To condemn Adrian Peterson without considering racial context ...

[enough]

7. This is a very interesting point of view, and courageous of you to raise this issue.

I have known two different Italian-American men (now in their 50's) who beat their young sons in order to toughen them up for the real world. The fathers felt that this was the proper role of a father. At a certain point, their wives and the public school system made it clear to them that they would lose their families if they were not able to find a new way to relate to their boys. It was a conscious and life-long struggle for them, put the families stayed together and things did change.

My father also was beaten by his Polish father for the same reason, to make sure he was tough enough for the real world. (By the way, he grew up to be a pacifist, and never used physical force for discipline.)

I have never before thought of the idea that, in African-American families, the use of corporal punishment was seen as a way of preparing one's children to be able to survive in the world, not to toughen them up, but to break their attitude.

What a sad sad world we humans live in.