I find the connection to slavery doubtful, but I did find this abstract:
I agree with astro. A better question to ask is why has corporal punishment fallen out of favor with middle class white people in recent years. I remember an old white professor of mine telling us about his father’s theory that disciplining children should be “sudden, violent, and unexplained.” Ask any white person over the age of 40 if they’ve been whipped. More likely than not, the answer will be yes. Not to mention Asian, Hispanic, and Native American people, who seem to be just as willing to whip their children as black parents. What explains them?
ASKIA –
Wait a minute. Are we talking about “spanking” or are we talking about “beating the hell out of” children? Are you asserting that black parents are or were more inclined to be actually abusive? Or are you just asserting that black parents are or were more inclined to spank their kids, and speculating as to why? Because I thought we were talking about the latter.
And that is the distinction I am drawing. What we are talking about (or at least what I have been talking about) is spanking. Though black families may be more apt to call it “whipping” – though as to that white parents call it whipping, too – we are not, in fact, talking about whipping, but about spanking. The use of an implement such as a hairbrush or a belt does not transform a spanking into a whipping. Even your link specifically addresses spanking – not actual whipping. It seems to me that you are simultaneously acknowledging that a real and important distinction exists between spanking a child and whipping – literally whipping – an adult, but then you continue to conflate the two terms. They are not the same. Certainly I never said they were. What I said was that a black parent IMO would have no reason to associate the spanking he or she does to his or her child with the whipping he or she might receive from an overseer. And if such a connection were made – of extreme pain, helplessness, and total disempowerment – that would seem to me to be a reason not to spank your child. Since blacks did not refrain from spanking (at least according to you), it seems reasonable to infer they did not draw that corrollation. I think this inference is as reasonable as yours is.
Again, I never said blacks did not spank their children. Please read my post again. I said that the fact that they did do so might indicate they did not associate spanking with actual whippings done by their masters – because if they did make that association, one might reasonably assume they would refrain from spanking their kids. Which, apparently, they did not. So I don’t think you have shown that my point is “just wrong;” rather, you seem to have misunderstood it.
This may or may not be true. I have no evidence on it one way or the other, and therefore no opinion of it. It seems to me, however, that if one segment of society came to think that corporal punishment was not effective, but another segment of society continued to think that it was, then you would find that the first segment would stop doing it, while the second would not. What I see no evidence for, and what seems to me to be a huge stretch, is attempting to pin the decision of the second segment of society on a history of slavery, as opposed to other factors – like not being convinced that it isn’t still a good idea. And it may well be a learned behavior, passed down through the years – you spank, because you were spanked and so was your mother and her mother and her mother. But I see no basis to attribute that to slavery. The physical correction meted out under slavery does not bear up to comparison to the spanking of a child – even if an impliment is used and even if “spanking” is called “whipping.”
Sure. Like I said, I was spanked, because my mother was spanked, and her mother as well. Going back to the nineteenth century, virtually every American child would have been subject to physical correction – and home and in school, and probably by the neighbors as well, if they felt it necessary. A history of the use of corporal punishment of children exists throughout all segments of American society, AFAIK, with the exception of many tribes or nations of Native Americans, where hitting a child was unheard of. That doesn’t mean the prevalence of black spanking today can be corrollated to slavery 150 years ago.
Frankly, I find the very thesis disturbing. In the rare cases where black parents are abusive – literally whipping, or beating up on, their children – then is that a product of a cultural history of slavery, and, by inference, the fault not of the black parent but of white society? Because that would seem to be where your argument leads, when taken to its logical conclusion: If blacks spank because their ancestors were whipped, then those who abuse do so because their ancestors were abused. As you might guess, I would find this extended argument (which you did not make, and I do not say you did) to be purest baloney.
I guess I give black parents more credit than that. I assume that black parents continue to spank their kids because they think it’s appropriate and they think it works. White parents are doing so less because they no longer think it’s appropriate or it works, and because there is increased societal pressure to refrain – pressure that you say does not exist (or at least not to the same extent) in black society.
That seems to me to be logical. Casting back 150 years to tie this behavior to slavery seems to me to be less so.
