>Sounds like a blanket statement

I said somewhat common. I don't have evidence of this beyond my experience being black and my wife being a highschool teacher in a majority black school. In my estimation it is more common for black kids to look older and this is echoed by the research I have read on the subject.

>importantly, an excuse for racism and not allowing black kids to be kids.

It's a partial explanation. Give people pictures of pubescent black kids and in general they will guess older ages for the black kids than similarly aged white kids. This is part of why black kids are charged as adults more often. IMO the only way to fix this is to have a hard cutoff. UNder 18 and kids can't be charged as adults with no exceptions.

Some of what racism is is built into people. Good people identify and account for those thoughts. Bad people either ignore them or give into them. Human beings are programmed to see patterns (whether or not they are there) and make shortcuts based on them. Think social optical illusions.

>Black people aren’t inherently older looking

Except experimentally it seems that black kids are seen as older by white people. And black kids tend to enter puberty slightly earlier than white kids.

> In fact it’s quite normal for black people, especially black women, to maintain their youthful imagine/skin well into adulthood.

Yes, my mother won't shut the fuck up about how young she looks. That's not the age nor the phenomenon I was referring to.