What do you do when you and your spouse clash over whether to spank the children…and the conflict is rooted in black and white?

A father wrote to me recently with a very real dilemma. He is White, married to a Black woman. They have a young son. Problem is, this husband and father is at odds with his wife and her family.  He writes:

“Thanks for the website. I’m a white male married to a black woman; her family is heavily religious and very much believes in hitting children. We don’t hit our son but it’s a struggle at times to have to push back on their various paradigms concerning children and adults.

When my wife was pregnant, I had an argument with my wife’s sister when she insisted that she had the right to hit my son if he was under her watch (needless to say, I don’t leave him with her).

Recently, my wife’s mother tried to be very forceful with me, announcing that she was going to start hitting my son because otherwise it would confuse the other grandchildren whom she hits (I had to show her a side of me that made her realize that was not a good idea). I consistently see various adults in the family apply their hitting less for discipline and more for petty and angry responses to children in their care.

My wife feels intimidated by the family and, although she doesn’t hit our son, she doesn’t step in because there are many stronger personalities in her family. These dynamics go much deeper than a family thinking that physical punishment is ok. There’s black identity involved where yielding to these ideas smells like yielding to white culture (never mind the irony that some researchers suggest that the origins of both Christian faith and physical discipline in black families are in slavery as white masters pushed both onto them).”

The Black/White American divide over spanking is very real, as this concerned husband and father has expressed. He wrote to Spare the Kids in search of tools for coping with this huge cultural divide.

This is a popular topic. When I speak to mostly White audiences, the question always comes up: “What should I do when I see a Black person slapping their child in the grocery store, on the train/bus, other public spaces, or even in my own family?”

There is no quick or easy answer.

Few Black parents are going to react favorably to a White stranger chastising them publicly about anything having to do with their child. But the “culture clash” isn’t the only thing to consider. These days, parents (especially Black parents, it seems) can be arrested and locked up for hitting their children. I am not against this. But it’s not always an ideal situation. Nor is it necessarily a solution to have a parent in jail, particularly a single parent, which increases the chances of their child going into foster care. And a situation that perhaps could have been addressed in a more constructive way ends up feeding two more bodies into the prison-industrial system.

Still, I will always put the protection and well-being of the child first and foremost. No child who is beaten or abused in any way should be forced to remain with their abuser(s).

When I am asked this question in a public presentation, I suggest that that the concerned White person should calmly, gently, with a soft voice, approach the parent and say something that conveys a sense of understanding and empathy such as, “It can be really stressful to deal with a child who’s not doing what you want them to do. Is there anything I can do to help?”

Of course I warn them to expect the Black parent to react with suspicion, if not hostility. Most would perceive even the most well-meaning White stranger as trying to get in their business and tell them how to raise their child at best, or someone who would and could turn them into the authorities at worst.

There is no simple, perfect, fix-it-all answer.

As for the father who wrote seeking advice about how to navigate the issue of spanking with his wife and in-laws, I commend him for taking a stand. Since his son isn’t getting spanked, his efforts have been successful so far. And even if his wife doesn’t oppose her family on the topic, her behavior speaks volumes and proves that people are teachable when it comes to corporal punishment!

I would advise him to calmly, quietly articulate his position when needed, and to avoid any attempts by his in-laws to goad or bait him into a debate on the topic. He could take advantage of his Whiteness if the topic does come up and say, “Well I don’t know if it’s ‘a White thing,’ but spanking our son is not an option in our family. We use other methods of discipline, and appreciate your respecting our rule of no physical violence.”

His in-laws aren’t likely to agree, and he can’t control their behavior, but as long as he is consistent in his messages on this topic and communicates in a calm, assured manner, they are likely to respect him. They might still challenge him verbally, but he could always turn the tables and play the “are you trying to tell me how to raise my child?” card with them.

As our society grows more diverse, the issue of how to protect children in public spaces becomes even more complex. As laws become less tolerant of physical discipline, the legal risks to parents and their children intensify.

Readers, I’d like to hear from YOU on this one! Please weigh in with what you would tell this father. I look forward to your comments.  

“There is no place for black children in this world,” intellectual giant and civil rights doyen W.E.B. Du Bois lamented in 1920.

