Some

Child(ren) Left
Behind:
Dedric Darnell Owens
and the
Three Strikes of Black Male Development


Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race
Senior Thesis
Jasmine Ayana Sudarkasa
4/30/13









For Jonathan and Nigel

Preface

Shortly before 10 AM, on February 29th, 2000, a 6-year-old boy in Flint, Michingan
became the youngest killer in the history of the United States. Dedric Darnell Owens,
an African-American boy, shot and killed his classmate Kayla Rollins during the
change of period between their first grade classes at Theo J. Buell Elementary
School. Reports vary as to the sequence of events that led to the murder of Rollins,
but an eyewitness report from Time Magazine relates the following:
The kids were on the first level heading to the second when the boy pulled
out his pistol. Kayla was walking ahead of him, up the school stairs. He called
out, "I don't like you." She had her back to him, then turned and asked, as a
challenge, "So?" The boy, who had first pointed the gun at another classmate,
swung around and fired a single bullet that entered Kayla's right arm and
traveled through her vital organs. Boaz says he saw blood on both sides of
Kayla's stomach. She grabbed her stomach, then her neck, gasping for air.

(Rosenblatt, 4)

After the shooting, Owens threw the handgun into the trash and hid in the
bathroom. Rollins was taken to a local hospital, where she was pronounced dead at
10:29 am. Owens was retained in the principals office, questioned and ultimately
released. At 6 years old, he was constitutionally protected from prosecution but, as a
first grade student, Owens also became Americas youngest killer (Bowling for
Columbine).

Ultimately, Owens mother and uncle were held responsible for the affair:
Tamarla Owens had been recently evicted from her home and moved her two sons
into a crack house where, allegedly, guns were traded for drugs, with their uncle
and the 19-year-old man who left the murder weapon, evidently loaded, under some
blankets. (Rosenblatt, 7) Dedrics uncle, Jarnelle James, was ultimately prosecuted
for his negligence: for owning the gun, James served two years and five months for
involuntary manslaughter. In this, the household narrative in the case of Dedric
Owens is a familiar one, featuring an almost stereotypical relationship between a
single-parent household, drug abuse and poverty. As news of the shooting began to
spread, a concerted fear and uproar rose throughout the United States, with social
consensus ranging from empathetic considerations of Owens household to calls for
the prosecution of the boy. Roger Rosenblatt, in an article for Time Magazine,
considered the social implications of the case for American society and its treatment
of the boy, and found culpability to be the pendulum around which the case swung.
Ultimately, however, it appears that culpability falls in the face of the larger
problematic: What does first grade murder suggest about the American condition?
Dedric Owens was a child that shot another child, acting out a rage and confusion
(10) that seems remiss at six years of age. His youth made for a case that baffled the
American public; his race made for an all too familiar typecast: Owens presented as
a black male child, a conflation of both inherently criminalized (black male) and
inherently innocent (child) identities in American society. His identities seemed at
odds, and the caveat of his childhood seemed to qualify his criminality, allowing

news media and public consensus to afford far more empathy to Dedric than any of
his older (Black male) counterparts.
In all, the case of Dedric Owens presented as a point of self-reflection for the
American population. A society that can exist on a paradigm where six year olds can
arm themselves and commit murder is surely a society that needs to consider its
condition...Or is it? The criminalization of the black male identity may have robbed
Owens of the innocence assumed of all children, and the subsequent racialization of
the incident, featuring archetypes of white innocence and black aggression, only
complicated the matter: was Owens simply another violent black man in a country
pre-occupied with its own fear of blackness? Or, was he a child, misplaced amongst
the furor of his social condition?

CHAPTER 1: Childhood, Blackness, and the Binary

The Methodologies of Childhood
When distilled, childhood theory presents as an interdisciplinary study of the
relationship between the child and its society, and the various protections or
privileges afforded to children in a contemporary setting. Authors James, Jenks and
Prout present childhood as an intersectional experience, whereby sociological and
anthropological concern is not only warranted, but necessary. The preliminary
thrust of their work suggests, specifically, that there exists an intimate relationship
between "the child" and the idea of social order, wherein children offer living
exemplars of the very margins of that order, of its volatility and, in fact, its fragility.
(James, Jenks and Prout, 140) In this context, childhood can be understood as a
socialization, wherein children are rendered, rather than a biological/physiological
state of being that is somehow implicitly defined.
In considering the case of Dedric Owens, and the cases of children of color
throughout the United States, this platform could not be more accurate. While we
may be predisposed to assume childhood as the time for children to be in school
and at play, to grow strong and confident with the love and encouragement of their
family and an extended community of caring adults, (UNICEF, Childhood Defined)
the intricacies of the social condition and its relationship with childhood make this
an impossible assumption. Childhood theory holds that the true nature of
development is contingent on the peculiarities and impediments of the social order
in which the child develops. Even with the adoption of international mandates such

as the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), there can be no universally
protected and/or innocent childhood in a society that is as intricately hierarchical as
that in which we live. What is most crucial, in this, is the acknowledgement that
childhood is both a deliberate and deliberately constructed act children depend on
the socialization of adults to know the parameters of social expectation, and then
are expected to act within these confines. In this, childhood becomes somewhat of a
paradoxical learning curve, wherein children are expected to explore the
boundaries of their childhood, but are given decisive and clearly delineated confines
depending on their social standing and/or identity. If we further accept that
children learn who they are through interaction with (usually) the adult other,
(James, Jenks and Prout, 141) then it is somewhat obvious that the boundaries
delineated in crafting the childhood experience would refer to the preoccupations of
the adults teaching them. Thereafter, it becomes difficult to accept childhood as a
neutral, overarching experience, as its construction depends solely on its
recognition by the adults that shape it.
According to this capitulation, childhood and its purported social innocence
present us with a very tangible understanding of the fringes of society in
attempting to construct an ideal or stylized path of instruction for children, we are
forced to, in turn, construct somewhat of a hierarchical social order. We preoccupy
ourselves with good and bad, attempting to stratify the human experience into a
learning curve and point of instruction for children, through constructing some sort
of methodological relationship between various human experiences. In this,

childhood is both an epiphenomenon of adulthood (141) and a tangible

presentation of the margins in which we, as social beings, choose to live.

