Christine Wells-Wonsley corrected an NBC News interviewer who called her 18-year-old son Nolan a “man,” saying he was a teenager, after a Mississippi grand jury declined to bring criminal charges in his death; the family says it still has no answers.
Nolan was found dead two days after a July 4 boat trip and party with white friends on an island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The family released the medical examiner’s autopsy report on Thursday; it listed the cause and manner of death as “undetermined.”
The exchange renewed attention to adultification bias, a stereotype rooted in anti-Black racism. Research has found it can lead people to view Black boys as older, more responsible for their actions and more appropriate targets for police violence. Researcher Phillip Atiba Solomon said he has not formally studied the bias’s role in Wells’s case and cannot say whether it played a part.
