eroc on spanking via the poet and the professor
09 Apr 2018the other day i listened to eroc get interviewed on the poet and the professor. it’s an amazing interview. there were so many good moments that i had to stop every couple of minutes to write down the idea and/or text him about it, ha.
the interview was about parents spanking/beating their kids. it opened up so many things for me about my own childhood and the way i think about the world. so. many. things.
here are a few ideas that are top of mind:
- spanking a child after they’ve made a mistake or done wrong is like trying to teach someone calculus after a car crash.
- “if you want to untie a knot, you have to stop pulling on it.” — eroc ernesto-montano
- spanking as a practice as used by parents of color in the u.s. is very likely a residue of chattel slavery
there is so much introspection to be done in our communities about this. i love the way e at several points in the episode turned the gaze back on self. example: “if you’re listening to this conversation and noticing that you’re rejecting what we’re talking about… just sit with that and ask yourself why.” such a good practice, especially for audio. it’s so easy to enter into audio as a consumer, but e invites the listener in to doing work. love it.
i also really like the way e poked and prodded at the reaction people often have to this conversation: “ain’t nobody gonna tell me how to raise MY kids.” he had a clear and simple response: if you are a parent and there is an option to not hit your children as a way of developing discipline and you’re not interested in exploring that, why?
:O
damn.
anyway, time’s up for today. thanks, eroc, for sharing!
words / writing / post-processing
290w / 10min / 11min