America, the Beautiful
In the contemporary United States, social margins range from astringent to
unprotected. While it appears that, legislatively at least, weve reached a consensus
on the need for (the previously controversial) tenets of racial equality, womens
rights and universal enfranchisement, Americans remain undecided on the nuance
of their social condition. There is a pervasive separatist culture in the history of the
United States, with society often divided based on income level, sex or race. Charles
Murray, in a piece entitled The New American Divide, suggests that America has
reached a cultural and societal tipping point, whereby succinctly America is
coming apart. (Murray, 1) Where American ideologues may once have boasted of a
civic culture that swept an extremely large proportion of Americans of all classes
into its embrace, (33) in actuality the United States (past and present) purports
nothing if not intersectional binaries that divide its social order. American society
has always had its qualifiers, deigning to include and exclude based on a particular
peoples ability to align itself with a majoritarian culture, encompassing shared
experiences of daily life and shared assumptions about central American values
involving marriage, honesty, hard work and religiosity. (3) Those that cannot or
will not align themselves with the so-called universality of the American condition
face what Murray calls a cultural inequality, whereby the privileging of some
cultures over others in the political, social and economic strata make for hierarchies

of identity. Accordingly, America appears to exist on a perpetually dualistic axis,

stratifying its populations based on varying identities and revealing itself as a
society that often exists and thinks on the binary.
Jacques Derrida, in his seminal work Positions, furthers this interaction
between Western ideology and theories of binary opposition, whereby he discusses
the implications of the duality of Western discourse as evidenced by its language.
He suggests that the West understand its ideological direction as one that rests on
the idea of the double gesture, according to a unity that is both systematic and in
and of itself divided, a double writing, that is, a writing that is in and of itself
multiple. (Derrida, 41) His Western social order rests on binary opposition,
structuring itself around poles that present at the extremities of the social condition.
These poles are by no means passive, either; Derrida insists that binary oppositions
resist the peaceful co-existence of a vis--vis, instead finding meaning in their
violent hierarchy whereby one of the two terms governs the other (axiologically,
logically, etc.), or has the upper hand. (41) In this, then, it appears the American
social order rests on various violent hierarchies that corral public opinion and
polarize the population. This violence is both literal and metaphoric: interactions
between members of the upper and lower echelons of the Western order are often
violent, ranging from wars of dominion to the violence of the contemporary criminal
justice system in the US; the metaphorical component lies in the
subordinate/dominant tensions of binary opposition: through the actualization of
an identity that is fundamentally both itself and in opposition to another, there can

be no co-existence. According to Derrida, when ones identity finds meaning in its

ability to oppose anothers, there can be no peace.
With a social order contingent on specific binaries and general polarizations,
it comes as no surprise that childhood experiences differ throughout the United
States. If we accept that childhood, at its core, presents us with a lens through which
to consider the social order, we must accept that certain power relationships inform
the socialization of childhood in its contemporary iteration. In a nation where rich
exists on an axis with poor, old exists on an axis with young, and other identities
exist in conversation with one another, the hierarchies that inform the lives of all of
Americas adults have tangible effects on Americas children.
It is this relationship that is most important to consider when looking at
identities and their interaction with childhood the social order privileges various
identities over others, and these seen-but-not-heard tendencies tend to reveal
themselves during the instruction of childhood. If we focus specifically on power,
and hegemonic societal structures, it is not difficult to concede to the point that
Bourdieu makes, whereby childhood becomes a point of ideological reproduction.
To him, the educational instruction that is implicit to childhood presents as little
more than mechanism of mass socialization which helped to ensure...continued
dominance and also to perpetuate [the] covert exercise of power. (Bordieu, 145)
The subjectivity of childhood finds root in this statement, and this subjectivity
presents most aptly in considering the racial climate of the United States.

The Black-White Binary

In the history of the United States, there may be no binary with more
violent/hierarchical social repercussions than that of the Black/White binary. Racial
tensions between Black and White Americans have informed much of the social
strata of this country, and have had sweeping ramifications throughout the political
and economic histories of the US. Issues of citizenship and human rights have
revolved almost solely around race identity (with gender identity playing somewhat
of a role), and in this nexus the most pervasive and powerful paradigm of race in
the United States is the Black/White binary paradigm. (Perea, 1219) In a
pervasively racialized America, binary opposition allows for the conception that
raceconsists, either exclusively or primarily, of only two constituent racial groups,
the Black and the White. (ibid.) Socio-economic status, marriage status and other
identities conflate around the realities of the racial experiences of the Black/White
binary, resulting in variously recognizable Black or White archetypes. Images such
as the WASP or the Angry Black Woman, reveal themselves as both relevant and
exaggerated in the day-to-day socializations of Americans.
With this is in mind, the parameters of the Black/White binary must have
some incredible impetus on the childhood experience. If we accept that childhood is
a socialization, primarily, and that this socialization is contingent on the nuance of
the social order, and that the American social order pre-occupies itself with the
Black/White binary, it stands to reason that Americas children are hierarchically
racialized. In a world where, according to James, Jenks and Prout, adult society is
considered the structure, and the child the agent, and that the former determines or

socializes the latter, (James et al, 142) the racialized American child presents as
both a current and future agent within the social order.
It is peculiarity of this relationship between identity, childhood and race that
this paper preoccupies itself with; In attempting to explain, justify or simply
understand the case of Dedric Owens, concerted attention must be paid to the
interactions of childhood conditioning and social parameters. In my opinion, not
enough attention has been paid to this particular junction: discourse surrounding
Owens case has examined his Blackness, his poverty and his age, in isolation, but
has yet to put them in conversation with one another. In response, this paper
attempts to establish a tangible relationship between power, privilege and
childhood, whereby Dedric Owens presents as an archetype of blackness, to be
feared under the suppositions of the American Black/White binary. This
archetypical construction began before he committed his crime, and stands at odds
with the tenets of successful childhood development, as defined by developmental
psychologist Erik Erikson. Accordingly, the emphasis of this paper holds that Dedric
Owens was a victim in the killing of Kayla Rollins, due to developmental tensions (as
defined by Erikson), and that his actions came as a response to the disparity of the
social condition of black male children, individually and collectively.