His hyperbolic use of “this world” conveys the mean-spiritedness of mainstream life to the first generations of free black children growing up in what he called “a sneering, cruel world” of Jim Crow restriction and racial violence. 

Now, here we are in a new century, and black children are still growing up in an American society that fundamentally hates them.

Consider these recent examples:

On February 8, Joe Rickey Hundley, a 60-year-old white man who is the president of an aircraft parts company in Hayden, Idaho, allegedly slapped 19-month-old Jonah Bennett, the black adopted child of Jessica Bennett, a white woman.  The incident took place aboard a Delta Airlines flight to Atlanta from Minneapolis.  The baby’s mother told authorities that the she was trying to calm her son as the plane prepared to land.  That’s when the drunken Hundley told her to “shut that nigger baby up” before striking the child across the face with his open hand and leaving behind a scratch.

It is 2013.  President Barack Obama is in his second term.  Against the odds, black people consistently manage to overcome the barriers of racism and inequality and achieve great things.  But the other side of the coin is terrifying.  Infuriating.  Unacceptable.

If a toddler sharing an airplane seat with his mother is fair game for this kind of racialized abuse, where is there a safe place in America for black children?  Not Chicago, where by the end of 2012, 270 schoolchildren had been killed by guns since 2007—70% of them black in a city that is 33% black.

Not Detroit, where 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones was “accidentally” gunned down in May 2010 by a police officer as she slept in her living room while cameras for the A&E true-crime program, The First 48, rolled.

Not Sanford, Florida, where Trayvon Martin was slaughtered last year by neighborhood vigilante George Zimmerman while returning home from the corner store with a drink and a bag of Skittles.  

Not in Jacksonville, Florida, where Jordan Davis, who would have turned 18 this month, was shot dead at a gas station by a 46-year-old white man for allegedly playing loud music.

Not in Morrow, Georgia at a Cracker Barrel, where Tiffany Hill, an Army reservist mom was stomped, punched and called a “nigger” and a “bitch” by Troy West who took his with the young mother calling him out after he nearly hit her 7-year-old daughter in the face with a door.

Not the Atlanta suburb of Stone Mountain, Ga. at a Walmart, where a 61-year-old white man named Roger Stephens slapped a crying two-year-old black girl four or five times, telling her mother, “If you don’t shut that baby up, I will shut her up for you.”

And not in public schools across there country, where children are arrested for engaging in normal adolescent behavior: a 5 year old was arrested for having a temper tantrum in kindergarten; a 12 year old was arrested for scribbling on a desk, a 13 year old boy was arrested for burping, and a 5th grader arrested for giving a wedgie.

The race of the abuser or killer isn’t the main point.  We all know that black-on-black crime remains at epidemic levels.  But these high-profile race-motivated travesties cannot be ignored or swept aside. The truth is, the United States of America has never been a safe space for black children.  The very notion of black childhood is tied up in the definition of black people as property, as sub-human, as dangerous, as the enduring metaphor of citizenship unworthiness.  The politics around black bodies continue to drive the contemporary cultural narrative, from news to art to public policy.

Perhaps the most telling example was the 2010 anti-abortion campaign targeting black women with prominent billboards that said, “The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb.”  Never mind that the Rev. Al Sharpton helped to get one of these billboards taken down in New York City—this ultra-right-wing attack on black motherhood, childhood and life itself echoes the enduring sentiment that black life is inherently dangerous, problematic, wrong.

A slogan.  A slap.  A gunshot. 

The litany of names of child victims keeps growing.  Our hearts should be beyond breaking at this point, yet each new victim shatters them a bit more.  The legacy of slavery and Jim Crow hasn’t left us—it has just gotten a makeover to fit into contemporary American life.  A black child growing up in America today is not safe in the air, on the ground, in their neighborhood, at school, or asleep in their home.

“Shut that nigger baby up!” 

At 19 months, baby Jonah might not have understood the racial slur, but he felt the slap.  He felt the hatred, the contempt, and the racism.  He may not yet have the language with which to process the history behind that moment, but I promise you, it is an awakening that he may never forget.

Today, black parents across America are in the same quandary that they were during slavery and the segregation era – ultimately they can’t protect their children.  And as a white adoptive mother raising a black son, Jessica Bennett had to face the same painful and terrifying truth.

