Of Spanking and State Violence

Chino stops beating the kid who deals drugs (note – AFTER knocking the gun out of his hand) because he hears what the kid is saying. Through his tears, the kids is saying “he can’t hit me man – he’s not my father.”

Chino lets the kid go, and leans against the wall with his dead brother’s mural. He slams his fist against it – shame, rage, anger, frustration all play on his face. He walks away and the camera cuts to Lil’ Chino under the stairs, scared and remorseful, waiting for his mother.

This isn’t the end of the scene, but I want to stop here and talk about the fear and consequences in families struggling to raise their children against a backdrop of violence.

The assumption of peaceful environment probably makes sense. I grew up in a mostly peaceful area – you weren’t fighting for your life all the time, like my cousins had to. But at the same time, it was kind of unfathomable to me to not learn how to fight and defend yourself. I lived in DC around the time when they were warning parents to make sure your kids weren’t wearing brand name clothes (anyone else remember that?) because there were way too many crimes happening over Northface Jackets and Timberland boots. I couldn’t afford these things anyway, but wearing no brand names was a step to reduce the likelihood of violence happening to you, even if it didn’t reduce it completely.

So that’s one aspect of the question. Despite some parents desire to be peaceful, their children are still operating in a violent world. So even if you raise a home that is nonviolent, how do you keep violence away from your door? How do you teach your children to respond to a violent world? The idea that violence begets more violence is a true one – but at the same time, blocks and neighborhoods can be taken over by very small groups of determined and violent people. Suddenly, all the neighbors live in fear of a handful of people. That public spankfest Chino initiated in the video above would be really welcome in communities I know and remember, though some would probably cringe to hear that said aloud. But I think it’s important to reflect on the place that violence has in our lives, and ways in which we navigate its boundaries.

I’ve heard quite a few of the grown folks talk about gun violence by discussing the way fights used to work. A certain type of fight is prized above all others – the one on one show down kind of fight, just fists and stamina. The way they tell it, there was no need for gun violence since conflicts were resolved through fisticuffs. I don’t think reality was ever that neat or honorable. But earlier this year, I watched kids from a nearby high school gang up repeatedly on their classmates, 6-on-1, 8-on-1. Everyone in the neighborhood was concerned. On three different occasions, a child cut up my block, running for his life, pursued by an angry gang of classmates. Other times, the fights started a few blocks from school grounds. Each time, adults had to figure out how to intervene. We would all come out of our houses. Some neighbors took the initiative to call the police, which we all had mixed feelings about, but all of us together couldn’t have broken up a group of 30 or so kids. With smaller groups, a few of the adults would go out yelling. Sometimes I would come downstairs with my dog, who is a good visual deterrent, and who accidentally broke up a few of these when we were out on walks. But all spring, the violence kept increasing. Quite a bit of it made the news. I am not yet a parent, but I wonder about this often. How do I teach my child to exist in this world? And how do I teach them to defend themselves in environments like this?

But then, I need to flip the question around. For every child that is targeted by bullies, there are the children who are acting as the bullies. Or the young drug dealers. Or the young adults that got set in their ways and have grown up to be the drug dealers. So when you are raising a child, and they head down that path, I often wonder: what do you do when words don’t work?

I was raised by, with, and around black men. My father, uncles, cousins, grandfathers and their friends rarely ever disciplined us girl children – that was a task left to mothers and aunties. But the boys? The boys got in coming and going.

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