10

Chapter 2: Fear of Blackness, Loss of Innocence

In order to consider the innocence and/or guilt of Dedric Owens, this chapter
considers the theoretical implications of his identities as both black male and
child. His blackness is considered through the lens of societal fear, whereby the
American social order is identified as agentic in the construction and operations of a
public fear of blackness. Thereafter, his childhood is considered in conversation
with Eriksons theory of childhood development through the examination of various
stages, identified as crisis points in the normative development of children, in the
specific case of black male children.

The fear of blackness
The intricacy of the image of the violent black is rooted in fear, whereby
blackness presents itself as an identity to be feared by the white patriarchal
individual and (representatively) the white power structure. While there is an
abundance of literature chronicling this swartgevaar1, very little has been done to
consider the locus of this fear. It is my endeavor to root the conditioning for the fear
of blackness in the conditioning of the childhood experience, whereby the
household becomes the learning environment inherent to the fear condition2. In
this, childhood becomes a conditioning environment, and that which he fears

1 Afrikaans word meaning black threat, often used to summarily describe blacks during the
Apartheid years of South Africa.
2 John Watsons Little Albert experiment (1920) demonstrated that fear is a conditioned (rather than
implicit) response, wherein he was able to condition a fear of rats into an otherwise stable 8-month-
old child. Through graduated exposure to a rat in tandem with a loud bang, Watson was able to
condition the child to associate his fear of the bang with the rat, ultimately resulting in a conditioned
fear of the rat itself. This study on classical conditioning was able to effectively prove that a child can
be taught the fear condition.

11

becomes symptomatic of the implicit and explicit fears of his household. Thus, it is
our primary position that the fear of blackness is a condition first taught in the
home.
This impetus, for the home as the primary conditioning environment, aligns
itself with childhood development theories discussed in Chapter 1, whereby the
suggestion of this paper is that the home is the primary platform for learned
childhood behaviors. While race is an identity that is indeed conditioned, for the
purpose of this argument, we can concede that (by middle childhood) race has
already been learned and incorporated into the childs sense of self. Professor Erin
Winkler, of University of Wisconsin-Madison, contributes to the conversation by
suggesting (based on empirical evidence) that children not only recognize race
from a very young age, but also develop racial biases by ages three to five. (Winkler,
1) Based on various childhood development studies, she posits that race is a learned
behavior, and that children are able to examine and determine their own race
identity from a very early age. In addition, she holds that race identities are
incentivized based on the implicit behaviors exhibit when privileging certain
identities over others: environments teach young children which categories seem
to be the most importantChildren then attach meaning to these social categories
on their own. (Winkler, 2) Accordingly, in a US system where whiteness is
normalized and privileged (Winkler, 3), it stands to reason that any child existing in
the social order would acquire some exaltation towards whiteness. While this does
not conclusively prove a fear of blackness, it certainly pre-empts an aversion to it: In
a 1997 study, child psychologists Katz and Kofkin were able to effectively prove the

12

racialized condition of the child, whereby (when given the choice) by 36 months
old, the majority of both black and white children chose white playmates (Katz and
Kofkin, 59) and white children rarely exhibit anything other than a pro-white bias.
(Katz and Kofkin, 62)
It is in this vein that we locate our definition of the fear of blackness,
mentioned above: the fear of blackness is more an implicit aversion to blackness,
rather than a conscientious phobia. It is my assertion that black children develop an
aversion to blackness early in their development, and that this informs the
development of their identity in later years. It is important to locate the conditioning
of the childhood racial experience in the societal parameters and implicit privileging
of identities in the US system as well as the household, as (according to Winkler)
childrens racial beliefs are not significantly or reliably related to those of their
parents. (Winkler, 2) The supposition then must be that children learn value
judgments about race from an amalgam of stimuli, and that the impetus cannot be
put solely on the parents behaviors in locating racist tendencies. However, if we
evaluate this position in tandem with Watsons theory on child conditioning, it may
serve to reason that the conversation is far more complicated.
While we can summarily absolve parents of full responsibility in conditioning
the prejudices of their children, we cannot deny that the condition of the household
and the family structure serve as the primary apparatus for the teaching of societal
norms. Therefore, if we accept that children learn behaviors based on the their
motivation to learn and conform to the broader cultural and societal norms that
will help them function in society, (2) it stands to reason that the norms espoused

13

by the household would hold weight in predisposing the child to certain beliefs and
and/or behaviors. It is this that is key to the argument, as it is this papers pre-
occupation that the household is an implicit rather than overt conditioning
environment, with the structure of the family weighing more in the development of
the racial identity and psyche of the child than the actual demonstrated prejudices
(or lack thereof) of the parent. In this way, the social conditions of race identity
inform the childs understanding of his difference (or normativity), and the
structure of his family re-enforces these understandings of the value judgment
placed on his different/normative identity. It is in this way that we can locate the
black/white paradigm in the nuance of childhood development, and it is this that
informs our further consideration of childhood development and race.

The case of the black male child
To further our conversation, our analysis of the child must be pared down to
a specific childhood case. For the purpose of this argument and its focus on the role
of childhood development in predicting and/or explaining the criminalization of
Dedric Owens, the childhood condition of the male is of obvious interest. Males are
proportionally overrepresented in the incarceration system of the United States,
with the male incarceration rate [at] ~15 times the female rate.3 Within this
population, African-American males are grossly overrepresented, with One in six

3 U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners 1925-81, Bulletin NCJ-85861, p. 2; Prisoners in
1998, Bulletin NCJ 175687, p. 3,Table 3 and p. 5, Table 6; 2000, Bulletin NCJ 188207, p. 5, Table 6; 2001, Bulletin
NCJ 195189, p. 5 and p. 6, Table 7; 2002, Bulletin NCJ 200248, p. 4 and p. 5, Table5; 2003, Bulletin NCJ 205335, p. 4
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice); and U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics,
Correctional Populations in the United States, 1994, NCJ-160091, Tables 1.8 and 1.9; 1997, NCJ177613, Tables 1.8
and 1.9 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice).