If you care about the safety of ALL children, I ask that you make your voice heard.  Please sign and share this petition I started on change.org: https://www.change.org/petitions/us-district-court-of-atlanta-send-joe-rickey-hundley-to-prison

Roderick “RJ” Arrington Jr. murdered by his parents for lying and not reading his Bible.

My heart breaks at recent news reports of a 7-year-old boy, Roderick “RJ” Arrington Jr. being (allegedly) beaten to death by his parents. The reason?  Because RJ didn’t do his homework, or read his Bible.

Roderick’s stepfather, Markiece Palmer, 34, is alleged to have beaten the boy with a spatula, belt and possibly a wooden panel, and shaken him, resulting in severe bruising and brain swelling. The arrest report described, “open abrasions on [Arrington’s] buttocks, severe bruising to his thighs, marks and bruises on his back and shoulders and evidence of previous beatings,” according to KLAS-TV.

In the police report, detectives say they found a broken broomstick, belts, cords, spatulas and clothing — all with blood on them, according to KSNV-TV.

Dina Palmer, 27, Roderick’s mother and Markiece’s wife, is said to have helped with the beatings, but mostly to have stood by and watched as her husband pummeled and shook the second grader, who had lived with his father and grandfather in Illinois until moving with his mother and stepfather a few months ago.

The couple has been arrested on two counts each of two counts of child abuse and endangerment and murder.

Most telling for me is that, when they found Roderick unresponsive in his bed the morning after the beating, their first call was not to 911. It was to their pastor, Kenneth Hollingsworth, who told KSNV that he was “as shocked as anyone that Markiece Palmer chose to call him before first-responders.”

What has not yet been reported is whether Hollingsworth was one of the many preachers who advocate child abuse as a biblical directive. But Hollingsworth is not the point. My concern is that there are religious leaders who advocate and strongly promote corporal punishment, justifying it as the word of God and citing scripture as “proof.”

While we have no idea how widespread this pulpit-driven child abuse might be, those cases resulting in murder make headlines, and remind us that children are too often the victims of religious dogma gone awry.

Tragically, the dynamics behind Roderick’s abuse and murder are not uncommon. Experts say that religiously-inspired beatings are increasingly common in Christian homes where children are home-schooled and the family belongs to a house of worship that advocates corporal punishment as an essential tool for discipline.

Larry and Carri Williams of Sedro-Woolley, Wash., adopted a girl, 11, and a boy, 7, from Ethiopia to join their family of six children. The parents, who home-schooled, viewed the new children (the only Blacks in a White family) as “rebellious.” In May 2011, Hana was discovered in the backyard—naked, emaciated, face-down—killed by hypothermia and malnutrition. The sheriff reported that Hana had been deprived of food for days, forced to sleep in a cold barn or closet, and made to shower outdoors with a hose. She often had marks on her legs from being whipped. She had been beaten the day of her death with a 15-inch plastic tube.

The Williams’ took child-rearing tips from a popular and controversial book, To Train Up a Child, by the Rev. Michael Pearl and his wife Debi Pearl, who head a church in Pleasantville, Tenn. The New York Times reported in 2011 that “More than 670,000 copies of the Pearls’ self-published book are in circulation, and it is especially popular among Christian home-schoolers, who praise it in their magazines and on their Web sites. The Pearls provide instructions on using a switch from as early as six months to discourage misbehavior and describe how to make use of implements for hitting on the arms, legs or back, including a quarter-inch flexible plumbing line that, Mr. Pearl notes, ‘can be rolled up and carried in your pocket.’”

The type of tube with which Hana had been beaten on the day of her murder, described by Michael Pearl as “a good spanking instrument … too light to cause damage to the muscle or the bone.”

According to the Times:

“The same kind of plumbing tube was reported to have been used to beat Lydia Schatz, 7, who was adopted at age 4 from Liberia and died in Paradise, Calif., in 2010. Her parents, Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz, had the Pearl book … they whipped Lydia for hours, with pauses for prayer. She died from severe tissue damage, and her older sister had to be hospitalized, officials said.

“The Schatzes, who were home-schooling nine children, three of them adopted, are both serving long prison terms after he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and torture and she to voluntary manslaughter and unlawful corporal punishment. The Butte County district attorney, Mike Ramsey, criticized the Pearls’ book as a dangerous influence.