I’m taking a quick break from lunch to write this.
Astro - OK. I am jumping the gun with the “Boo-yaaa” comment… But I was just sooo surprised that what was merely an offhand musing of mine was stated so prominently in the very first thing I looked up online. That Dr. Alvin Poussaint, MD, the man who helped shape The Cosby Show and wrote the introductions for the Cos’ books (Fatherhood, Time Flies, Love and Marriage, etc.) shares my belief that whipping is a vestige of slavery – well, that was just unexpected validation. (BTW, his use of ‘vestige’ is much better than my use of ‘relic’ in the OP. Wish I thought of it, too.)
I really appreciate both your responses astro, as well as the link posted by bibliophage citing the huge discrepancy between CP use as used by black parents and white parents. Even while we are agreeing to disagree, your doubt and your pointing out flaws in my argument forces me to re-evaluate recent assumptions and long-held beliefs of my own. I’m in the process of doing research now that disproves some of what I’ve already stated (90% is way too high) and surprisingly validates other things I’d noted that weren’t so obvious… I’ll post those and any other findings later.
I think, for the purposes of this argument, we can now accept that far more black Americans parents will publicly admit and encourage – and presumably resort to – the use of corporal punishment whipping of their children than white Americans. I’m not quite prepared to include people of African descent in other countries just yet.
Astro: YES. I do assert that the term ‘whipping’ is specific to black Americans! But ‘specific’ is not the same as ‘exclusive’ …
Jodi, no. That’s YOUR extropolated argument, not mine. Please do not assign motivations and inferences like this to me. (God!)
Those who use whippings and spankings to abuse, humiliate, domineer and terrorize their children probrably were abused themselves. You might even be able to discover a long history of abuse and domestic violence if you go back far enough along a family lineage… but the origins and reasons for such abuse would differ. “Most cases of black child abuse today have their origins in slavery,” sounds highly improbable on the face of it, especially since it ignores poverty, crime and the failure of social services to respond to incidents of abuse. Even if it is true, it would be the fault of the abusive parent, who MUST “own his anger” as astro put it; the fault of anyone who knew about the abuse and did not intervene; and not all ‘white society’ but slaveholding society and those governments that supported slavery. However, I am not wholly prepared to believe that at this time.
I am prepared to believe that the use of a leather strap, switch, electric cords and the like; the Southernisms ‘whippings’ and ‘whup’ are part of an oral tradition to refer to corporal punishment; and the widepread practice and belief that whippings and spankings are effective means of disciplining misbehaving children by American blacks – all were perpetuated during slavery.
Finally, as a teacher I can tell you: sadly, child abuse and neglect is not “rare”; certainly not with the social mix of children I teach. When using CP, there is a line that can be crossed. Responsible parents take care that line is not crossed.
I confess, the more I research this, the more I find this disturbing, too.
ASKIA, with respect, I very clearly – and quite intentionally – did NOT assign any such motivation or inference to you. That is why I specifically said “I would find this extended argument (which you did not make, and I do not say you did) to be purest baloney.” So you’re safe. 
Why? There appears to me to be very little evidence for this, yet you are prepared to believe it, and that puzzles me. White parents use implements to spank their children too (those who spank at all). White parents refer to spanking as “giving a whipping.” Those who support spanking – of any race – do so because they believe it is an “effective means of disciplineing misbehaving children.” As far as I can see, you are willing to corrolate the prevalence of spanking among blacks with slavery solely because blacks spank and blacks were slaves: The set A includes subset B and subset C; therefore B and C must in some way corrolate. That does not follow. As the child of immigrants, my grandmother spoke Norwegian, and my grandmother grew up poor. That doesn’t support the conclusion that she spoke Norwegian because she was poor. I am not saying your argument is wrong (how would I know?) but there seems to be very little evidence in support of it, and other reasonable explanations appear possible (i.e., that blacks spank their kids because they think it’s an appropriate means of discipline, period). So I’m surprised by your willingness to accept this thesis with very little in the way of proof.
And I used the term “rare cases of child abuse” to emphasize that I was not making the statement that black parents in general are abusive. They are not. I did not intend to create the impression that I think child abuse itself is a rare thing.
