Discuss The Role Of Corporal Punishment In African American Children

There is a harsh practice of using corporal punishment in order to discipline children in African American family; spanking, slapping, and pinching the child is common. Though, voices have been raised against these abuses, many black parents believe that the punishment is important to teach their children the ways to live as a black in America. Brittney Cooper, a famed black feminist theorist, in her article entitled “The racial parenting divide: What Adrian Peterson reveals about black vs. white child-rearing” talks about the effects of physical punishments and concludes that “violent modes of discipline makes [children] no less violent, no more acceptable.” She also states that “some of [black family’s] ideas about discipline are unproductive,

Both writers believe that the physical disciplines experienced by black children are abuses even though they acknowledge that the “black people love their children with a kind of obsession……[they] would like to kill [their children themselves] before seeing [their children] killed by the street that America made (Coates P.82)”. Both of them believe that it is sometimes necessary to beat children to teach them; on the contrary, they, as a parent, want to practice the different types of disciplinary methods to their children. This clearly shows, it’s necessary to rethink about the practice of physical disciplines in the African American

But these actions clearly have profound negative impacts in their overall development and later part of life rather than the short-term positive impacts. Cooper correctly analyses “What [corporal punishment] might do is curtail creativity, inculcate a narrative about ‘acceptable’ forms of violence enacted against black bodies, and breed fear and resentment between parents and children that far outlasts childhood”. And Coates shows that despite practices of harsh punishment, the majority of African American people are still losing their life due to police brutalities, drugs, HIV and other different things. He talks about the girl whom he loved and who taught him that love can be “soft”. Coates later realizes that corporal punishment by loving-but-hard parents can be replaced by the revelation that “love could be soft and understanding”. Continuing the violent kind of physical punishment in this generation can lead to serious problems; the parent might be punished by state law for violating the child right as in the case of Peterson. Once, Coates talks about the instance where he had to prevent his child happiness by not letting him to play with children he did not know. Coates himself was not happy for what he did