By DR IAN BETHELL-BENNETT
The discussion has arisen again around a viral video about how we punish our children. Because children in the current cultural context are not seen as people, they are apparently seen as inferior mortals, deserving of fewer rights. This belief is not limited to children, but also common to the way many men view women. Similarly, during slavery and colonialism, blacks and other non-whites were seen as less than human and their bodies were controlled through colonial and other rules and laws that subjected them to cruel and unusual punishment. Today, though we live with this legacy, people tend to celebrate a good old time when people knew their place and women and children spoke when chickens pissed, a "good old" Spanish saying from the Hispanic Caribbean.
The irony of this is the country and its population is deeply divided on beating. Some believe that beating saves lives, even if it kills spirits; others believe that we need to rethink how we administer corporal punishment. However, many continue to deny the link between slavery, colonialism and corporal punishment and trauma. First, people never simply get over slavery. Second, the trauma from slavery is cross- and inter-generational, one did not have to experience the whip directly for the trauma to be internalised in the DNA. Third, relations of power often revert back to this kind of dynamic. Ultimately, gendered relations are deeply 'tainted' by this 'violence'.
In many intimate partner relationships we hear of men beating women because they love them. We also hear that men beat women because it is how the Bible says we need to live. We are told that women and children are less than and so deserve to be treated as if they were chattels, similar to enslaved Africans who were property.
The Bahamas is not alone in this regard, as many other slavery-surviving communities demonstrate similar patterns. The slave codes/laws, ordinances all speak to the use of violence to control the enslaved body/mind. Initially, slavery was easy because enslaved Africans had no souls. They only later got souls when emancipation discussions began. Yet we forget this. We also forget that much religion comes with deeply rooted colonial attitudes. However, this situation becomes even more complicated when the former oppressed persons, take on the role of paternalist, colonial overlord who uses violence to 'control' the masses, but also couples this with mental coercion and spiritual indoctrination.
In "Between The World and Me", T-Nehisi Coates points out that, "Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. I think we would like to kill you ourselves before seeing you killed by the streets that America made." The Bahamas is no different. Meanwhile, the state's use of violence is continually justified by its agents and many citizens who see the rod as essential to keeping order, and as being divinely and historically inspired.
As a society that rose out of slavery, there is little wonder that many Bahamians endorse corporal violence. We can put our children in the grave, according parents' responses to being called out on their beatings. "I brought you into the world, I can take you out." The saying often justifies massive psychological impact on souls that are beaten but claim they did OK. Study after study bears this story out. Yet as a people, Bahamians refute the evidence gathered that shows how damaging slavery was to the cultural and personal psyche, and how damaging licks continue to be.
So, for example, even though the Old Testament God of wrath and anger has been replaced by a far more forgiving and understanding New Testament God, many rely on that old God to punish people. The need to use the rod is pulled from scripture without ever contextualising it. These same proponents of violence against young bodies never challenge why the Bible is so fully embraced by subjects or former colonised people when others seem to have liberated themselves. They have been able to update the teachings and make them far more relevant to today's realities. Fear of losing control allows this unchallenged history to thrive. This all comes to a head with a supplicant population that sees the need to keep itself in line and how good the old days were.
Once 'Blacks' were recognised as having souls, religion was brought into tame their response to continued and deepening oppression. Religion has been used for centuries to dispossess, disempower and oppress any foreign body. The Spanish Inquisition stands as one example.
At the same time, the church has been created and recreated as a paternalistic structure that disempowers women through the discussion that they are less than men, according to some. Similarly, children are seen as being less than, and so made to suffer under the weight of trauma experienced by their parents who beat them to save them.
The need to beat does not come from love; it comes from a place of fear overlaid with anger and hatred. All of these feelings are internalised and bottled up, and come pouring out in dangerous ways, that society recognises as troublesome, but refuses to 'deal with'. We fear that something will go wrong so we beat the Jesus out of our children. We fear that we will lose control, so we beat the love out of our intimate partners. We fear discussion so we respond to any challenge with violence.
"Legacy", a short film of intimate relations in the Caribbean, a part of the Lux Film Screening to be held at the National Art Gallery on Thursday evenings, shows how families beat their children as a way of "showing love". Again, this follows Coate's words above. Meanwhile, we encourage violence and trauma to grow as we refuse to allow men to express their feelings and parents to openly and freely show love towards their children, "because it ga make dem soft".
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