It really makes me depressed how so many Black parents I talk to celebrate and fetishize whupping children as a necessary disciplinary strategy, and weirdly, as an effective form of resistance to centuries of structural racism and barbarism.

But they can't/won't see how whupping their children is one of the PRIMARY ways that white supremacy moves through the bodies and minds of black parents and caregivers.

When you whup your child your are essentially acting as a proxy for Massa, modern-day state agents, and vigilantes to carry out the legacies of racial violence onto the bodies of Black children.

And we don't listen to the voices of Black children whose bodies bear all that pain and who are socialized to believe that they are inherently deviant and deserving of adult violence.

Can't y'all see how empowering it would be to actually listen to the voices of our children speak their truths and to treat them humanely? Do you not trust their wisdom?

Do you not believe that each generation of children born to us is yet another chance at racial healing, redemption, and empowered? What group of traumatized, broken, and beaten down people do you know ever wrote its name in history in revolutionary ways?

If we did listen to our children and treated them like the gods they are, then perhaps we as a people could become empowered to engage in a new kind of resistance to racism by refusing to extend the enslaver's lash.

By refusing to continue the intergenerational transmission of trauma and socialization of Black families into violence.
We don't have to be prisoners of our history.

We can exorcise the pain and rage. And when we do, we will discover that others emotions and liberating possibilities will spring forward.