In a New York Times opinion column, Stacey Patton calls for African American parents to stop beating their children.

Patton starts off by sharing an emotional and powerful anecdote from her childhood about how she was beaten by her adoptive mother.

Her story helped her argument and call for action because it displays her personal connection and experience with it. It also helps the reader depict the situation and how scarring and painful it may be. Patton begins with a very strong pathos appeal to grab the reader’s attention.

“Today, black parents are still about twice as likely as white and Latino families to use corporal punishment on their children.”

Patton then goes on to explain how many African Americans believe they are successful because they were beat as a child, which allowed them to avoid jail, drugs, etc.

Like Patton, I disagree with this. I do not believe that success and beatings as a child are positively correlated. If beatings kept African Americans out of jail, then why is mass incarceration and police brutality so relevant today?

Patton points out that before slavery, whipping and beating children was not a parenting tool. In West African cultures, there were no physical punishments for children because they were viewed as “sacred and pure.” Europeans were the ones who thought that children were “born in sin,” and were beat to get the devil out of them.

“The truth is that white supremacy has done a masterful job of getting black people to continue its trauma work and call it “love.”’

I understand that many parents beat their children because of “tough love”, and discipline. However, in today’s society, African American children go through enough already. With police brutality and mass incarceration, parents should be protecting and loving their children, not hurting them.