Jodi-- with an equally amount of respect and deference – I knew that’s what you meant, really. But I was ASTOUNDED by your speculation ‘where this was leading’ when that was never my intention. Sorry that I came off glib. It’s not that I felt threatened, just misunderstood. 
This debate should to be decided with the quality of the limited evidence that’s available, rather than the abundance of it. If there were a lot of evidence to suggest it, this wouldn’t be a great debate, now would it?
I’ll own up to not presenting much in the way of evidence, Jodi. I’ll also own up to muddling up this thread with my sloppy thinking earlier, so I’ll try to amend that with more precise use of terminology.
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Spanking is an all inclusive word for corporal punishment, a term used by Americans of many ethnic backgrounds. It usually involves the use of a bare hand to physically reprimand a child, although sometimes other objects may be used.
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Whipping or whupping, on the other hand, is a regional colloquilaism for corporal punishment, a term used by Southern whites and blacks or transplanted former Southerners. The word’s etymology is Scottish. [See: whup, Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary] While ‘whuppin’ occasionally involves the use of a bare hand, in most cases it involves a long flexible object, such as an extension cord, hickory branch or leather belt and is used to physically reprimand a child. In young children, it is frequently administered by having the child undress from the waist down and literally whipping the child’s back, buttocks and legs.
Now, I can’t speak for white Southerners, or even other black familes – but in my family, whippings were almost ritualized. I was rarely whipped immediately… my mother and grandparents talked it up first, made me sweat it out. By the time they came into my room and made me take off my pants (I could keep my underwear on) I was usually crying more from the anticipation of the whipping moreso than the whipping itself.
I can remember seven --maybe eight – whippings in my entire childhood. I was talked to, reasoned with, warned. When I lied too outrageously or was caught flagrantly misbehaving I was always promised a whipping and I always got one. I never equated whippings with a empty threat.
Um…at the risk of sounding glib… www.nospank.net/n-d76.htm+whupping&hl=en&ie=UTF-8]yeah.
And yeah, again.
And for historical edification, the account from the Rev. Elijah Marrs, born 1840, on discipline growing up:
I was talking about this topic earlier today IRL…
Generalization alert!!
I believe black parents are usually much stricter than white parents. Even if we ignore “whuppins”, I think black parents are more likely to be more firm than soft when it comes to disciplining.
I believe slavery is partly responsible, for not for the reasons expressed in the OP.
Back in the day, if a black person looked a white in the eye, they could be accused of anything from being uppity to being a rapist. Life and death hinged on controlling one’s behavior. So it was the black parent’s job to instill this kind of do-as-you’re-told discipline in their children. If they didn’t do it, then someone less loving would do it.
This kind of harshness is prevalent among poor people in general. Schools in poor neighborhoods tend to have stricter teachers and rules than schools in rich neighborhoods because poor children are being prepared for a do-as-you’re-told lifestyle, where questioning authority is out of the question. (See Jonathan Kozal’s Savage Inequalities for more details).
A lot of arguments can be made against corporal punishment, but one effective result of it’s use is fear. Fear of doing wrong. Fear of authority. Things that are “good” when you have to survive in an oppressive society. I think black people are strict disciplinarians less because of the vestiges of slavery and more because of oppression in general.
And these quotes, from The Slave Community: Plantation Life In The antebellum South by John W. Blassingame (Revised and Enlarged Edition, 1979)
page 186:… "slave parents made every effort humanly possible to shield their children from abuse and to teach them how to survive in bondage. One of the most important lessons for the child was learning to hold his tongue around whit folks. This was especially true on those planttations where the masters tried to get the children to spy on their parents. Sam Aleckson [pointed out that as a child he “was taught to say nothing” about the conversation in the quarters. Frequently mothers had to be severe with their children to prevent them from breaking this important rule."
page 187:
“Learning to accept personal abuse and the punishment of loved ones passively was one of the most difficult lessons for the slave child…”
Page 188:
“The lessons the slave child learned about conformity were complex and contradictory. Recognizing the overwhelming power of whites, parents taught children obedience as a means of avoiding pain, suffering and death. At the same time, they did not teach unconditional submission… children were often taught to fight their masters and overseers to protect their relatives.”
monstro: I dunno. These last three quotes seem to make it clear this kind of instilled fear started in slavery.
