. 

[00:31:54] Tony
Yeah. That's the first thing they took out of school.

[00:31:57] Kris

Well, they're starting to add it back. I mean, this is exactly right, Tony. Right? Like, you're both. Toni, I just realized. But, they're beginning to add it back in this piece that I was talking earlier about youth activism and civic engagement.

[00:32:12] Kris

I think, this is spot on. It's like teaching kids from a very early age, how do I respond? How do I make change? And, there's been some powerful research about cultivating civic engagement and protest and reform efforts as a really important part of healthy adolescent development. And there's been some researchers, black researchers, black male researchers who looked at this issue of youth activism.

[00:32:38] Kris

I threw out the name Shawn Ginwright when I was writing my own book. I was citing to his work and looking at the ways in which teaching young people civic engagement builds leadership skills. It teaches conflict management. It helps with that cognitive development, problem-solving, logical thinking. It teaches young people how to navigate bureaucracies and teaches the importance of the vote, right, at all levels. And, it cultivates a cadre of young people who go on to be politicians, and leaders, and activists, and all the things. It's a really important piece. 

[00:33:18] Toni
The book is called Rage of Innocence by Kristin Cole Henning, professor at Georgetown Law School, as well as the director of the Juvenile Justice Center. Wow. How can people get in touch with you?

[00:33:37] Kris

So, you can go on to rageofinnocence.com. That's got all my contact information and links to the book and some of the programs. You can also Google Georgetown Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative, and then you can click on our racial justice portfolio and see the range of work that we're doing around racial justice. And then look, I give people my email address largely because you can find it online anyway, but hennink@georgetown.edu, reach out. Let's talk about these issues.

[00:34:11] Kris

I hope folks will read the book because Chapter Twelve, for example, you are talking about what are the solutions? What do we do? Chapter Twelve has ideas for all of us. And really, the stories, I think one of the things in having a conversation like that, I think a lot of us as black Americans, we think we know what this looks like, but this criminalization, the traumatic effects of policing, people don't know, even us. We don't know. There are pockets of our society. There are black and brown neighborhoods that live under constant surveillance of state actors. Where are you going?

[00:34:46] Kris

Where are you coming from? Lift up your shirt, so I can see whether or not you have a weapon in your waistband. I'm sorry, the Constitution does not permit you to examine me. 

[00:34:56] Toni
It's apartheid, period. That's it. All the information will be available in the show notes. Thank you, Kris. Oh my gosh, you are again, you're doing the work. Thank you.

[00:35:08] Kris

I appreciate you all. Thank you. Thank you for having me and creating the space for conversations like this. This is how we make a difference. So, thank you.

[00:35:17] Tony

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[00:35:25] Tony

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[00:35:43] Toni
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[00:35:54] Toni
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[00:36:25] Toni

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