Introducing the Special Issue on the Experiences of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) Children and Families in the Welfare Context

Abstract

This Special Issue explores papers on the experiences of children, young people and families of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) heritage who come into contact with the criminal (youth) justice systems in the UK [...]

Black and mixed-heritage boys: desistance through a co-creative Critical Race and postcolonial lens

“…The everyday experience of Black and mixed-heritage boys in England and Wales is very different from their White peers (Harries 2012(Harries , 2014. This difference reflects their experience of racism, where individual physical appearance and cultural differences evoke responses from society and its institutions that Other them, alienating individuals and constructing them into a despised and denigrated threat and danger (Miles and Brown, 2004;Apena, 2007;Sims-Schouten and Gilbert, 2022) as potential offenders and rarely, if ever, as victims Wainwright, 2021). In this way, Black and mixed-heritage boys are marked out by a racism that accentuates somatic and phenotypic identifiers that characterise body shape and facial characteristics, respectively, sorting and separating individuals from White society (Roland-Dow, 2011;Walker, 2020).…”

“…In this way, Black and mixed-heritage boys are marked out by a racism that accentuates somatic and phenotypic identifiers that characterise body shape and facial characteristics, respectively, sorting and separating individuals from White society (Roland-Dow, 2011;Walker, 2020). This demonisation of difference identifies them as the Other, insidiously affecting how they feel about themselves and experience the world around them (Walker, 2020;Wainwright, 2021). Black and mixed-heritage boys understand from a very early age that, outside of their family environment, and sometimes within it, the expectations of them from White British society are extremely low and quite often pathologising and criminalising (Byfield and Talbot, 2020;Eddo-Lodge, 2020).…”

“…Many boys of mixed heritage, brought up in a family with a Black parent and/ or living within a Black or multi-ethnic community, identify as Black. They identify with their predominantly Black peers and may share a cultural, psycho-social and political worldview (Wainwright et al, , 2021. Mixed-heritage boys may also identify with their peers' everyday experience of racism and institutionally ingrained exclusions from education, employment and other opportunities (Taylor, 2016;Lammy, 2017).…”

“…They will respond to adverse situations as children, even though they are perceived by authorities as otherwise (Case and Haines, 2021;HMIP, 2021a). For Black and mixed-heritage boys, however, the racist trope of being big, Black and threatening and/ or violent prevails in school and when encountering the police and the wider criminal justice system and when in conflict with their peers or persons of authority (Williams and Clarke, 2018;Wainwright, 2021). In other words, Black boys are not perceived, responded to or treated as children but often as violent threats (Williams and Clarke, 2018).…”

“…Likewise, an awareness of the postcolonial Other will inform an understanding of Black and mixed-heritage boys' experience within society (Fanon, 1967;Glynn, 2014). A focus on the family, the Black community, contested spaces, the education and the criminal justice system(s) can provide much to inform how practice and policy can develop effective strategies of desistance (McHugh, 2018;Wainwright, 2021).…”