“The Pearl’s books were also cited in the trial of Lynn Paddock of Johnston County, N.C., who was convicted of the first-degree murder of Sean Paddock, 4, in 2006. The Paddocks had adopted six American children, some with emotional problems, and turned to the Internet and found the Pearls’ Web site, Mrs. Paddock said. Sean suffocated after being wrapped tightly in a blanket. His siblings testified that they were beaten daily with the same plumbing tube. Mr. Paddock was not charged.”

Some conservative Christian parents reject the Pearls’ teachings and have started a petition drive asking sellers like Amazon not to stock their books.

Some churches around the country are debating the issue, and many oppose corporal punishment altogether. And that is good. But what troubles me is the fact that parents who are vulnerable to extremist teachings do not possess the judgment or ability to prevent them from crossing the line from one heinous crime—beating children in the name of discipline—to snuffing out their lives altogether.

Nobody wins in these situations. If the parents are tried and found guilty and they have other children, those children are most likely to end up in foster care. Thus a practice allegedly used to build a strong family through forced obedience destroys multiple futures. One life is snuffed out, parents are locked up, and the remaining children are sent into a system that dramatically increases their chances of becoming (or continuing to be) abused, and to end up behind bars themselves for any number of infractions.

It would be tempting to blame those religious leaders who interpret the Bible to condone abusing the young, vulnerable and innocent. It’s too easy to point to books such as “Train Up a Child” as the culprit. The real issue and the core of the problem is the notion that beating children is an acceptable form of discipline, exacerbated by the widely-held misconception that punishment equals discipline in rearing a child.

As everyone from the federal government to educators throughout our nation’s public school systems jump on the bandwagon to prevent school bullying, it’s easy to forget that the entire history, culture and sociology of the USA are founded on a platform of violence and domination.  Children who bully at school are often beaten and abused in their own homes. Police routinely bully the most vulnerable among us. Military culture is built on regimented bullying at all levels. And the prison-industrial complex that swallows and spits out people like Markiece and Dina Palmer is a nonstop assembly line of violence, domination, bullying and abuse at every level.

And so, another child lies dead at the hands of caregivers who believed that this was an appropriate way to deal with what they considered an infraction: lying about doing homework and reading, ironically, the Bible.

How ironic that young Roderick was (allegedly) murdered for lying—something every human does at some point. The fact is that few adults have mastered the art of living in absolute truth. I believe that humans—especially children—lie because they don’t feel safe telling the truth, because experience has taught them that they will be punished for being honest.

This post isn’t about blame. It’s about our need to take a hard look at the role that religious leaders play—and the power they wield—in guiding parents and caregivers about children-rearing practices. These pastors need to create safe sanctuaries. They need to play a much greater role in teaching positive discipline instead of telling parents to bet the devil out of their child(ren) for lying, or other reasons, or no reason at all.

There is great danger in this punitive fundamentalism, which has no understanding of the science of child development or the all-too tragic consequences that destroy not just the children, but often entire families for generations, and ultimately, our entire society.

There is possibility in the debates now taking place about the use of religious dogma as a weapon used to abuse and sometimes murder children. It shouldn’t take a heinous murder to bring our attention to this issue. Let’s get to work so that no other young innocents are forced to sacrifice their lives and futures to this insanity.

Recently, I met with a group of adult adoptees who were torn about searching for their biological parents. Since I am an adoptee who was eventually reunited with my birth relatives, they asked me to share my experience since there aren’t many support groups or professionals who help adoptees manage their expectations during the highly emotional reunion process.

Some adoptees in the group said they were hesitant about searching for their birth parents because they didn’t want to appear disloyal to their adoptive parents whom they love deeply.  Others feared they’d find out horrible information or risk being rejected by their birth relatives.

A few people in the group said they didn’t want an ongoing relationship, but they were curious about genetic and medical information and the backstory of the events that led up to their relinquishment.  Someone in the group asked me if I fantasized about my birth parents when I was a child.

“All the time,” I said.

Who are they?  What do they look like?  Do I look like them?  Where are they now?  What do they do for a living?  Why did they give me up?  Will I ever meet them?  Are they even alive?

