To condemn Adrian Peterson without considering racial context ...

[1StrongBlackMan]

12. To be honest ...

It took me 3 days to post that OP. I knew that people with no experience Life as Black in the U.S., would only see their frame to condemn what their frame has not prepared them to see.

I am familiar with "fighting" one's man-child to "toughen them up"; but whoopings, were to teach an entirely different lesson.

Just as an anecdotal story, one of my most memorable whoopings came while visiting older relatives in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I was 5 years old.

It was a Saturday evening and I was walking down the street with an adult male relative. We were going to get ice cream! As we approached the parlor, I kind of ran up to the door; but he stopped me, and told me we'd have to "go around back", I didn't understand because I was watching the white kids go in the front door. Just then, a white man came out the door with his family(?) ... he took one look at me and yelled "Move boy!" and with that shoved me off the stoop and into the street.

Without a word, my relative scooped me up, apologizing to the man that just shoved me, as he hustled me towards home. I cried all the way back home ... asking my relative, (loudly) why that white man pushed me and why he LET that white man push me. I was angry that I didn't get my ice cream; I was angrier that I got shoved; and, angrier still that my grown relative didn't stand up to the guy.

When we got back to the house, it was just about sun-down. He told me to go inside and play with my cousins. He began talking to the adults; but, I was in no mood to play, so I refused to go inside. He told me to go inside again, and again I refused. He, then, called out to one of my cousins and told them to help me get a switch. It was, then, that I saw the cross light up and I got shoved into the house and followed my cousins, to hide, under the kitchen. I had no idea what was happening; but I knew it was bad.

My whooping came the next morning.