14

black men [having] been incarcerated as of 2001, and the statistical prediction that
one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his
lifetime. (NAACP Criminal Justice Fact Sheet, 2009) Sequentially, we can identify
the black male as the primary submissive subject of the criminal justice system and
thus pare our consideration to the consideration of the black male child as the
primary victim of the prison industrial complex. It is important to note at this point
that this stratification of the black male identity to victim is strictly for the
purposes of the consideration of black male power and disempowerment,
specifically in the case of Owens, and with obvious implications for the theoretical
black male condition. The assertion therein is not that all white males are prison
wardens, or at all involved in the prison industrial system, or that all black males are
prisoners/defeated by the prison industrial system. Instead, this analysis relies on
somewhat of a stereotyped and/or stratified identity in order to make conclusive
arguments on the role of childhood development in predicting the fear of blackness
narrative and/or violence of the black male within the prison industrial complex
and its representations of the American psyche. With this in mind, we proceed to the
consideration of developmental phases in informing the conditioning of black/white
male children. e

Eriksons theory of development
Initially, it is imperative to distinguish between the childhoods discussed in
the methodologies available for understanding the maturity of the child. Throughout
childhood theory, theorists posit that there are various stages of development in the

15

childhood experience, and that each of these childhoods is innately different from
(while contingent upon) the other. Sequentially, we can identify childhood as
developmental, with the preliminary phases of early and middle childhood and
adolescence, whereby different experiences are privileged in the psychological
development of the child in these different stages, and that these stages are in
dialogue with ones another in informing the adult perspective of the now-mature
child.
With this in mind, Eriksons theory of personality development (1968) best
informs our consideration of development, whereby development is established as a
series of conflicts, privileged based on the normative social experiences of children
at various stages in their maturity. In tandem with our understanding of fear of
blackness, this series of societal conflicts aligns itself most aptly with our
consideration of childhood development and race as a conditioning based on
broader cultural and societal norms. (Winkler, 2). This interaction between
Eriksons general stages of development and the development of race identity
and/or prejudice allow us to draw a deductive methodology for the tension of
childhood development, which will in turn inform our consideration of the racial
parameters of the childhood experience. Specifically, we can posit that Eriksons
theory of development relays the tensions of the ambulatory (224) and middle
childhoods and adolescence as most prescient to development, and that these
tensions are in turn - informed by the psychosexual intricacies of the childhood
condition and the family. To this dialogue, I contribute the assertion that these
intricacies are contingent on the racial experiences of Black and Whiteness in the

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household and the family. Accordingly, we can posit that the difference in the Black
family experience informs the psychosexual tensions of the Black child, which in
turn informs his developmental decisions regarding the tensions of his maturity and
foreshadow the particularities of his participation in the prison industrial system.
Eriksons theory of personality development delineates 8 stages of man,
identified primarily by the tensions that confront man at each step. The stages most
prescient to our discussion are those identified by Erikson as initiative vs. guilt
(224), industry vs. inferiority (226) and identity vs. role diffusion. (227) The
initiative vs. guilt paradigm first informs the white/black fear relationship by
presenting the child with his own autonomy in the familial realm, with limits
established not only by his position as subordinate in his family but by how this
position is affected by the race identity that informs the structure of his family.
Thereafter, the industry vs. inferiority paradigm locates the tension of the childs
autonomy in an external environment, whereby the child is encouraged to measure
his performance against others and draw conclusions on his own worth. When these
measures are informed by his race identity, the child begins to (accordingly) draw
conclusions on his self-worth based on his race identity. Finally, the identity vs. role
diffusion phase conflates sexual maturity with identity formation, whereby the
child must now consider the implications of his performance on others perception
of him and, thereafter, how these perceptions inform his adult identity. With his
sexual performativity tied both to his autonomy and perception of self-worth, it
comes as no surprise that his race identity (and its bearings on previous phases)
informs his perception of others perceptions of him. Together, these phases

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represent the crux of the developmental process and the central point of
construction for the black male identity.

Initiative vs. Guilt
The initiative vs. guilt paradigm is crucial to any understanding of the
divergence of black and white masculinities, as it is the phase in which the child
begins to develop autonomy in the construction of his existence. Erikson articulates
this phase as that of being on the make, (224) whereby the child is able to
construct his own goals and actions independent of the parent. In this, Erikson
constructs the primary tension as one of divergence, whereby the child must decide
(for the first time) how to act on his own initiative in the face of social prescription
and the idea of guilt: should the child act in accordance with authority/convention,
or diverge and stay true to his own agency? This choice, according to Erikson,
proves the point of departure between potential human glory and potential total
destruction. (225) The deciding factor between these binaries of power and
destruction is distilled to mutual regulation (226), whereby the child can develop
a sense of paternal responsibility where he can gain some insight into the
institutions, functions, and roles which will permit his responsible participation
(226) but must do so under the regulatory forces of his social circumstance. It is this
that informs us of the importance of the peculiarities of the Black family experience,
as the household and its parameters directly inform the child of the limits of these
institutions and functions.

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The black family experience, though varied, must be distilled at this point in order to
make any deductive decisions about the role of the family as a regulatory force in
childhood development. Based on data available from the Census Bureau4, which
details that 67% of black children live in single-parent households, the black family
experience must be summarily identified as that of the single-parent household5.
Concurrently, as the same data provides that 25% of non-Hispanic white children
live in single parent households, the white family experience can be summarily
identified as that of the two-parent household. It is with these experiences in mind,
that of the black single-parent family and the white two-parent family, that we
proceed.
To further the argument, the Black single-parent household can be
summarily redefined as the single-mother household. According to Jewell, the
percentage of single-mother headed households in the Black community almost
doubled between 1960 and 19806, prompting a pervasive social inquiry in to the so-
called thesis of matriarchy as the primary cause of intergenerational poverty,
crime, and other forms of social disorganization among black families." (Jewell, 12)
While we must concede that this trend towards single-parent households is more
symptomatic of structural disparity (Rockefeller Drug laws, the Crack boom etc)
than a concerted effort towards single-parenthood, the focus of this paper is the

