Parents are precious. Parenting is a tough job. I think it is the most important job that we will ever undertake. It’s also a job that we don’t get any training for and we don’t get paid for. As parents we also don’t get listened to enough—we don’t get to tell how much we love our children. Parents’ oppression makes us feel like we are bad parents—we parents need to be appreciated and also appreciate ourselves.


Black people were often hated during the centuries of slavery, and this can leave us hating ourselves as much as we were hated. We were whipped, beaten unmercifully, and traumatized into silence. Because of this it may seem that spanking children is the best way to discipline them. However, no one deserves spanking, and it creates distance between parents and children. It’s likely that a majority of parents around the world feel that spanking is the fastest and most effective way to change a child’s behavior. Once we recognize that our children are not inherently bad, the rest will slowly fall in place.


The adult-child relationship is at the core of building a strong community—we need to nurture and empower it.