Adultification refers to the perception based off biases that perceive and treat certain children, particularly Black children, as older, less innocent, and more mature than their white counterparts. This bias can lead to them being held to adult standards, receiving harsher punishments, and having their needs overlooked.
This is why words like she’s being fast are said at family gatherings about your 10 year old body , but no accountability to the uncle that keeps looking you up and down
This is why you’re raising your siblings as a kid yourself, and no one’s batting an eye that your parents are out on the town every single night
This is why warnings and practices, policies and procedures are given on how to respond to police for that just in case when you don’t even know you’re black yet
This is why they scream protect our black boys but rarely hear about our black girls
We barely hear about our black girls, they assume we got it already, that our brains magically developed from the womb
He’s just a boy
But no compassion that i am just a girl.
& ain’t nobody told me nothing
Nobody told me what unsafe looked like, i had to learn it from watching the people who said i love you , but im hurting you cause of that love
Nobody told me that being desired doesn’t mean love, it rarely even means liked, it just means you look good to someone’s eye
Nobody ever told me that being that good girl actually gets you played , that men will call you wife material and still cheat
So then what does wife material really mean?
Nobody told me that they didn’t like that i went to church because they felt Gods presence there too but that it’s because they had a fetish that i already knew how to be on my knees
Nobody ever told me that i’d get blamed for daddy issues all on my own, as if a child could raise themselves
Nobody told me that my body would be a museum , a muse to the artistic pervert who didn’t care i was 12 although he was 25
Nobody told me that the man offering me homework help in the library actually wasn’t trying to help me pass my class, he was trying to teach me what he could do to me
Nobody told me that when i cried for help, they would look at me and assume i already knew what i was getting myself involved with
but how could i have known? Cause ain’t nobody told me nothing .
They preached from the pulpits , talk to your children before the streets teach em
By that time , the streets already welcomed me with open arms
They complimented my smile, my innocence and they just couldn’t wait to be the first to give me my class: no tickets needed and lucky me i got front row seats
I tried to tell those trusted adults the truth but that persona of “she would never” already was nailed to the walls of their minds, they loved the picture they hung of me , painted to perfection with light strokes of heavy responsibility for myself
She’s good on her own, she’s smart enough to handle anything and anyone and everything all at once
But i really was not,
Cause ain’t nobody told me nothing
Ignorance is bliss
I wish i could still be sleeping on a cloud of my own imagination
Instead of the reality of the worlds fantasies come to life at my expense
For future generations , don’t let the same stories be written , let them make mistakes but let them make it with the knowledge of
Well i knew better because at least someone told me something
don’t let them sit in the dust of their shame and disgust crying for help cause ain’t nobody told them nothing
