For Black, Indigenous, and other racialised peoples, the polycrisis is not new or emerging, but an ongoing product of colonialism. Yet their demands for otherwise worlds premised on the abolition of racialised systems of oppression are often dismissed as utopian or impossible. This paper therefore examines counter-narratives of Black childhood to explore transformative possibilities for the future. I argue that young Black peoples’ counter-narratives of Black childhood refuse White futurity and instead open up possibilities of growing otherwise. Growing otherwise exceeds the limits of White futurity. It is an open historical or developmental movement through otherwise political formations. Within colonial and patriarchal structures, childhood is conceived in terms of an indeterminate future-adult citizen and intensively governed to ensure the reproduction of the present racial order. These structures orient growth in a particular direction: upwards towards the White future. Colonial and patriarchal structures thus negate and deny the futurity of Black childhood. Black children, however, also inhabit their own distinct political formations of family, community, home, and diaspora which provide them with the resources required to determine their own futures. Based on interviews undertaken with young Black British people, this paper explores three primary dimensions of growing otherwise. First, growing otherwise may be conceived as a process of ‘growing into one’s self’, an ongoing process of becoming who one already is. Second, growing otherwise may be produced through intergenerational processes of reproduction which recreate open-ended Black political subjectivities. Finally, growing otherwise may reshape the political formations in which Black childhood itself is located. These counter-narratives of Black childhood unsettle colonial and patriarchal structures of age and gesture towards the possibilities of otherwise worlds.
