About that new video of a Baltimore mom smacking up her son: white praise linked to oppression
What’s disturbing is how many people are calling this behavior “mom of the year.” She’s screaming cuss words at her son and smacking him on the head, which causes brain trauma.
I would be okay with her getting angry and pulling him away, and certainly applaud her for going to get him. I also understand that she is frightened and doesn’t want him to get killed.
But the cussing and the slapping are NOT okay. Many people have noted that embarrassing her son on national television will only cause harm, and have given other means she could have used, such as talking to him, validating him, but telling him this is not the way.
We can understand WHY she did this, and sympathize, but we need to stop condoning such behavior. We need to know there are other ways to raise children that WORK.
And let’s not excuse abuse because a parent was “under pressure.” Abuse victims have heard all sorts of excuses, yet it traumatizes them anyway. Don’t forsake the victim for the sake of “not judging” the abuser.
Also, when people say they “turned out okay” after such harsh, outmoded “parenting styles,” or even defend what their parents did, it sounds like Stockholm Syndrome.
Some have also noted that this video’s popularity demonstrates white America praising the beating-down of blacks. See, for example, Joan Walsh’s The hideous white hypocrisy behind the Baltimore “Hero Mom” hype: How clueless media applause excuses police brutality
Also see Why is America celebrating the beating of a black child? by Stacey Patton, who demonstrates how praising this behavior is part of white supremacy and systematic oppression of blacks:
The kind of violent discipline Graham unleashed on her son did not originate with her, or with my adoptive mother who publicly beat me when I was a child, or with the legions of black parents who equate pain with protection and love.
The beatings originated with white supremacy, a history of cultural and physical violence that devalues black life at every turn. From slavery through Jim Crow, from the school-to-prison pipeline, the innocence and protection of black children has always been a dream deferred.
I see almost nothing in the comment section to Patton’s opinion piece except calling her an idiot and saying the mother’s actions are not abuse.
To that I say, YOU’VE GOTTA BE FRICKIN’ KIDDING ME!
WHAT THE HECK????!!!!!
Do we really still have THAT many abusers left in this country, who think that smacking a kid around is NOT abuse?
Obviously we still have TONS of work to do to get the word out! THIS IS ABUSE!!!!
Also Sunn m’Cheaux:
This is about the utilization of her actions as propaganda by the very elements of society who created the conditions that led to her believing what she did was the best course of action. This is about the shameless hypocrisy of media that selectively demonizes the behavior of Blacks, depending on how said behavior fits into their agenda. This is about the fact that the media–including social media–is now more inclined to indoctrinate us with narratives than inform us of news. –Post here
Abuse leads to bad behavior, and does NOT stop it. Yet in various comments people are complaining that “liberals” are somehow the problem if they see this as abuse. Um, NO. Obviously the complainers don’t understand that abuse at home does NOT create well-behaved kids.
My blog/website is FULL of pages against screaming at, cussing at and slapping kids. It has become my mission to fight this, ever since I saw Tracy doing this kind of crap to her kids. My most popular posts include “Slapping kids upside the head causes traumatic brain injury.”
She then turned around and became my worst nightmare, psychologically abusing me and trying to intimidate me in various ways, and now my cyberstalker, because I dared to say she’s an abuser. She threatened to sue me if I went to my priest for mediation if she began coming to my church full-time. Yet asking him for mediation was the only way I could handle it if she became my fellow parishioner, which was a real danger because her church has now closed.
I also unfriend anybody who says crap like, “Parents, beat your children.” I’ve actually seen this in my Facebook newsfeed, and was absolutely appalled.
Yet now I find people praising behavior like this, saying the lack of screaming/cussing/smacking around kids is why this country is so screwed up, and calling the woman in this video “mom of the year,” and complaining that “idiot liberals” are probably going to sic CPS on her.
(Yet spanking is still done by the majority, so that kid you see acting up, is probably spanked at home. And my generation got spanked plenty, yet WE acted up plenty as well: cussing, disrespectful comments, promiscuity, not obeying, all the stuff people blame on lax parenting.)
How can I possibly be okay with this???!!!!
And now I find that many blacks are not okay with this, either, are horrified at the glee with which whites praise it.
Also see Violence for Violence: A Mom’s Turmoil in Baltimore:
Finally, a mom doing parenting right, the world seemed to scream.
It made me profoundly sad, and quite honestly, confused.
The very same people who recognize that violence is not the answer in retaliation to the police somehow find violence an appropriate response when it’s coming from a parent?
From Unschooling Momma and Poppy’s Only in America would an abusive mother receive the title “Mother of the Year”:
The real problem here is not whether or not this is abuse but the fact that abuse of children is so widely accepted in America and often sugar-coated under the umbrella of “discipline.”
Watch this video and imagine this happening in any other context outside of a parent child/relationship and tell me if abuse would then be too harsh of a word to describe this scenario.
If a man dragged and beat his wife like this to “protect” her it would be abuse. If an employer slapped his employee like this to teach him a lesson it would be called abuse. If I protected my dog from being killed and proceeded to beat him, it would be called abuse.
People would be outraged! Animals have more rights and are offered more protection than our children! Yet, this woman is seen as a hero on national TV because she showed up to beat her son.
….I know there are plenty out there who disagree with my “bleeding heart” approach to parenting but I say America needs more bleeding hearts! We need to be people our children can look up to and respect. We need to practice what we preach.
We need to value our children as humans and not hurt them. We need to open up our eyes and see by physically punishing children we are treating them that is how they deserve to be treated.
They feel worthless, they have no self-respect and it opens up the doors for them to be more likely to be abused in the future “out of love.”
We need to model the behaviors we want to see in our children, violence begets more violence. Violently attacking a child does not teach a child not to partake in violence!
Respect is taught by feeling respected. Children develop respect for their parents and ultimately authority by being respected themselves not by being beaten down.
For a time, I felt alone in my feelings on this case, when usually there are lots of voices speaking out against an abusive incident. I wept for humanity.
But now I’m finding all sorts of blog posts and people on Facebook speaking out against it: friends, strangers. And they, too, say, “I felt alone in this.” Here, I’ve only posted a few such blogs which I have found so far.