These questions occupied my thoughts as a girl growing up in a house with an abusive adoptive mother and a feckless adoptive father who didn’t protect me.  My adoptive parents did not accommodate my curiosity about my family of origin.  There was no room for questions or open and honest discussion.  My adoptive parents took my questions as signs of disrespect and ungratefulness.

“You’re lucky that somebody took you in and gave you a good home,” my adoptive mother used to say.  “If your real mother wanted you she wouldn’t have given you up.”

So, as I navigated each developmental stage of childhood, particularly the stormy period of adolescence when issues of identity intensify, my lost connection to my birth family made me feel incomplete, worthless and unlovable.  To get whole, I felt I had to find out who I was and where I had come from.  Knowing my birth story would give me a sense of continuity instead of feeling like a turnip that fell off the back of a truck.

But the law said that I couldn’t search for my birth relatives until I became an adult.  The details of my birth and adoption remained a state secret.  That meant that I’d spend many years yearning and fantasizing about a beautiful mother with a soft voice and loving hands, and a tall father with strong protective arms.  I imagined they had a big house with a room waiting for my return.  They would look like the Huxtables and they would never treat me the way my adoptive parents did. 

Meeting my “real” parents meant that I could erase the stain and shame of being an adoptee and a victim of child abuse.  I told the group that if loving people had adopted me then my longings for “home” might not have been as intense.

When I was finally reunited with my birth relatives, my fantasies did not match the reality.  I did not relate well to the people with whom I shared blood ties.  We had different values and incongruent expectations about the reunion.  I was disappointed because my fantasies had allowed me to create expectations that could not be met.  In my girlish fantasies there was no room for dysfunction, secrets, lies, betrayal, or rejection. 

No one warned me that adoption is almost always the result of some kind of loss or tragedy.  And no one told me that the tortured backstory of my adoption had remained buried in the day-to-day lives of my relatives for years until I came back looking for answers. 

I expected my birth family, just as I had expected my adoptive parents, to be open and honest with me.  To tell me everything.  Hold back nothing.  I thought that my reunion would help me strengthen the tenuous hold I had on my identity.  Bring me closure.  Help me heal from my childhood from hell.  But ultimately, my reemergence brought up bad memories and emotions for everyone involved. 

It took me over 15 years to finally accept that my obsessive questions and even my physical presence stirred up emotions in my birth relatives.  My face, which looks like my mother’s face, reminded them of her death, our family’s other tragedies, pain, losses, grief, shame, secrets, lies and even their own personal failures.  This reality was a far cry from the fantasy I had of being welcomed into warm arms by people who would promise to keep me this time around.

Though my reunion with my birth family was a disaster, this adoptee’s fantasies were not all bad.

I told the group that my fantasies helped me survive child abuse.  They gave me the drive to succeed, to be a good student and a disciplined athlete, to stay out of trouble, and to make something out of myself so that my birth parents would be proud if I ever found them.  My fantasies helped me refuse to accept the lies that came from both sides of the adoption triad.  My fantasies spurred me to always ask questions, to seek out the truth, to imagine an alternate vision for myself, and to get free from unhealthy cycles.

Ultimately, when I finally faced reality, I learned the two most important lessons of my life – I have the power to reconstruct myself, and, there is a difference between relatives and family.  Not all adoption reunions end like mine.  Good or bad, what you find will most likely mean an end to the unknown and torturous wondering.  You can achieve peace if you can muster up the courage to take the journey, learn to manage your expectations, and check your fantasies at the door.

If you are an adoptee who is thinking about searching for your birth family, here are some helpful insights to keep in mind as you navigate the process . . .

1. Expect the unexpected.  You will likely experience a range of emotions, from a sense of peace and the joy of seeing yourself reflected in people who look like you, to feelings of anger and grief about things that could have been.  Some, all, or none of these may be your experience and they can each happen at different times in your journey.  It may takes months or even years for you to integrate your relatives into your lives and vice versa.

2. Be honest without fear.  Be sure to talk openly and honestly.  If you need to take things slow, then say it.  If there are questions you have, don’t be afraid to ask them.  Don’t hold back for fear that the relationship will end.  And don’t feel like you don’t have a right to know your birth family’s history.  It is yours too.  You didn’t just inherit their genes.  You can only be free when you embrace the truths about the past.  Even if you discover bad things that doesn’t mean that the past will hold you hostage.  The secrets and lies will.

