Many of us remember our parents “giving us something to cry about.” Whooping helps children behave – and it’s part of Black culture. Right?
But what if what we think we know about whooping is actually a lie?
Whooping doesn’t actually start with us. It was white Europeans who punished their children with severe beatings and lashings, the more severe the better! So how did we discipline children in OUR culture?
Before enslavement, our children were never beaten! According to the American Psychological Association, historians have found “no evidence that … physical discipline of children existed in precolonial West African societies prior to the Atlantic slave trade.”
Children in many West African cultures were considered to be connected with the afterlife, and whooping children was thought to scare off the soul. So why DID we start whooping our children?
For centuries, Black children were in danger – one wrong step and a white person could attack, enslave, or kill them at will. Whooping children into obedience was a form of protection. We still carry much of that generational trauma today.
The act of whooping our children is rooted in white supremacy – it’s NOT part of the way Black people historically cared for our children. Our culture was built on love, not violence, and as we continue to free ourselves from white supremacy, we might also want to leave whooping behind.