4 Children in single-parent families by race (Percent) 2011, Data Center for the National Kids Count
Program, 2011
5 The dissolution of the black nuclear family is a recent phenomenon, but its effects have been far-

reaching. It must be noted that the purpose of this comparison is not to privilege the nuclear family
structure over that of the single parent household. Rather, it is my intent to consider how the single-
parent household informs a different conditioning of the male child than the two-parent household.
6 In 1960 22 percent [of households] were headed by women by 1980, () the number of black
women heading families rose to 41 percent. (Jewell, 16)

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implication of single-mother households, moreso than the reasoning behind their

prevalence. Social programming and academic inquiry in the 80s dedicated a
substantial amount of time and energy to exploring the effect of the single-mother
household on the successes of black children, but little has been done to consider
the effect of this dynamic on the psychosexual processes of the child during the
initiative vs. guilt phase.
It is my assertion that the prevalence of single-mother households in the
Black community has distinct psychosexual effects on the condition of the black
male, best described by Freud as the Oedipal Complex. Freud suggests that all
children display an implicit sexual entitlement to their parent of the opposite sex,
and suggests that the need to protect, specifically displayed by males, is crucial to
development of masculinity and the males ultimate departure from the household.
The predominance of the single-mother household compounds the Oedipal
narrative, whereby the young male, without a father, becomes the subconscious
protector of the household. His Oedipal attachment to his mother is compounded by
the absence of the father, whereby the impulse to protect the mother and establish
an alpha male persona in the household is able to flourish unfettered but without a
significant male counterpoint to act against. It is Freuds position that the presence
of the father in the household is the primary regulating authority, allowing for the
male child to develop a composite masculinity that is both diminutive (in relation to
his father) and burgeoning (in the development of his own sense of self as an
autonomous individual). Without the regulating force of the father, it appears that
the male child must develop an autonomous sense of self without a significant

20

counteractive balance. This is compounded when considered in tandem with a

racialized narrative, wherein authority is displaced from the household, with
regulating power manifesting outside of the home. When this happens, the young
male becomes the protector from the outside world in tandem with protector of the
household. In conversation with Eriksons initiative vs guilt paradigm, this
premature assumption of authority has particular effects on the extremity of the
childs autonomy:
While autonomy concentrates on keeping potential rivals out and is
therefore more an expression of jealous rageinitiative brings with it
anticipatory rivalry with those who have been there first and may, therefore,
occupy with their superior equipment the field toward which ones initiative
is directed (Erikson, 224-5)
With this is mind, one can suggest that the black male, encouraged by this particular
psychosexual tension, must assume autonomy in order to protect the family from
potential rivals, with outside authority (in the White hetero-patriarchal society)
becoming the primary rival. Additionally, in his awareness of the societal superiority
of the White male (as discussed by Winkler), the black male child is first confronted
with a rival with superior equipment in the social realm, and is first exposed to his
societal inferiority therein. In tandem with the development of his masculinity, the
black male becomes aware of his dual position as both a protector and a subordinate
against an unfamiliar, White society.

Industry vs. Inferiority

21

According to Erikson, the age bracket of 6-11 marks the arrival of the
industry versus inferiority complex, whereby the child begins to envision himself
as comparative, with his viability measured according to his ability to perform in an
academic setting. If we evaluate this developmental stage in tandem with the family
(as the locus of racialized conditioning), it becomes clear the paradigm of race and
the family become imperative to the childs ability to evaluate his own industry
and/or inferiority. After being conditioned to see himself as inherently subordinate
to a pervasively White social order, while concurrently being conditioned to see
himself as the ultimate protector of his household, the Black male must now enter
the larger social order outside of the home in order to prove his worth in a
competitive setting, whereby he now learns to win recognition by producing
things. (226) Accordingly, we can posit that the stakes for this recognition are
reasonably high: without proving himself as able, how can the Black male child
possible protect his household? The gravity of this tension cannot be understated, as
it is at this age that the child begins to build a comparative sense of self, with his
ego boundaries [now] includ[ing] his tools and skills. (227) This phase defines the
childs relation of self to the larger world, wherein wider society becomes
significant in its ways of admitting the child to an understanding of meaningful roles
in its total economy. (227) With this is in mind, we turn to the case of the American
public school system and its effects on the construction of initiative for the Black
male child.

22

The American public school system, at its best, is failing the African-American male
child. As of 2008, the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that,
among other things, the reading scores of African-American boys in eighth grade
were barely higher than the scores of white girls in fourth grade [and] in math, 46%
of African-American boys demonstrated "basic" or higher grade-level skills,
compared with 82% of white boys. (Kirp, 54) Black males persistently
underperform against their peers, and this underperformance is tracked throughout
their educational experience, with 54% of 16-year-old African-American males
scored below the 20th percentile, compared with 24% of white males and 42% of
Hispanic males. (ibid) This underperformance is attributed to a number of causes,
with black males often held accountable for their own inability to close the
achievement gap. Regardless of the locus of the underperformance, the achievement
gap is apparent between black male children and their peers from a very early age.
If we consider this underachievement in conversation with Eriksons theory of
initiative, it becomes clear that this underperformance can (and does) have reaching
effects on the black male child in this crucial stage of development. Erikson suggests
that, at this phase:
his [the childs] danger at this stage lies in a sense of inadequacy and
inferiority. If he despairs of his tools and skills or of his status among his tool
partners, his ego boundaries suffer, and he abandons hope for the ability to
identify early with others who apply themselves to the same general section
of the tool world. (Erikson, 227)

23

With the black male child consistently underachieving, as evidenced above, it stands
to reason then that he may acquire a sincere sense of inadequacy, whereby he is
unable to prove himself in an academic setting with his own tools/skills. This feeling
of inadequacy is then compounded by his position in relation to his White peers,
who consistently outperform him and overshadow his position. Accordingly, his
ego boundaries fall, re-enforcing the inadequacy pre-empted by his dual
protector/subordinate role. Accordingly, his ability to identify with white peers
decreases, and the black male begins to see himself as extraneous to the successful
working order, but bound (by law) to continue in his schooling and (presumably)
continue to fail. Accordingly, the child begins to lose hope ofindustrial
association and consider himself doomed to mediocrity or mutilation. (227) In
this moment, the black male child begins to doubt his functionality within the
normative structures of society, and instead turns toward extraneous means of
becoming autonomous.