3. Take notes.  Bring a camera.  Keep a journal and write down your emotions.  Talk with a therapist, close friends or relatives, and other adoptees who’ve been through the process.  Your adoption reunion is not a journey that should be taken alone!  You need healthy ways to process and release your emotions.  Having someone you trust close by can help you not become blinded by emotions and the residue of child fantasies.

4. Let go of the secrets.  If you decide to reunite with your birth family then this means that all parties have to be willing to let go of secrets, shame, and guilt.  If people keep secrets then the potential joy, healing, and closure of the reunion will be thwarted.  Expect that unveiling secrets can be painful and overwhelming for your birth relatives and for you.

5. It’s okay to be angry. Anger is part of the reunion process.  It’s not necessarily a bad thing if you can get behind the anger – bad memories resurfacing, hurt, past pain, grief, loss, shame, insecurity, rejection, abandonment, and vulnerability.  Birth parents and adoptees may find themselves getting in touch with what they missed over the years because of the lost connection.  Don’t let your anger scare you into retreat.

6. Find balance.  Your birth parents may want to rescue you because to them you are their baby even though you are now an adult.  And sometimes the adoptee might want to rescue their birth parents.  Your siblings may have intense reactions.  They may feel left out or they may have fears about the new place you might take in their parents’ lives.  Take things slowly.  Don’t rush or think that you’re going to move right into your birth relatives’ lives like nothing happened.

7. Don’t overreact.  The honeymoon period can be intense and overwhelming.  Sometimes there’s daily contact between the adoptee and birth relatives.  Any break in the communication may signal fear of rejection.  Don’t overreact.  All parties need time and space to process this life altering event.

It doesn’t take much to set them off.  Adults, too often Black, are joining a growing chorus on social media and everywhere else to sing the praises of beating children—too often Black—for one infraction or another.

Most recently, a viral surveillance video of a 9-year-old boy viscously biting, punching, choking and kicking girl toddlers in a daycare center, has inspired a litany of odes to everything from corporal punishment to outright abuse.  Here are some of the comments I’ve seen:

“WHAP! WHAP! WHAP! … the sound that should be coming from that kid’s butt, EVERY time, and I mean EVERY time this kid even talks about doing something like this.”

“He needs to be put down, like a rabid dog. I don’t care if he’s 9. If he is allowed to roam free, he will most assuredly be a serial killer.”

“THE TEACHERS, THE PARENTS AND THE KID NEED TO HAVE THEIR ASSES BEAT!”

“This kid needs an old fashion butt whooping!”

“I would beat the brakes of the day care worker & they better had got the boy out of my sight.”

“My fist was balled up just watching this video. Both the kid, the aunt, and the daycare worker need to be beat!”

“This evil 9 year old, should be charged as an adult, because he definitely knew what he was doing.” 

“If this was one of my kids omg I would be on death row right now cause him and everybody there would of been in there graves…real talk.”

Many of the commenters have called the child a “monster,” “thug,” “demon,” “menace to society,” and “pure evil.”  While some have called for him to be jailed or placed in a “psycho ward,” others see no redemptive possibilities for him; they predict that he will become the “next James Holmes,” a woman beater, a serial killer, or that he’ll end up dead before his time.

At the same time, the conversation about Michael Jackson’s daughter, Paris, 14, violating the cultural taboo against airing her famous family’s “dirty laundry.” According to The Los Angeles Times “Paris sent a threat into cyberspace, referring to a sustained lack of contact from her grandmother: “9 days and counting… so help me god i will make whoever did this pay,” after, “8 days and counting. something is really off , this isn’t like her at all .. i wanna talk directly to my grandmother!!<|3.”

After Grandma Jackson returned from what was a vacation with her eldest daughter, Rebbie, it was reported that Paris’ aunt Janet verbally abused and slapped her for inappropriate Tweeting. In the time between that rumor (later retracted by celebrity gossip site TMZ) and the calmer factual accounts, singer Gladys Knight said on “The Talk” show on CBS that she would knock Paris’ teeth out for such an infraction

My concerns are two-fold.

