Latasha Harlins, Cyrus Carmack-Belton, and the Cost of Anti-Blackness

Thirty-two years separated the deaths of Latasha Harlins and Cyrus Carmack-Belton. One was killed in Los Angeles in 1991, while the other died in South Carolina in 2023. Although the cases occurred in different states, involved different circumstances, and belonged to different generations, placing their stories side by side reveals something uncomfortable about America that many people would rather avoid discussing.

A realistic illustration of fifteen-year-old Latasha Harlins entering a convenience store in 1991. On other side, an illustration of fourteen-year-old Cyrus Carmack-Belton walking away from a convenience store in 2023.

Both were Black teenagers who found themselves accused of theft. In each case, a store owner decided that suspicion justified escalation, and both encounters ended in death. The similarities between these cases forced Americans to confront questions that remain unresolved decades later.

Latasha Harlins was fifteen years old when she entered a convenience store in Los Angeles. A confrontation began after store owner Soon Ja Du accused her of attempting to steal a bottle of orange juice. Security footage later showed that Latasha had money in her hand. As she turned to leave the store, she was shot in the back of the head and killed. Her death became one of the most emotionally charged events leading up to the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, a period already marked by frustration over police violence, economic inequality, and racial tensions. When Soon Ja Du was convicted of voluntary manslaughter but received probation, community service, and a fine rather than prison time, many Black Americans saw a familiar pattern emerge. A Black child’s life had been taken, yet the consequences appeared limited and inadequate.

More than three decades later, fourteen-year-old Cyrus Carmack-Belton entered a convenience store in South Carolina. A store owner believed he had stolen bottles of water. Cyrus left the store and was later chased and shot. Investigators argued that the theft accusation itself was unfounded and that Cyrus was running away when he was killed. When the store owner was acquitted of murder in 2026, the case reignited many of the same debates that had surrounded Latasha Harlins decades earlier. Once again, a Black teenager was dead after a theft accusation escalated into lethal violence, and once again the public found itself debating whether the response had been justified.

When viewed together, these cases raise a larger question about how Black children are perceived in American society. Why do Black children so often encounter suspicion before they are granted the presumption of innocence that many people associate with childhood itself? Researchers have spent years examining what is known as adultification bias, the tendency to perceive Black children as older, less innocent, and more threatening than their peers. Studies have repeatedly found that these perceptions influence decisions in schools, interactions with law enforcement, courtroom outcomes, and everyday encounters.

When a child is viewed as dangerous rather than vulnerable, people often respond differently. When guilt is assumed before facts are known, decisions change. When fear is treated as more credible than a child’s humanity, the consequences can become irreversible.

Both Latasha Harlins and Cyrus Carmack-Belton were killed by Asian store owners. Historically, discussions about these cases often become trapped in narratives focused on conflict between Black and Asian communities. While those dynamics may shape aspects of the conversation, that framing often misses the larger issue.

Anti-Blackness isn’t confined to any one racial group or community. It operates as a broader social system shaped by centuries of American history. People from many different backgrounds can absorb the same assumptions about Black criminality, Black danger, and Black worthiness. That reality challenges the idea that racism exists only in its most obvious forms. Many people can identify overt racial hostility when they see it, but it’s often more difficult to recognize the assumptions operating beneath the surface however, those assumptions frequently shape decisions long before anyone consciously acknowledges them.

This is also where the model minority myth enters the conversation. For decades, Americans have been encouraged to compare racial groups against one another. The model minority myth portrayed Asian Americans as evidence that success could be achieved solely through hard work and cultural values. Implicit in that narrative was the suggestion that if one minority group could succeed, then systemic barriers couldn’t be a significant factor in the struggles of another. The problem is that this narrative was never particularly interested in accuracy.

It ignored major differences in immigration policy, historical circumstances, economic opportunity, and government support. More importantly, it redirected attention away from the structures that produce inequality in the first place. The result was predictable. Rather than asking why disparities exist, people were encouraged to compare communities against one another. Rather than examining systems, attention shifted toward stereotypes. Rather than building solidarity, division often became the dominant outcome.

The stories of Latasha Harlins and Cyrus Carmack-Belton remind us why those dynamics matter. These cases are about far more than two tragic deaths. They force us to examine how society determines who receives empathy, who receives suspicion, and who receives the benefit of the doubt. They reveal the assumptions people carry into everyday interactions and the consequences that can follow when those assumptions go unchallenged.

A generation passed between these two cases. Technology changed, politics changed, and the country changed in countless ways. Yet many of the same questions remain. How do we see Black children? Whose fear do we consider reasonable? Whose innocence do we protect?

Until those questions are confronted honestly, the danger isn’t simply that history will be remembered. The danger is that the same patterns will continue to reappear, generation after generation, under different circumstances but with painfully familiar outcomes.

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-Smart Brown Girl