The Plantation Politics Behind Corporal Punishment

Because the world wants pliable Black children, not powerful ones.

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Growing up, my parents were huge proponents of corporal punishment. In their parenting prime, they were the quintessential authoritarian pair; zero explanations, unlimited rules, and all-you-can-eat ass whoopings. My parents were about that action, but even they drew a line in the sand somewhere, and that was right at the border of harsh and heartless. Granted, that didn’t stop them from threatening to send me back to Nigeria for cutting class a couple of times, but when it came to forcing me out on the street to fend for myself, well that just wasn’t an option.

So the first time a friend told me she was newly homeless after being put out by her mother’s boyfriend, I couldn’t fully understand what she was saying. “You mean you can’t go back home?”, I asked her in awe. “Where does he want you to go?” As my friend explained just how on her own she really was, my heart broke. In my naïveté I thought, surely her parents were just bluffing; bumping their gums the same way my parents did when mad. Surely, she wouldn’t be made homeless by the woman who gave her life, what parent would do a thing like that? Right?

Ultimately, she would be the first of my friends to face that same fate; put out on the streets with as much as she could carry, no…