Every now and then I catch myself waxing too nostalgic about whuppings
With emphasis on the vowel sound
To make it sound different than "whippings"
So as not to equate parents with plantation owners
But I remember how my parents would beat me like a slave who didn't pick enough cotton
Recalling none-too-fondly the slash
and the whistle of tree branches cutting thru the air
And the slapping thunder as leather connects with buttocks, hips and back
As a child I learned I was praying to an unresponsive god
Who rejected all my burnt offerings
Answering my supplications with white hot pain
Id say my disrespect of authority figures started with my parents...
And their asinine arguments of:
“this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you”
Or:
"Shut up before I really give you something to cry about"
When Allah asks me to explain my brief stint as an atheist
I will point out the criss-cross pattern of belt-burns
That I carry that look like little crucifixions
And I’ll mention to Him that I naturally only thought
the same thing Jesus did in the bible about being forsaken...
I also learned how to strategize whenever
mama sadistically made me go outside
and pick my own switch of off a willow tree..
Now -I learned that you cannot just pick a totally dry, brittle branch...
So I employed the same process we now use to manufacture airplane parts -
picking one that only looked like it would last..
I swear white people are jealous for no reason - we really only dance better
because we were taught early on by the sting of belts,
And shoes, extension cords, and Hot Wheels tracks...
...Into jumping up and down with both speed and rhythm
like Watusi warriors doing the two step
I learned how to do the Dougie, stanky leg and cabbage patch -
Long before BET became everybody's instructor,
I learned to contort and maneuver my body to make sure the end of momma’s belt
Did not make contact in the same spot twice
In hindsight, if I only wrote down how hard I begged mama not to hit me again
Into a song addressed instead to a girlfriend
I would have become an even bigger R&B star than Keith Sweat ever was...
....
One day I saw my little daughter spanking one of her dolls for some imaginary wrong
And I realized all I had learned was that Black childhood amounted to an inheritance of hand-me- down torture,
A passed-on lesson that power is always measured
by how much pain you can inflict on someone else.
This is what my people were taught for centuries by people using
Rapes and manacles, pig ears and horse whips,
The ghosts of which
Still haunt us in relaxer cream and light skin/dark skin arguments
And the reality is that a million whuppings didn't stop a million Black boys from avoiding prison
the same reality is that -
a lot of those whippings that whites gave to blacks
should have been given to their own children
If not for this disparate distribution of parental punishments,
Every other Black brother would not have a probation officer...
And the worst terrorist in the world
would not have turned out to be little Timmy,
Who, once he has reached the age of legal gun ownership
Has decided to avenge all those times he got picked on in gym class
I'm sure there are better ways to discipline kids
Than via same method that made Kunta Kinte change is whole name
Although I must admit, it sounds a bit ridiculous
To rely solely on time outs for when Timmy cusses at his mama
Despite my nostalgic misgivings I can't help but think:
Timmy would have stopped long time ago if just one time...
His mama sent him outside and made him pick his own switch...
