African American Child Terrorism

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Child Terrorism is the exercise of sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity of adults using corporal punishment as a child rearing technique to control children and to modify their behavior into submission. African American Child Terrorism is the exercise of sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity of adults using corporal punishment as a child rearing technique to control African American children, primarily males to modify their behavior into submission. The end result of this form of child rearing is undiagnosed and untreated post traumatic stress disorder yielding a diminished capacity for appropriate emotional development, plus personal and professional productivity.

Too many Americans employ this approach to child rearing. Too many African American Families are proficient in this use of physical force and abuse to manage children. Children surviving this form of child rearing report as adults having heard their mothers say with angry expressions on their faces, "I brought you into this world and I can take you out."

Disclaimer: This article does not purport to present a solely monolithic or absolutist perspective. What is reported here affects cultures other than African American Culture. The distinct uniqueness is represented by the source origin of the phenomenon among people descendant of slaves for whom corporal punishment was anathema. If what I report was not true, I would not be able to report it from the research of others as corroborating evidence and my own real first hand experience as a survivor of the same. I write this article for four reasons. First, I write it because I love children. Second, I write because I love myself. Third, I write it because I love my people from whom I descend. Fourth, I write it because there is a better way to raise children.

What is to be the long term affect and symptoms of children raised in this hostile fear based environment? How will these children learn to relate to other people when the adults responsible for their direction and relationship orientation do so in ways harmful to their bodies, minds, and emotions?

Corporal Punishment is a physical action employed by adults with power over children acted out against children for the purported purpose of behavior modification. African American males school aged children are the primary focus of this article.

Corporal punishment embodies and involves a number of aggressive forms of expression designed to cause pain in children to modify behavior through physically striking children with adult body parts: hands, feet, arms, legs, or instruments like wooden paddles, sticks, switches from trees, electrical cords, hair brushes, books, tobacco stalks, belts; to name an unlimited few.

Straus and Stewart note in their work Corporal Punishment by American parents: national data on prevalence, chronicity, severity, and duration, in relation to child and family characteristics that African American males being reared in poverty in the south in households headed by single mothers experience the highest frequency of corporal punishment, both at home and at school. Religious education and cultural tradition factor into and support this outcome.

On April 1, 2001, the Houston Chronicle carried an article written by Chicago Tribune writer, Dahleen Glanton about the arrest of Pastor and Rev. Arthur Allen Jr., Pastor of Atlanta's House of Prayer for ordering families to whip (a term of slavery) their children because God's word permits it. Whipping is the same word used to support and maintain the existence of the institution of slavery. Straus and Mathur confirm this finding in Social Change and the Trends in Approval of Corporal Punishment of Parents from 1968 to 1994.

Corporal Punishment borders on insanity when employed by some (too many) African American families. The practice has one primary source origin which suggests the practice a mandate from God. Multiple texts from the Hebrew Bible's Proverbs encourage the beating of children, particularly male children.

This practice was put to full use during the Era of Slavery in North America. Biblical passages justified the abuse of Africans in the formation of the new republic purported to be established one nation under God with liberty and justice for all; Africans not included, because Africans were not quite fully human. Slaves took on the biblical perspectives reported to have destined their lot in life to one of involuntary servitude with few to no available avenues of recourse.

The following is cited from an earlier personal work while in graduate school at Western Kentucky University in 1985 entitled, "Operation Double Tongue, A Study of Bilingual Education in America". I took the position that America is by perspective a linguistically imperialist nation.

Support for this was demonstrated by the federal funding levels for Bilingual Education's then two primary initiatives; Maintenance Bilingual Education and Transitional Bilingual Education. Maintenance Bilingual Education represented the investment of simultaneous instruction in two languages; the language minority origin student's native language or Mother Tongue and English. Transitional Bilingual Education's task was to move non native English speakers into English only classrooms as quickly as possible. Funding for transitional was 9 to 1 over maintenance. English as a Second Language was developed to bridge the gap though it had existed for more than 200 years..

Nowhere is this more aptly demonstrated than in Alex Haley's classic work, "ROOTS". Kunta Kinte, (portrayed by LeVar Burton), is at the whipping post (there's that word again) being beaten and made to say his slave name, Toby as an act of submission. This action represents the first form of English as a Second Language (ESL) Class in the U.S.

Descendants from African slave ancestors that assert corporal punishment as a means of beating their children into submission to a modified behavioral point of view are qualitatively no different than former slave owners and slave task masters that beat their ancestors. This pathological approach to child rearing is nothing short of criminal in application. Children deserve better from the adults responsible for their direction and supervision.

When children are regarded as less than human like slaves were, children may be treated as the slaves of the first centuries of the formation of the American Republic. Adults who perceive children as things less privileged than adults can do anything with children they want premising their belief in biblical and political privilege. Corporal punishment is pathologically criminal.

James F. Gregory of St. John's University cites the disproportionate incidents of African American males receiving corporal punishment in school as extremely high in his work, "The Crime of Punishment: Racial and Gender Disparities in the use of Corporal Punishment in U.S. Public Schools. Incidents of corporal punishment experienced by white females are noted insignificant to non - existent by comparison.

The same African American male students receiving most incidents of corporal punishment are targeted for special education disproportionately. How many layers will this form of punishment foster in the elective and intentional segregation of African American school age male children into areas least likely to enhance their scholastic performance at highest levels of learning function and productivity? Where does it end? What are the primary prompts to this propensity of school leaders and African American parents to collude in conspiracy to cite corporal punishment as primary to behavior modification in African American male children?

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is on record saying, ""Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Nothing is more stupid than adults regarding other human beings less than themselves such that they may treat others any way they wish. This was the behavior of slave owners to their human property; slaves. It is the same of many African American parents in the rearing of their children who also sanction the agreement of school leaders in reinforcing their sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. For the children's sake, this madness has to stop. It is nothing short of child terrorism shrouded in notions of the adult and racial supremacy.

To demonstrate further correlation, National Geographic has captured the trail of Al Qaeda that led to September 11, 2001. Our nation has since been involved in engaging this external enemy at the level of war. Al Qaeda, warriors with a cause and without a flag, are sometimes found nested within the geography of our nation. The engagement is intense. These represent terror or the inflicting of painful corporal punishment to bend others to their point of view. This behavior is inarguably destructively pathological.

The enemy of child terrorism is even more insidious. This enemy is in every American neighborhood, church, school, business, and service organization. This enemy not only looks like us, this enemy is us; those of us that perpetrate this crime of terrorism against children by acts of commission, as well as those of who try to act like it does not exist through acts of omission.

Child terrorists at their best represent the worst application of sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. At their worst, they represent a terrorism of evil no child and no human should have to experience. African Americans treating their children like slave owners treated slaves are qualitatively no different in their demand for submission of children's spirit at the whipping post.