BlackWhiteParenting

The racial parenting divide: What Adrian Peterson
reveals about black vs. white child-rearing
Black parenting is often too authoritative. White parenting is often too
permissive. Both need to change
Brittney Cooper
Sep 16, 2014

In college, I once found myself on the D.C. metro with one of my favorite
professors. As we were riding, a young white child began to climb on the seats
and hang from the bars of the train. His mother never moved to restrain him.
But I began to see the very familiar, strained looks of disdain and dismay on the
countenances of the mostly black passengers. They exchanged eye contact
with one another, dispositions tight with annoyance at the audacity of this white
child, but mostly at the refusal of his mother to act as a disciplinarian. I, too, was
appalled. I thought, if that were my child, I would snatch him down and tell him to
sit his little behind in a seat immediately. My professor took the opportunity to
teach: “Do you see how this child feels the prerogative to roam freely in this
train, unhindered by rules or regulations or propriety?”

“Yes,” I nodded. “What kinds of messages do you think are being
communicated to him right now about how he should move through the world?”

And I began to understand, quite starkly, in that moment, the freedom that white
children have to see the world as a place that they can explore, a place in
which they can sit, or stand, or climb at will. The world, they are learning, is
theirs for the taking.

Then I thought about what it means to parent a black child, any black child, in
similar circumstances. I think of the swiftness with which a black mother would
have ushered her child into a seat, with firm looks and not a little a scolding, the
implied if unspoken threat of either a grounding or a whupping, if her request
were not immediately met with compliance. So much is wrapped up in that
moment: a desire to demonstrate that one’s black child is well-behaved, non-
threatening, well-trained. Disciplined. I think of the centuries of imminent fear
that have shaped and contoured African-American working-class cultures of
discipline, the sternness of our mothers’ and grandmothers’ looks, the firmness
of the belts and switches applied to our hind parts, the rhythmic, loving, painful
scoldings accompanying spankings as if the messages could be imprinted on
our bodies with a sure and swift and repetitive show of force.

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