Stop Beating Black Children

“This is gonna hurt me more than it hurts you.”

My black, middle-class adoptive mother often grumbled these words as she prepared to whup me for getting dirty, mouthing off, rolling my eyes, telling lies or any number of other childhood misbehaviors.

I still see myself standing naked in the living room of our suburban New Jersey house, my heart thundering as I watched her through the screen door, rustling through the thicket of shrubbery that girdled the front porch. The switches she pulled smelled sweet and damp like the...Lees meer