Identity vs. Role Diffusion

At the point of adolescence, the black male child has already been confronted

with the failures of himself and his society, pre-empting the crisis of his sexual
maturity. Between the ages of 12 and 18, the male child reaches adolescence and,
according to Erikson, the sense of ego identity, then, is the accrued confidence that
the inner sameness and continuity are matched by the sameness and continuity of
ones meaning for others, as evidenced by the tangible promise of a career.
(Erikson, 227) With a failing academic record, it comes as no surprise that at this

24

point the black males ego identity is due to suffer. His crisis of identity comes to a
tipping point when forced to consider his failings in tandem with the advent of
sexual maturity, whereby (typically) puberty rites and confirmation help to
integrate and affirm the new identity. (228-9) However, in his case, instead of the
affirmation of his ego identity, the black male must confront its erosion. His inability
to perform on his primary stage of evaluation (the academic setting) places the
black male at a point of contention before even beginning this phase of identity
formation, arguably (according to Erikson) his most crucial.
Accordingly, his frustrations at his lack of success in a performative setting
result in a crisis of identity, which is then acted out and/or defined by his sexual
ability or desirability. In an attempt to ground himself, at this moment, to keep
[himself] together, [he] temporarily overidentif[ies], to the point of apparent
complete loss of identity, with the heroes of cliques and crowds. (228) In a society
bereft of black male achievement, the pickings for heroic role models are slim:
According to the US Census 2010, of the total population of black males aged 18 and
up (12.7 million), only 1.2 million black men were actually enrolled in a four-year
college program, suggesting that only 9% of black college-aged men are actually
enrolled in college (to say nothing of their graduation rate, which is the lowest of
any demographic, male or female7) In the face of this incredible achievement gap,
and in the absence of black male role models that are gainfully employed and/or
college-educated, young black males turn towards one of few industries that
regularly produces fiscally successful black men: hip-hop.

7 Toldson, Ivory A. Debunking Education Myths About Blacks; Journal of Negro Education. July 19th,
2012. Web.

25

In a larger narrative on progress, it appears that hip-hop music should indeed

be indicative of the success of the black male. The international popularity of the
genre has created successful black men, often of low initial socio-economic status,
and has made so-called black culture an international phenomenon. In this sense,
hip-hop has provided leadership and role models for millions of young black men, as
it has successfully allowed for the overcome of the two failure conditions noted
previously (i.e. the failings of the home and the academic environment). However,
this success comes at a price: the violence and misogyny of hip-hop music has
haunted its creators and consumers since its inception. At this point in his
development, hip-hop leans itself as both a gift and a curse to the black male,
wherein it provides him with a reality where there exist substantive images of black
male success, but that these images are inextricable from an expectation for violence
and criminal activity. Authors Guillermo Rebollo-Gil and Amanda Moras detail the
conflict of this identity in their piece entitled Black Women and Black Men in Hip
Hop Music: Misogyny, Violence and the Negotiation of (White-Owned) Space,
whereby hip-hop becomes synonymous with the blatant embracing of a criminal
lifestyle, and:

Some of the most popular rap acts go by the names of former Mafia kingpins,

actual and fictitious drug dealers, and even corrupt Latin American dictators

You see music videos that are modeled after popular gangster films like Casino

and The Godfather. Entire album concepts are based on drug deals gone bad

or drug deals gone well. (i.e. Jay-Zs Reasonable Doubt)

(Rebollo-Gil and Moras, 123; italics authors own)

26

In this paradigm, it comes as no surprise that violence and criminal activity become
over-incentivized in the ego formation of the young black male. With few other role
models, or depictions of success, the black male turns to hip-hop role models for
constructions of an ideal masculinity in a system where no other black masculinities
are recognized with the same magnanimity. The black male quickly becomes self-
destructive, implicitly even, as he begins to construct a self-image based on hip-
hops assertion that individual male valor and honordepend on the ability of the
male speaker to quickly do away with his presumed (black) enemies. (125) The
young male turns to violence and misogyny as a means to establish his adolescence
and masculinity, in an attempt to model himself after an industry where in
2004at least 16 well-known rap artists [were] serving time behind bars for
offenses ranging from second-degree murder to sexual assault and violation of
parole. (123) Again, it comes with little surprise that, as the black male reaches the
age of adulthood and has self-identified as a criminal and societal outcast (based on
developmental deficiencies), he also reaches the age of criminal prosecution. His
pre-emptive relationship with the prison industrial complex now comes to fruition.

This theoretical consideration of the frameworks of black male childhood

development provides us with a methodological basis for the synthesis of Dedric

Owens condition. His case features a single mother, educational and behavioral
barriers to competent academic participation, and a propensity and/or exposure to
violent behavior. Accordingly, further evaluation of the black male and his childhood
condition must consider agreements and discrepancies within this framework in the
individual case of Dedric Darnell Owens.

27

Chapter 3: Dedrics Story

The final synthesis and success of this paper lies in its ability to locate the crises of
Eriksons theory of development in the case of Dedric Owens. Accordingly, the
paradigms of Initiative vs. Guilt, Industry vs. Inferiority and Identity vs. Role
Diffusion can be reconsidered, in conversation with the individual intricacies of the
case of Dedric Owens, as follows:

Initiative vs. Guilt
As noted, the initiative vs guilt phase revolves around the idea of mutual
regulation, (Erikson, 226) whereby the impetus lies on the father figure to establish
a regulatory environment within the home for the male child. Erikson upholds that
the child relies on this regulation in order to situate himself within the institutions,
functions, and roles which will permit his responsible participation(ibid) in society.
If we accept the supposition that the male child models himself after this regulatory
authority, or at the very least in response to it, then the case of Dedric Owens
provides insight into the possibilities for failure within this paradigm.
Dedric Owens came from a household void of the regulatory archetype that is
Eriksons father; the boys father, and namesake, was incarcerated at the time of
the shooting for violation of parole. He had been apprehended in possession of
cocaine, with intent to deliver (Rosenblatt, 7), and is said to have been in and out
of his sons life. Owens mother, Tamarla, was thus responsible for the upbringing of
her three small children, alone. Tamarla is said to have battled substance addiction,

