To condemn Adrian Peterson without considering racial context ...

[tularetom]

87. Frustration explains a lot of it

I'm having a problem putting this into words but as a child I believed that almost every example of corporal punishment I received was due to parental anger or frustration in which external events played a large part. They came of age during the depression and neither of them had it easy especially my dad who was dumped on the steps of a church as an infant and raised in an orphanage. They didn't spank me to teach me to do the right thing, usually they did it because they were human, they were having a bad day, and I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And I have to confess that later on as a parent I wasn't totally immune from such a response myself. I never let my anger get hold of me to the extent that I ever struck one of my kids with a closed fist or a foreign object but there were times when my response was disproportional to the offense they committed. And I knew immediately that I had overreacted. And as my children matured, so did I. By the time they were teenagers I realized that anger has no place in child raising and I was able to deal with challenges with reason instead of emotion.

And I'm pleased to say that neither of my kids, as far as I know, ever raised a hand to their own children in anger. And their children are now parents and it appears, mature and responsible ones. So maybe there is something to this generational evolution.

But Mr. Peterson's actions toward his child cannot be explained, excused, or justified in any context of what happened to young black men in his parent's (or grandparent's) generation. He simply lost it and when off on an innocent child. And stating this isn't a manifestation of "white privilege". Peterson has more money than god and the fact that he hasn't been arrested for what he did tells me that money speaks way louder than skin color. If anything he is the privileged one here. It appears that nobody has been able to convince him that what he has done is child abuse, hopefully he will grow up and learn to do the right thing before he ruins his child.

Anyway, thank you for returning this discussion to reason and civility.