First, the 9-year-old boy in Vicksburg, Mississippi needs help, not an “ass whooping,” as so many are quick to prescribe.

Vicksburg police, who were given the tape by the owner of Kiddie City Childcare Center, said the boy’s attacks went on for 10 to 20 minutes, going unnoticed by a daycare worker whose back was turned during the assaults.  That worker, Sandra Trevillion, has since been arrested and charged with two counts of contributing to the neglect of a minor.

The video also shows an angry parent of one the abused girls entering the center looking for answers.  When other children pointed to a six-year-old boy, the father, 29-year-old Jamie Williams, stormed over to the child and slapped him.  

But he hit the “wrong” child, police said.

Williams, who was also arrested and charged with assault, said that when he picked up his one-year-old daughter on Monday he took pictures of her busted lip, bruises, and a bite mark.  He told his side of the story.

‘She (the daycare worker) couldn’t tell me anything, you know what I’m saying?  But everybody in the classroom pointed to the little boy.  You know, I was kind of angry at the time.  So, I just slapped him upside his head like don’t be doing my daughter like that. You know what I’m saying?  I ain’t trying to hurt the child or nothing.  You know what I’m saying? I got children too.”

Williams described how he hit the child.

“I didn’t really just cock back and try to hurt the child.  I know the child is still a child, you know, but at that point in time I had to do something.  I had to hit him a little bit. You know, quit hitting my child man.  Don’t be putting your hands on my child like that. You know, I ain’t try to hurt the baby.  I know he a baby, he at a daycare.”

As I watched this video I, like many others, was shaken to the core.  I was horrified, speechless, and sick to my stomach.  I didn’t quite know how to process what I was seeing. 

The boy’s behavior tells me that this is something he learned.  Something was done to him or he witnesses it.  The fact that he takes medicine should not be discounted.  Clearly he’s taking his aggression, frustration, and boredom out on weaker people. This is learned behavior. If children are hit for every inappropriate behavior at a young age, with nobody explaining what they’ve done wrong, then the only thing they are being taught is to act aggressively towards those younger and weaker than they are.

As infuriated as I was watching that child attack those toddlers, it never occurred to me that someone should beat him.  Violence against a child is never the right response.  And hitting somebody else’s child is illegal.  

It’s interesting that so many people say, “I would be in jail today if that were my child.”  What does it mean that, as a people, we are so quick to default to prescriptive violence? Don’t we realize that just puts more Black people into the prison pipeline and the foster care system?  The whole community needs to learn some conflict resolution skills, ASAP!

As horrific as that video of the 9-year-old boy attacking younger children might be, we need to be coming together—as families, as neighbors, and as communities—to learn the reasons behind such horrible behavior.  Look into his family background, his home environment, the medicine he’s alleged to be taking—maybe violent outbursts could be a side effect?

Just as it was startling to hear sweet, beautiful Gladys Knight talk about permanently disfiguring a troubled teen girl, and justifying it with cultural references (“I’m from the South”), I’m disappointed to see so many otherwise sane and rational adults revert so automatically to violent forms of punishment in the name of “teaching some respect,” “administering some good home training,” and “showing a child right from wrong.”

I submit that introducing violence makes effective discipline more difficult, because the beating becomes the central point rather than the child’s behavior choices being problematic.  It disturbs me deeply that Black parents especially are so very, very quick to talk about straightening children out through spankings and beatings.

The conversations that erupt in response to shocking videos and celebrity fodder are perfect examples of where the healing and growth needs to take place.  While it is neither easy nor simple to change habits and behavior, this is a challenge we must undertake.

We must slow the rush to judgment, criticism, condemnation and talk of “whoopin’ that behind,” and replace it with empathy for a child in crisis who might not have the language, skills or tools to adequately communicate what they’re going through—whether that child is beating others as he was probably beaten—or expressing concern for the whereabouts of an adult caregiver on social media.

You are either part of the solution, or part of the problem.

What’s it gonna be?

I am excited to announce that this coming week I will be traveling to Cincinnati, Ohio to join 3,000 leading experts, policymakers, practitioners, and faith leaders for the Children’s Defense Fund’s first national conference since 2003.  We are heeding a call by founder Marian Wright Edelman to “purse justice for children and the poor” in these politically volatile and polarized times.