28

in addition to the pervasive unemployment and social decay that persisted in the
Owens hometown of Mount Morris Township in the greater Flint area (Bowling for
Columbine). In a 2005 article on the case, former Genesee County Prosecutor Arthur
Busch highlighted the poverty of the region, reporting that parents face some of the
state's highest unemployment rates and the majority of kids are eligible for free or
reduced-price lunches [and] delinquency and neglect cases still strain the system.
(Durbin, 7) It seems inevitable, then, that Owens would face some crisis of initiative:
his father was absent, his mother struggled under the double burden of poverty and
substance addiction, and he stood as a male figure in a decaying household. It should
be said that Owens has an older brother, and younger sister, but that this older male
presence was negligible: his brother is only two years older than he. Comparable
male figures, in the life of Dedric Owens, manifested in the figures of his uncle and
the young men that moved in and out of his uncles home, purportedly a crack
house. (Rosenblatt)
With this in mind, we can begin to make some substantive deductions on the
developmental climate of the childhood of Dedric Owens. In addition to a
psychological displacement from Eriksons depiction of a functional household, he
was literally displaced from any home at all: Rosenblatt reports that, just prior to
the shooting, Tamarla Owens had been evicted from her home and had moved her
sons into their uncles crack house, where the the boy and his brother had been
sharing a single sofa as a bed. (7) Dedric Owens had little to no regulatory function
in his life: his parents struggled with the consequences of their narcotics use, and his
older relatives were actively involved in the trade. The transience of authority

29

within his household made for the displacement of authority in his life. If we accept
Eriksons supposition that this developmental stage seeks recognition from an
authoritative figure as a regulatory development mechanism, and the initial
supposition of this analysis that (in its absence) black male children must confront
authority as external to the home environment, then the violent actions of Owens
begin to make substantive sense. We can posit that Owens only real confrontation
with regulating authority was institutional: both of his parents were ultimately
overcome by the prison industrial system, and had interacted with the system for
much of his life prior to (and after) the shooting. If the supposition is that the child
models himself in opposition to the pervasive regulating authority in his life, can we
suggest that Owens modeled himself in relation to the criminal justice system? It
appears that this must be the case, as Erikson holds that regulating authority models
and foreshadows the mechanisms for responsible participation (Erikson, 226) in
society. If the only model of responsible participation for Owens was that of poverty,
drug abuse, violence and interactions with the ultimately regulatory criminal justice
system, Owens motivations for shooting his classmate begin to add up.

Industry vs. Inferiority
Within the age bracket of 6 to 11, Erikson holds that the developmental
processes of the child revolved around his ability to win recognition by producing
things. (226) The school environment presents as the primary platform for the
development of appropriate tools and skills, and provides (arguably) the first
competitive arena for the child. In the case of Dedric Owens, the school environment

30

is perhaps that which is most pivotal, as it is the place where the murder was
committed. Rollins was his classmate, and the shooting took place during the change
of period in front of his fellow students.
Little information is available as to Owens academic performance in school,
and his placement as a first grader at the time of the shooting makes academic
performance more of a trajectory than an actuality in his life. What is known is that
Owens acted out within the school environment, and was often punished for his
misbehavior. Rosenblatt relates the following report of eyewitness Chris Boaz, a
fellow student, on Owens behavior at school:
The boy was said to have played normal street games. He was also known to
have started fights. Boaz said the boy once punched him because he wouldn't
give him a pickle. He said the boy was made to stay after school nearly every
day for saying "the F word," flipping people off, pinching and hitting. Some
weeks before, he had stabbed a girl with a pencil

(Rosenblatt, 9)

The pervasive use of violence and lashing out attributed to the boy comes as no
surprise in considering his home environment. In a 2005 report on the interaction
between parental conflict and school performance, Dr. Gordon Harold found that
children living in a family environment marked by frequent, intense and poorly
resolved conflicts between parents are at greater risk for deficits in academic
achievement than children living in more positive family environments.
(ScienceDaily, 3) Thus, while conflict in his household was abstracted from the
parent-to-parent relationship, we can safely deduce that Owens was exposed to

31

household conflict in his uncles home, and thus summarily assume that there were
deficits in his academic performance. In tandem with the decay of his household,
Owens now was unable to adequately perform in school. In the face of Eriksons
suggestion that, at this phase, the childs ego boundaries include his tools and
skills, (227) we can further assume that Owens sense of self in an academic
environment was irrevocably jarred. There was no institutional oversight into the
violent behaviors of Owens on the schools side, either: Rosenblatt reports that, on
the day of the shooting, Owens had been apprehended with a knife as well, but that
the teacher to whom the knife was reported did not take him to the principal's
office, where he could have been searched. (Rosenblatt, 11) Furthermore, it was
reported that there was no sign that any social-service organization was watching,
or even that one was in the vicinity. (13) This lapse in institutional oversight, in
tandem with Owens premature exposure to violence in the home, may have
conflated in the event of the shooting. Erikson holds that, in the face of failure to
establish industry, the child becomes pre-occupied with his own inferiority and may
consider himself doomed to mediocrity or mutilation. (Erikson, 227) In response,
Owens chose to lash out.

