Thursday, September 18, 2014

good order in public schools ended when corporal punishment was replaced by armed uniformed security guards...,


NYTimes | While 70 percent of Americans approve of corporal punishment, black Americans have a distinct history with the subject. Beating children has been a depressingly familiar habit in black families since our arrival in the New World. As the black psychiatrists William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs wrote in “Black Rage,” their 1968 examination of psychological black life: “Beating in child-rearing actually has its psychological roots in slavery and even yet black parents will feel that, just as they have suffered beatings as children, so it is right that their children be so treated.”

The lash of the plantation overseer fell heavily on children to whip them into fear of white authority. Terror in the field often gave way to parents beating black children in the shack, or at times in the presence of the slave owner in forced cooperation to break a rebellious child’s spirit. Black parents beat their children to keep them from misbehaving in the eyes of whites who had the power to send black youth to their deaths for the slightest offense. Today, many black parents fear that a loose tongue or flash of temper could get their child killed by a trigger-happy cop. They would rather beat their offspring than bury them.

If beating children began, paradoxically, as a violent preventive of even greater violence, it was enthusiastically embraced in black culture, especially when God was recruited. As an ordained Baptist minister with a doctorate in religion, I have heard all sorts of religious excuses for whippings.

NYTimes |  According to reports about the Adrian Peterson felony abuse indictment, Peterson’s 4-year-old son pushed another of Peterson’s sons off a video game. Peterson then retrieved a tree branch — called a “switch” — stripped off its leaves, shoved leaves into the boy’s mouth and beat him with his pants down until he bled.

According to a CBS affiliate in Houston, Peterson texted the boy’s mother that she would be “mad at me about his legs. I got kinda good wit the tail end of the switch.”

He also reportedly texted that he “felt bad after the fact when I notice the switch was wrapping around hitting I (sic) thigh” and “Got him in nuts once I noticed. But I felt so bad, n I’m all tearing that butt up when needed! I start putting them in timeout. N save the whooping for needed memories!”
But the boy reportedly said, “Daddy Peterson hit me on my face,” that his father “likes belts and switches,” that “there are a lot of belts in Daddy’s closet,” and that he “has a whooping room.”
Spanking is not against the law in America — although some argue that it should be, as it is in Sweden and some other countries — but, as with most things in life, there are degrees beyond which even something that is generally acceptable, or at least legal, crosses a threshold and becomes not so.

17 comments:

woodensplinter said...

Do you suppose Americans will resume some semblance of sanity and common sense when all of its patently ridiculous over reactions to the 1960's "counter-culture" die their long-overdue heat death?

Vic78 said...

I know there's some kind of relocation plan in the works. I remember suggesting that on one site and some cat got upset with me. "What about their home values and businesses?" I responded that all that was gone anyway. His questions got a lot of up votes. Maybe people don't understand the state might not recover. And you don't want to be sitting on brown grass when the wildfires start hitting. But you get to keep your home and business. They could wait for the desalination plants to come up. The commenter told me he'd rather wait for the plant.

DD said...

"Beating in child-rearing actually has its psychological
roots in slavery"

Nonsense, beating your kids predates modern American slavery by millennia, and....meh, it's not even risible it's so dumb. Talk about jamming a square peg through a round filter. If these guys want to make an analogy or a correlation, fine. But that's a stupid sentence.

CNu said...

Um..., to educate the mind, you must first train the behind. Folks running around locking up other folks at rates higher than North Korea, folks running around bombing, droning, and killing other folks in their millions, folks running around with law enforcement violently showing and proving arbitrary and capricious disregard for constitutional and civil rights, folks running around with no control over safety and security in their public schools - all just really need to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up because they're flatly incompetent, don't know how to deport themselves, much less raise children to be sane, respectful, responsible, critical, and individually sovereign human beings.



But then, after being so undeniably ass-out and monstrous in Ferguson, and this is of course after being so undeniably ass-out and monstrous in response to the Occupy movement - it was overdue time for an establishment backlash against dysfunctional black folks who violentizing their women and children. Michael Brown had to be answered for somehow/someway in order to get that Uhmurkan id back into its comfortably numb parameters....,

CNu said...

lol, plenty fresh water..., and lovely Toronto close to hand!

