Race, righteousness and revulsion threaded through reader conversations about the lines between spankings, whoopings and abuse in responses to opinion pieces regarding NFL player Adrian Peterson’s indictment on child abuse charges.
“While 70 percent of Americans approve of corporal punishment, black Americans have a distinct history with the subject,” Michael Eric Dyson wrote in an op-ed essay “Punishment or Abuse.” “Beating children has been a depressingly familiar habit in black families since our arrival in the New World.”
At least in the Times comments, several readers who offered their opinions as black Americans said they embrace corporal punishment as part of their disciplinary philosophy.
“I am a mother of two black children and will use ALL of the tools available to me to raise them,” Lattaria in New York wrote in response to Mr. Dyson’s column.
Race remained a strong theme in comments on Charles Blow’s column “On Spanking and Abuse,” although Mr. Blow did not address the issue as a matter of race, as Mr. Dyson did.
“There is not a black parent on this planet that will tolerate,” calling a parent a vulgar name or saying “shut up,” Cottabu in Los Angeles wrote in response to Mr. Blow’s column. “The threat of corporal punishment is the primary means of ensuring it doesn’t happen.”
As Mr. Dyson wrote, “Adrian Peterson’s brutal behavior toward his 4-year-old son is, in truth, the violent amplification of the belief of many blacks that beatings made them better people.”
That theme was reflected among readers.
“You guys will never know what it takes to raise black youth in an urban society,” Jhamar D. Youngblood of New Jersey wrote. “My mother’s beatings saved me from becoming a crackhead.”
Corporal punishment is prevalent throughout the country, Mr. Blow wrote. Survey research shows that “77 percent of men, and 65 percent of women 18 to 65 years old agreed that a child sometimes needs a ‘good hard spanking.’”
In that context, spanking and switching is hardly a matter of race, several readers pointed out.
“Why is the narrative about this story consistently about corporal punishment within the black community?” Cassius Drake, M.D., of Detroit wrote.
Psychologists consistently provide evidence of the lifelong damage to children from spankings and beatings, Mr. Blow and Mr. Dyson wrote. Yet, when people say “success is directly measurable to the violence visited on our bodies as children, we reinforce a societal supposition that pain is an instrument of love,” Mr. Blow wrote.
“If you want to destroy someone’s sense of worth or make them incurably angry for life, this would seem to be the way to go,” Nancy in New York wrote of Mr. Peterson’s switching of his 4-year-old son.
It’s important to make a distinction between parents who exercise clear-minded discipline and those who take out their anger on their children, many readers said. One supports character development, the other is abuse, as in the allegations against Mr. Peterson.
“There’s a big difference between an old-fashioned beating and mild spanking,” JJC in Virginia wrote. “A lot of my friends got the tar beaten out of them and had the bruises to prove it. That’s abuse.”
Others invoked the same biblical phrase Mr. Dyson described as a scriptural justification for spanking their children.
“I don’t agree with beating a child until they bleed — that is clearly nonsense and abusive,” LLFrench in Michigan wrote. “Spare the rod spoil the child is biblical, but so is love and balance.”
Many readers welcomed the opportunity to have a national dialogue on corporal punishment, saying it’s overdue.
“Sadly, it took the fear of [the] NFL losing money to have this conversation,” Tony J in New York wrote.
One reader illustrated how change is possible.
“I was turned in by my best friend to social services… I actually didn’t know how to discipline in any other way than I had been treated myself,” Tamara Eric in Boulder, Colo., wrote. “I never hit my child again under any circumstances.”