Identity vs. Role Diffusion
While Eriksons theory holds the crisis of identity vs role diffusion as
developmentally beyond the age bracket in which Owens fell, there are warning
signs within the case of Owens that suggest an interaction with sexual maturity

32

and/or the puberty rites and confirmation [that] help to integrate and affirm (228-
9) the childs identity.
Immediately after the shooting, reports were unclear as to the sequence of
events that led Owens to kill Rollins, and it is this that haunted much of the
discourse on the shooting. Why did Owens kill Rollins in particular? Initial reports
held the shooting to have been somewhat random, claiming that the boy was
showing off a handgun to classmates when it fired. (CNN.com, 6) However, in his
later report, Rosenblatt offers what is perhaps the most interesting insight into the
sequence of events at Buell Elementary School. According to the eyewitness report
of Boaz, Owens and Rollins had somewhat of a history: He (Dedric) had attacked
Kayla before and, on the day prior to the killing, tried to kiss her and was rebuffed.
(Rosenblatt, 9) Apparently, this rebuff did not sit well with Owens, who is quoted to
have said I dont like you to Rollins before shooting her. Her response of So? is
said to have provoked the shooting, and this interchange weighs heavily on
evaluations of the identity/role diffusion paradigm.
The suggestion of Erikson, within this particular realm of development, is
that the child now confronts himself as a sexual social being, and examines his
achievement as indicative of his ability to find social success and to find a mate. That
Owens attempted to kiss Kayla, and was rejected, cements that this theory is not
remiss. That he chose to respond to this with a gun speaks to the magnanimous
divide between the impression of his social position on his developmental processes
and that of other six year olds. In attempting to address his feeling of rejection, at
the hands of a girl, Owens followed the predicted trajectory of overidentification, to

33

the point of apparent complete loss of identity, with the heroes of cliques and
crowds. (Erikson, 228)
Obviously, the role of hip hop masculinity and its heroes, in this case, is probably
negligible but one can point to similar tropes of drug usage, incarceration and
misogyny within Owens uncles home. On the morning of the shooting, Rosenblatt
reports that Owens and his brother had gotten into an altercation with eyewitness
Boazs ten year old uncle: He and his brother got into a fight with Boaz's 10-year-
old uncle. Boaz's uncle punched the boy (Owens), who said, according to Boaz's
grandmother, "Do you want me to take my gap [sic] out and shoot you?"
(Rosenblatt, 10) The language here is obviously not the language of a six year old
child; hip hop, prison and gang culture all provide variants of the slang term
gat/gap, meaning gun, and it would not be remiss to assume that Owens was
introduced to this language by the heroes of the drug subculture that persisted in
his home. It is clear, then, that Owens was exposed to a violent hypermasculinity in
his household, signified by guns and dominion, and in the face of social rejection
chose to resort to that which he knew.

34

Chapter 4: Conclusions

The initial endeavor of this paper was to establish Dedric Owens as a victim of his
circumstance operating in a paradigm where, developmentally, he was almost
certainly doomed to fail. Although Rollins lost her life at his hands, Dedric Owens
was no more a criminal than a victim although he wasnt imprisoned, his mother
lost custody of him shortly after the crime, and his name will always resonate with
societal tropes of violence, blackness and masculinity. The either/or paradox
considered in the introduction8 becomes especially prescient at this juncture: social
discourse on the event waivered between Owens presentation as a black male and
as a child. That these two identities exist in opposition to one another presents us
with the crux of the problem. American society appears to hold the innocence of
some children over that of others, and this is made clear through the evaluation of
Owens case.
Using Eriksons theory of development, I have attempted to construct a
paradigm that explains the psychological motivations behind the act. The intention
therein is to present that the childhood of black males is neither privileged nor
supported by the social deficits for black males operating within American society,
herein distilled to the challenges of the single-mother household, the inadequate
school environment and socio-sexual rejection (and counteracting
hypermasculinities). To reiterate, Owens confronted Eriksons three stages of

8 Owens presented as a black male child, a conflation of both inherently
criminalized (black male) and inherently innocent (child) identities in American
society, Preface

35

development with predictable outcomes; his authority came from an abstracted

incarceration system, his inferiority appeared requisite in an under-funded school
with limited oversight, and his identity was rejected by Rollins and molded by
violent male archetypes in his home and community. Each of these stages, critical to
successful development, were essentially damning in the development of Dedric
Owens, with sweeping implications for our understanding of his agentic role in
committing the crime.

Caveats
At this point, it would be appropriate to qualify the victim identity of Owens.
The intention of this paper is not to absolve Owens of his responsibility in killing
another child. Dedric Owens did indeed murder his fellow student, and will have to
carry that action for the rest of his life. He is not innocent, that must be made clear,
but he is a victim. The intent was to provide a lens through which to evaluate his
actions as emblematic of a larger societal aversion to black masculinity, and larger
societal implications of poverty and inequality in the psychological development of
black male children. Kayla Rollins has been dead for thirteen years, and her death
cannot and will not be muted by this psychological evaluation of the development of
Dedric Owens.

Implications
The case of Dedric Owens offers substantive insight into the implications of a
fear of blackness on the childhoods of Americas black male children. From the

36

above consideration, it appears that there is a substantive developmental difference

between Americas children, and this raises certain questions. What is it that makes
some children act out their inequality through violence? Is this case relegated to
black male children alone? What about female children? What about children of
other racial identities that experience similar realities of poverty and drug abuse?
Kayla Rollins came from a similar socio-economic background, as did most of the
other children at Buell Elementary School. Why didnt they lash out with violence?
The answers to these questions are complicated, and to an extent outside
of the scope of this paper. What we can suggest is the following: black male children
operate under a specific psychological condition, wherein their blackness and
masculinity challenge their childhood. They are matured rapidly within public
opinion, considered violent and threatening long before they reach adulthood, and
are marginalized as such. This, in tandem with the typical developmental deficits of
the societal condition of poor, unemployed Black peoples, conflates to create a
specific condition. Using Eriksons theory of development, I have demonstrated a
significant perception of inadequacy that pervades the developmental processes of
black male children, in turn pre-empting certain violent and/or deviant behavior.
Again, this can be qualified: not all black men are violent, not all black men are
criminal. At this point, though, it is my position that this is a null point, as the
majority of black men face profiling, regardless of their innocence or guilt. The
overarching suggestion is that black males must confront a society that fears them,
and does its best to subdue them accordingly.

37

In this, it is the theoretical contribution of this paper that fear of blackness is

a perceptive mechanism that forces black men to confront their societal inferiority
at an incredibly young age far earlier than their peers and that this confrontation
has overwhelming consequences for black men in their development, and often pre-
empts an interaction with the prison industrial complex. It is this that is the tragedy
of the Black/White binary, it is this that is the tragedy of the childhood conditioning
in an American context, and it is this that is the true tragedy of the case of Dedric
Owens.

38

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