By Jayla Johnson

In the black community, it is commonly known that parents believe in corporal punishment and other extreme forms of discipline. Parents have become more creative with their punishment as time evolved. An example of new forms of punishment is making young men cut their hair completely off.

In a recent video on social media, a mother is seen in a video smashing the game controller as a punishment for the child being suspended from school. The child is also seen crying in the video.

Although it is correct to punish the child for being disobedient in school, was it equally correct to record the smashing of the child’s game controller on camera, utilize his face in the video, and publish the video on social media?

In today’s generation, it is common for young children in elementary school to have a social media account on Instagram and Twitter. The video became viral and even surfaced on popular social media news outlets such as The ShadeRoom. The ShadeRoom has 11.8 million followers on Instagram.

The video of the mother and child received nearly 3 million views as well as thousands of likes and comments. On the popular talk show The Real, Tamera Mowry Housley injected her comments about the video and suggested that if she were the parent in the situation, she would make her child donate the entire game system to the child he bullied.
A question was raised about the severity of the punishment given by the mother and the potential consequences the son could suffer from bullying when he returned to school. In wake of this question, a decision was made to interview a black, young adult on the campus University of Georgia and an adult at least forty years of age. The student at the University of Georgia was asked to answer the questions in the interview in perspective of him/herself as future parent. ‘
The student selected from the University of Georgia was Dion Blocker, a third year Biology major.

“My parents believed in corporal punishment,” he said. “My worse punishment was from the time I cussed in school. I received detention and got a whopping from my parents.”

The video was shown to Blocker and he said “I don’t agree with the parent. I would not have destroyed perfectly good property. It’s stupid. You could have just taken away the console and controller. The parent placed the video on social media for attention. The mom probably thought about the potential backlash but didn’t care. The child will be humiliated and insulted by his peers. He will be adversely affected.

Latauja Johnson, a mother of one daughter and a Business Development Administrative Assistant for UPS. Mrs. Johnson began with, “My mom believed in whoopings. I believed in them with my daughter. After I saw the video, I agree with the punishment. If that wasn’t his last time getting in trouble, I would tear it up. Record it so he will know what happens if he gets on trouble again.” When asked if she was aware how viral the video went and the potential viewers such as teachers and the son’s classmates, Mrs. Johnson said, “I wouldn’t post the video on social media since younger kids have social media.”