More research coming…
ASKIA –
[quotoe]This debate should to be decided with the quality of the limited evidence that’s available, rather than the abundance of it. If there were a lot of evidence to suggest it, this wouldn’t be a great debate, now would it?
[/quote]
So far you have presented no evidence for your thesis. None. The bald opinion of one person (in addition to your own) hardly qualifies as “evidence.” I am looking for quality as well as quantity. I see neither. You can’t judge the "quality of the evidence presented until some evidence is presented.
By this definition, “spanking” would include “whipping” or “whupping,” since it is a form of corporal punishment.
First, “whipping” is not a colloquialism that is exclusively the provenance of southerners and/or blacks. As I have said, my parents threatened to give me whippings too. I grew up in Montana, the child of English and Norwegian immigrants. Second, the use of an implement to spank a child is not the exclusive provenance of southerners and/or blacks, either. White children are spanked with belts, hairbrushes, wooden spoons, and other things as well. Third, I would submit that while the line between physical correction and abuse can be a fine one (and therefore one should not act in a way that even approaches that line), literally whipping a child with an extension cord on the legs and/or back would be in almost all cases abuse.
Beyond that, the build-up and dread you speak of as “ritualization” is common in white families as well. On the very rare occasions when I was whipped (meaning, spanked) with a belt, my mother made me go get the belt myself. Similarly, my father recalls being “switched” for some transgression as a kid, and his father made him go out and cut the willow switch himself. Since you speak of comics, Jeff Foxworthy (admittedly, a southerner, but white) talks about having to pick the switch to be whipped with – “not that one, it’s too little, he’ll just make me get another one . . . not that one, it’s too big; it’ll break my back . . . .” So that again is not something unique to black families, or necessarily attributable to a history of slavery.
And your quote from Reverend Marrs again does not distinguish between what we would now call spanking and actual whipping, but it seems to me obvious that when he talks about “a poor mother being whipped near to death” and his own mother “lovingly whipping” him, he is not talking about the same thing.
Askia, I think you’re giving too much weight to slavery. Yes, it was important but I think the subsequent, more pervasive, more recent forms of racist and classist oppression are more important.
If–following emancipation from slavery–black people hadn’t suffered the years of humialition and deprivation they had experienced as second-class citizens, I don’t think our use of corporal punishment would differ all that much from the general population’s. But I admit this is a moot point. Second-class citizenship would have probably not existed to the same extend if NOT for slavery.
Jodi: I’m glad I got that some of this evidence posted before you did…
I meant to say “whuppins” was a regional colloquialism. And as Webster’s demonstrates, a beating with a ‘slender, flexible object’ with ‘quick successive strokes’ is properly called a whipping, not a spanking… although black people also have a score colorful names for CP, as noted earlier in this article: beating, whipping, whupping, whupping the black off you, tanning your hide, tearing into your behind, licks, bustin’ ass, cutting tail, blows, and my favorite – roasting your black behind.
Spanking is not the same as a whupping. At all. I’ve had both and – they’re NOT the same. A kid see his mama’s hand every day. Big deal. You pull out a belt and wave it at a kid… well…
Why? I said WHIP a child, not FLAY a child. You don’t have to leave welts. The hard knob part is held in the hand, usually.
monstro: You and I agree that slavery plays some part in whippings and whuppins and the like – the only issue is degree. That said, I agree with you on the issue of oppression immediately following Reconstruction and up through the Jim Crow era and the Civil Rights movement may have also contributed to the role whuppins played in maintaining household and school discipline. Almost every older black person I know bemoans the fact that younger black people don’t administer whippings like they used to.
davidw: As far as I can tell, middle class white America began to grow disenchanted with corporal punishment with the rising popularity of Dr. Benjamin Spock, and to a lesser extent, behavioral modification advocates such as B. F. Skinner in the 1960s. My maternal grandparents – they had something like 22 brothers and sisters between them – were middle-class educators and college professors. My grandmother thought Spock was foolish and Skinner was crazy.