The goal of this year’s conference is to examine strategies to close off major feeding systems fueling the cradle-to-prison pipeline and mass incarceration including: poverty, racial disparities, zero-tolerance school discipline policies, the achievement gap, and child abuse.

About a month ago, Ms. Edelman phoned me at home and asked that I join the conversation by talking about the activist work I am doing through Spare The Kids.  She said she wanted to me to talk specifically about my experience as a child abuse survivor, foster care alumna, and what it was like to grow up in a church where a gospel of violence was preached against children.  We both recognize that faith communities play a significant role in shaping parenting practices and they can be a galvanizing force in helping to combat child abuse in their communities.

When I was a kid I heard the head minister of our church give instructions on how to beat children.  He told the congregants that beating the devil out of us with “a rod of correction” was god’s will and parents had a duty to keep their children in line.  So my adoptive mother’s rod was a belt, switch, hanger, extension cord, broomstick, her bible, and anything else she could get her hands on.  She believed that her beatings would save me from hellfire, just as her pastor said it would.

The minister also quoted Proverbs 20:30 – “blows and wounds cleanses away evil and beatings purge the innermost parts.”  But ultimately, my scars and wounds landed me in foster care and in years of psychological counseling to deal with the trauma.

So this Monday afternoon I will participate on a panel called Safe Sanctuary: Congregations Reaching Out to Vulnerable Children and Families.  The focus of our panel will be to discuss the multiple ways faith communities can extend a hand to vulnerable children and fragile families so fewer children end up in the foster care which has fast become a pipeline into the juvenile justice system.

I plan to pose a series of provocative questions – Are churches sacralizing child abuse?  Are they preaching a gospel of violence against children?  Do preachers help feed children into the foster care and juvenile justice systems when they instruct congregants to beat their children in the name of god?

This morning when I started preparing for my talk I found myself sickened by some of things I came across on the Internet.  I’ve gathered dozens of headlines documenting how parents severely abused or killed their children in the name of god.  Youtube videos show people spouting off scriptures and ranting about a generation of “bad” children who’ve gone wild because people aren’t beating them.  In many of the stories I’ve read about children who were killed, the parents said they beat their children with “biblical” whips, sticks, and other weapons because they were following the scriptures or the sermons of their pastors.

Some of the most disturbing endorsements of child abuse come from Christian websites that offer instructional lessons on how to physically discipline children. The titles include: “Godly Tips On How to Beat Your Christian Child,” and “Loving Use of the Rod.”  And as expected, they all cite Old Testament verses to justify assaulting children.

I will present these examples on Monday, along with some New Testament scriptures that advocate for healthier, non-violent ways to raise children.  I am hoping that those who attend will think about how some congregants and pastors make literal interpretations of the Bible and incorporate them into their child rearing practices with harmful and sometimes deadly results.  But I will also remind people that faith communities have an enormous amount of influence and the potential to help activists, child advocates, and social services workers combat child abuse.

What if more faith leaders asked their congregants to consider the Bible’s more inspiring words on parenting, “Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath” (Ephesians 6:4); “Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged” (Colossians 3:21); or “What do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a whip, or in love with a gentle spirit?” (1 Corinthians 4:21).

The burning questions for me remain – are churches willing to step in and provide havens for children who are abused so that they don’t end up in foster care?  Are churches willing to stop preaching a gospel of violence and incorporate a faith-based theology of positive discipline?

Faith leaders and churches are doing some wonderful work with struggling families in communities all over the country.  But I want to remind people that sanctuaries cannot extend a hand to vulnerable children, advocate for proper nutrition, education, and other resources that will allow childhood to be a healthy and safe path to productive adulthood and at the same time promote physical violence against young people in the name of god.  Faith leaders must take the lead in standing against people who hide behind scripture to justify abuse of children.

It would be more responsible for faith communities to proactively provide parent training that includes a full range of discipline options that are legally permissible in today’s increasingly punitive society where there are too many news headlines of parents being placed in jails for whipping their children over low grades, bed wetting, and other behavioral problems.  The best training, I will argue, should be positive discipline, which will keep parents out of prison and children out of foster care. 

Parents can keep the faith and still raise children humanely!