What are your thoughts on this article concerning the mother who beat her son when she caught him rioting in Baltimore (see details)?

Does that make the mother a thug, too?

I actually side with the mother here, for the same reasons she said. The kid needed a strong signal from a parent that rioting / torching was not proper behavior. Her methods may have been harsh, but I’m not the parent and I don ‘t live in Baltimore.

Kids will learn if they are taught. The mother’s goal was to teach her son. Fight fire with fire.

This is being discussed elsewhere. Dutchess raised the question.

I was hoping we could discuss the article I posted specifically which raises the point that white supremacy is the reason behind the way many black mothers choose to discipline their children so physically.

@OpryLeigh – I read that columnist’s thoughts and deliberately ignored them. What an utter crock.

Fucking hell.. That article was a lot of hyperbole.

“The kind of violent discipline Graham unleashed on her son”… Bullfucking shit. She slapped the kid around a bit. Get back to me when the kid has bruise.

Anything for page-views I guess.

The writer is a complete idiot. All I saw in the footage is a mother who did whatever she had to do to keep her child safe.

@OpryLeigh Sorry. I didn’t realize it was a different take on it. Will go back and read the link.

I posted a link to that same article in my Q. Another point the author brought up was that she has never said she pulled her son out because what he was doing was morally wrong, she pulled him out so he wouldn’t get shot. Obviously, that’s a damn good reason for risking your own life to go save your kid, but not once has she addressed the moral side of the situation.

You call that a beating?
A mom whacking a strapping teenager “upside the head”?
A bigger problem than the mom getting her moron teenager’s attention, is the people who actually believe that because the word beating was used, it must therefore have been an actual beating. Is the world losing it’s collective conceptual vocabulary?

I saw the video of the Mom and I thought she was pretty out of control in her actions. I have no idea though how I would have acted in that situation. I don’t see her as the “Mom of the Year” and I do think it is a distraction from the main issue that the article brings up, “How do we as a society keep black children safe?”

“Out of control” is a good description.

Yes, I call that a beating @josie. She wasn’t just slapping, she was punching as well.

Please…
If he was truly getting a beating he would be morally and legally justified in physically defending himself, to the point of decking his mother.
Now, just imagine what the response would have been if he had done that. Would anybody justify such an act by saying he was acting in self defense? That she deserved it? That he, God bless him, was a poor helpless victim of abuse?
I doubt it.

I agree with @josie not a beatin’. Hell, it was barely a whuppin’.

And although we may disagree on the details I think we all know the difference between a spankin’, a whuppin’ and a beatin’ especially if you grew up pre-1980’s.

As for the article, I agree there is a problem that needs to be addressed, too many minorities are arrested and jailed. By my way of thinking it should be more along the lines of the actual societal make-up. No one color is more prone to crime than another. The only difference is what laws you make and the consequences tied to those laws. An unemployed homeless black guy is going to be much more likely to get arrested for vagrancy that a white CEO and even if that CEO steals millions chances are the vagrant will do more time than him.
That being said, I don’t believe that what that mother did had anything to do with white supremacy or a culture that disempowers black parents. She did why my mom, and a bunch of other moms across the world, would have done in a similar situation; save her son from himself and his friends.

I haven’t seen the video, but calling this mother “Mom of the Year” because she whacked her son does not sit well with me. It sends the wrong kind of message, the one that violence is beneficial, maybe necessary to raise children. I strongly agree with the last part of the article – where’s the praise for all the peaceful protesters and their parents?

And, I am guessing that she actually did her son a favor. Had she gone over and asked him to go home in front of his friends, he would have had no choice but to act tough and refuse. His pride and male ego would not have let him surrender to her demand. But she did not ask, she TOLD him in no uncertain terms, and with enough physicality, that he was getting out of there RIGHT NOW! He did not have the chance to stand his ground or the time to be embarrassed by friends into disobeying. His friends were not going to get into it with her nor were they going to chide him with questions about his manhood, not with her that riled up.
He has probably caught hell since with it being all over the internet but he knows that every one of those people who make fun of him would have done exactly what he did. They have mothers too and they know that when she gets like that, you do what your mama says.

Well, they are taking into consideration that this was an extreme situation. I would have reverted to the same tactics if nothing else worked.

I just wonder what her parenting techniques were as he was growing up. Did it involve and lot of physicality and violence and cussing?

I applaud her for taking action and getting her kid out of there before he landed his butt in jail or worse. I agree with others that this was not a beating. He barely looked phased. He looked more annoyed and embarrassed. If you ever talked to a teen when they felt justify in what they were doing and enraged, than you would know that no amount of talking or crying from her would’ve gotten him out of there. He was in hive mentality mode. He needed to be taken down a few notches before he would listen.

I don’t like anyone to hit anyone, but she specifically told her kid to not go down to the demonstrations and he defied her. It was very risky for him to be there and she wanted to protect him. Would he have gone with her if she just had shown up and told him he better come back home with her? I don’t know. Teens can be defiant and stupid.

I saw them both on TV today and the boy said, “now I know how much my mom cares about me.”

I do not like the idea of physical punishment in a normal naughty child situation. However, this was a very extreme situation, one that may have got this boy jailed or worse, killed. I’m not sure that there was any other way of dealing with it for this woman and so I can not blame her or make assumptions on how she parents her kids under normal circumstances.

The whole “white supremacy is to blame for her actions” thing doesn’t sit well with me. My grandmother once used physically force to get me away from a dangerous situation. She grabbed my arm and smacked my bottom for disobeying her and putting myself in a potentially life threatening situation. She was clearly very scared at that moment. Firstly, I hold no bad feelings towards my grandmother, it wasn’t typical behaviour for her, she is one of the kindest people I know. Secondly, it had nothing to do with my skin colour and everything to do with her fear for my safety. I think any parent, if scared enough for their child’s safety could act in a similar way regardless of the specific circumstances.

I thought it was funny.
The 16 year old boy said he was thankful his mother did come after him.

If it had been a white woman, the cops and CPS be on her ass. LOL

I still wonder why the Media took off with this clip.
It’s really insignificant if you look at the whole picture.

Did they wish more parents would come downtown and round up their children who were rioting? Maybe.

It seems to have had the unfortunate effect of causing people to think it’s ok to cuss your children. There is a meme going around on FB that says something like, “The best moms use the F word.” It gets a lot of likes. That is so sad to me.

And speaking of the laws and the consequences, the six officers were charged with various offenses ranging from assault and manslaughter, carrying 10-year prison sentences, to second-degree “depraved heart” murder bonds were set ranging from $250,000 to $300,000.00.
Now the 18 year old who was filmed beating a police car with a traffic cone was charged with eight criminal counts, including rioting and malicious destruction of property; his bond was set at $500,000.00.
I am not condoning either act but you tell me which crime is really worse in the eyes of the law; Murder by an officer of the law or destruction of property by a private citizen?

That teen was Never beat. That for one is laughable.

If he just walked away, without letting his mother put up a fuss, his friends would call him weak and give him heck about it.

I’m sure he caught hell from his friends anyway.

Maybe, but he had to look hard to save face. lol

Yeah, he tried, but he totally lost.

It’s alright, at least the cops didn’t kill him too.

U.S. cops are out of control. They’re no longer cops, they are Nazi soldiers.