Asians, Hispanics and Native Americans discipline children with corporal punishment as often as BLACK AMERICANS?? Hispanics, maybe. What makes you say that Asians or Native Americans whip or spank their kids? Could you provide some cites, please?
In his autobiography, Black Boy, Richard Wright presents violence as a constant during the Jim Crow era. It was vital to the black community to maintain control over him lest everyone suffer for his “uppity” actions.
Perhaps this type of setting is part of why Askia feels that corporal punishment to control behavior has been passed on in black families. But as Montrso brought up, I am more inclined to think that poverty rather than race is the basis for it.
In the past I have provided consultation services to an inner city Head Start program. The teachers in one classroom were having difficulty with a child acting out and called the mother to let her know. She came up to the school, took a belt out of her purse, pulled down the kid’s pants, and proceeded to ‘whup’ him. On questioning the teachers I found out this was routine.
I talked with the staff psychologist and the center director about reporting the incidence to child protection and was informed that this was part of the black culture and to mind my own business! I reported it anyway, but as far as I could figure-out nothing happened.
The Head Start administration were perpetuating the stereoptype that corporal punishment is part of black culture in America. Other children of different races at that site were also abused but the staff were not told “It’s part of Hmong culture back-off.”
Hmmm. when she pulled down his pants, did she expose the boy’s genetalia?
Was the child beaten into unconsciousness? Did the child suffer cuts or welts or bruises or damage to any part of his anatomy? Was the child bleeding? Was the child struck deliberately and repeatedly over the head? Did she swing the belt buckle in his crotch? Did the mother go for his eyes? Nose? Teeth? Punch him? Choke him? Throw him up against the wall? Step on him on the floor?
If any of that is so, forget a phone call – you should have stepped in and taken the belt! You were damn right to call Protective Services, and I applaud you for having the courage to do so under administrative disapproval.
If none of that happened, well… sounds like you just witnessed a regular ol’ whuppin’ to me.
It’s not a stereotype. It is cultural. If that’s all that happened, it’s not abuse, which is why nothing happened with social services. I don’t care how much the boy hollered and screamed, it ain’t really abuse if there’s no damage. Hurt feelings and tears don’t count – that’s his mother.
Still – you were well within your rights to report it. The mother shouldn’t have exercised those particular parental rights inside the school. In this dangerous, litigious world she might have done something to expose you to a lawsuit and all y’all’d be out of a job.
Poverty may explain the pervasiveness of ‘whupping’ to an extent – again, that poverty was inescapably a direct result of slavery – but there must be other, cultural ( I’ve never said “racial”) factors. It doesn’t explain why middle-class-scion-turned-multimillionaire Will Smith sings to his son in “Just the Two Of Us”… 'I want to kiss you all the time/ but I will test that butt if you step out of line. True dat!"
Well, Askia, my parents are middle class, but their children were very familiar with belts and extension cords.
But both of them were raised in poor/working-class families.
My sister–who has two kids–isn’t as wont to use corporal punishment as our parents (who, of course, disapprove).
I imagine that when her kids have kids, the tendency to whup will be further diminished.
Askia, you keep enthusastically banging this poorly substantiated, lightweight argument for a meaningful and specific causal connection between “whippings” given to discipline black children in 2002 by their parents and slave whippings of the 1700 and 1800’s. You have provided no truly meaningful evidence for this link in causation other than some good natured hand waving and a Judy Tenutaesque “It coulda’ happened”.
The direction this seems to be heading is that you are determined to prove somehow, some way that the relatively higher levels of current, black cultural enthusiam for corporal punishment is related specifically to some vestige of slave culture. Well it is but not in the way you posit. Monstro has already addressed this issue as primarily a relic of poverty which can (I think) be logically and causally linked to a history of oppression until relatively recently. Monstro’s second argument that black children are disciplined more harshly historically, because of the dire consequences of misbehavior (specifically for blacks) for is potentially supportable but needs further discussion.
