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. As usual, Dyson lends a greater historical and social perspective to the issue at hand. He is speaking of the African-American experience, but this applies almost perfectly to the Afro-Caribbean experience as well. I know I may be belabouring the issue for some people, and I know many disagree with me, but if one person rethinks this approach and stops using controlled violence on their child, it is worth it.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 14:28:16 +0000
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