DD said...

I think we are agreeing overall but something about my post rankled you a touch this morning? Or am I having a Walter Mitty moment?



Did you want to come right out with an explicit expectation of corporal punishment for children (as opposed to an approval as an individual parental choice)? Because the stuff you've said and not said has me seeing your shadow talking.


You'll note I didn't actually advocate for or against, but I'm not so Modern California I haven't cut my own switch.

Vic78 said...

It's like Black folks are aliens. I remember parents were pretty much on the same page when I was growing up. If you fucked up, mom or dad was gonna whoop your ass. It wasn't just a Black southern thing. It was a rare kid that didn't get his ass whooped. Don't have religious parents; they took that part in Proverbs seriously.

So Dyson's talking some other shit as usual. With him everything goes back to racism. What about all those white and Asian parents? They are hell on their kids. I remember white ones beating their kids in the store. Dyson makes Black folks look like dumb ass victims every time he has something to say. Black folks just can't ever be people with this guy.

CNu said...

rotflmbao..., Raygun all cool and casual-like slapped the skank off of Angie - priceless!

DD said...

Ah. Yes, the result for the NFL will be more owner control, less player rights, and arbitrary rules. As per usual, the target is labor and the toolbox to smack them includes the Racism Kit.

Truly, the league should either get out of the moral's business or actually develop some. But again, just a stick to beat labor with, to use the apt metaphor.

DD said...

Another thought. In theory, both issues are economic predation, but in practice, they are applied racism. Having no personal knowledge of the south, I assume much of the driving force is the racism? I see racism in my world, but I think it's largely a tool as opposed to a belief system. It's convenient for the NFL to use race cynically as a tool to smash labor but they (I'll hazard) aren't motivated by racism (largely). It's money.

In Ferguson and other of these extractive municipalities, is it convenient for the government to exploit blacks, or is that the ends, as opposed to the means?

CNu said...

I always prefer to try and see it as the means rather than the ends. The former holds out hope of harmonious development, the latter, only existential conflict.

ken said...

Did you notice in Blow's article he cited a study---"Use of corporal punishment is linked to negative outcomes for children (e.g., delinquency, antisocial behavior, psychological problems, and alcohol and drug abuse), and may be indicative of ineffective parenting. Research also finds that the number of problem behaviors observed in adolescence is related to the amount of spanking a child receives. The greater the age of the child, the stronger the relationship."

These articles seem to suggest all corporate punishment is wrong, yet the study seems to talk of corporal punishment to adolescents. I am betting most parents are done using spankings and whippings by the time the child hits adolescence. Of course we would expect if a parent is still using spankings on a 16 year old there is a problem there, we don't need a study for this.

What Blow fails to note in his citing of the study just before his quote is: One of the most frequently used strategies to discipline a child, especially a younger child, is spanking.1 About 94 percent of parents of children ages three to four in the United States report having spanked their children in the previous year.2 However, use of corporal punishment is linked to negative outcomes for children (e.g.,delinquency, antisocial behavior.....



Obviously if 94% of parents use corporal punishment, it must be a pretty successful tool when it is properly administered to the child at the proper age.

Vic78 said...

I'm surprised that nobody asked him about that part in Proverbs. As a preacher, he knows what's in the Bible. As a person with mainstream acceptance, he knows what he can get away with. He just has to keep that thesaurus with him and he'll be alright.

CNu said...

rotflmbao....whew!!! pause....,

not touching that one with a ten foot pole. thanks for the belly laugh and welcome to the spot.

Vic78 said...

From here it looks like he needs therapy. I would've advised against going public about that one story. He shouldn't have ruled out house cleaning...
With his status he could've taken care of it with no blowback.

CNu said...

Rampant Cathedralism...,

rohan said...

CNu, accept the fact, geh is the new black! If you don't accept the civilizing and emasculating influence of this "stigmatized" minority - your ghetto pass is in danger of being revoked. www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/09/charles_blow_memoir_new_york_times_columnist_discusses_life_story_in_new.html

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