You argument on the other hand does not, unless you are prepared to substantiate it “great debatewise” with something more substantial than the argumentative equivalent of “I reckon” and “there must be other…”. Why isn’t having been/being poor and oppressed good enough for you, why do you keep grasping for some historically unique, black specific, meta-causality to explain these attitudes?
astro – I know. (Sigh) Either the evidence is there and not that obvious and I’m looking at things wrong or it’s not there and I have been carrying on a delusional topic for several days. I am not, however meaning any of this in a ‘good-natured, hand waving, Judy Tentutesque’ way. My scholarship and investigation may be flawed, but I’m very earnestly trying to establish the reasons why a vast majority of black American parents ‘whup’ their kids. I’m also convinced slavery is at least part – perhaps not as large a role as I’ve stated in the OP two days ago, but certainly part – of a confleunce of compelling reasons why this still occurs.
Monstro’s timely opinion is one that I have been looking into, and I certainly thank him(?) for it. I hope to hear any more thoughts on this.
Because there are historically unique, black specific, meta-causality events that explain other attitudes (say, slavery and the use of the word ‘nigger’ within our own subculture). Why not slavery and child discipline?
If it’s true – and I believe it is – it would certainly explain why upwards of 80% of all African Americans living in this country do it, do it proudly, www.childprotectionreform.org/policy/spanking/washpoststory.htm+Bible+%2B+whipping+%2B+rod+%2B+slavery&hl=en&ie=UTF-8]do it at the risk of losing their kids and are only just now starting to question the practice and change their attitudes about it at a time when the nation as a whole stopped doing it 40 years ago.
Look, just so we’re absolutely clear – I’m not poor. Have never really been poor. I’m decidedly middle class. My family – paternal side and maternal side – has been middle class since about the 1920s – three generations now. My great-grandparents, black landowners, homeowners, farmers and businessmen – put some their children through college to become teachers, who in turn put ALL their children through school to become teachers, ministers, college professors, professional artists – who in turn have sent all their college age children to school, who are now busy building families of their own. In my generation are teachers, architects, artists, a hair salon owner, a naval Lt., a corporate risk analysis assessor (or whatever the hell my cousin Nikki does), a starstruck aspiring filmmaker in Hollywood and two honor roll undergrads – not including my cousins still in high school. Moreover, if you look at a book by Washington Post Editor Eugene Robinson called Coal To Cream, you’ll discover that this middle class aspiration is not at all an unusual thing in Orangeburg, SC where I grew up. The home of two historically black colleges, Orangeburg has a bastion of genteel uppity black folks who were college educated in many disciplines, made sure their children were college educated and that expectation dwells on in their children for their children.
And we all still believe in laying that belt our kids if they act up.
Not a spanking. A belt. Or a switch. Early and firmly. Later you can ease up. Why? Why a belt? What’s the attraction with using a belt as opposed to a hand or some other method of child rearing? Where did that COME from? Not just my family – everybody black I know of, too? I’m not sure I’ve ever heard outright dissent, with the exception of Dr. Alvin Poussaint.
Church? Okay. Yeah. Makes sense. “Spare the rod…” I’ve heard a more than a couple of sermons from the pulpit on respecting your elders. I remember getting a couple of whippings after church. We’re all pretty much churchgoing folks, even if not all of us go the same kind of churches or are Christians anymore.
Why church, anyway? Did this always go on in church? Yeah? How far back did it start? A couple of generations? More? My families’ church in Charleston was founded right after the AME/CME split. That around 1800 or so. Did it start then?
What if it started even earlier? What if it started when the first group of black people landed in 1619? What if that indoctrination, that Christian, God-fearing belief in ‘if you love your chidren, you will punish them’ was instilled in the first group of non-Christian “indentured servants” who set foot in Virginia, and those that came after? Would it not make sense that they would take that physical catechism, internalize it and pass it on to their children to make them obey, to help them survive?
I should add, “Hallellujah!”
Anyway, here’s that www.childprotectionreform.org/policy/spanking/washpoststory.htm+Bible+%2B+whipping+%2B+rod+%2B+slavery&hl=en&ie=UTF-8]corrected link. I hope.