Boy, try me! I wish you would! Do you know I will slap the taste out your mouth? I will knock you into next week! And my personal scary favorite … Don’t you know I will slap the black off you? That’s right, forget the Boogieman, Freddy Krueger or Jason, what every black man in the hood feared most was momma! In fact, many young observably white young men in the projects, are not white at all, they are just those who dared to test momma and got the black slapped off of them. Now while I do oppose violence and abuse of this kind, I want to suggest that the threat of punishment has a good purpose that we will examine in this episode of Aquinas In the Hood. Now the word threaten is described as a verb; used in conjunction with an object, it is “to utter a warning or threat against.” Punishment is described by Webster’s Dictionary as “the Act of Punishing; A penalty inflicted on an offender.’ In common usage, the word "punishment" might be described as “an imposed deprivation.” In other words, it deprives the offender of some freedom, property, privilege, or good that otherwise would be expected or generally thought of as a particular right. This is very familiar to us all. We all know someone who was restricted from going outside to play as a kid, or maybe who had their favorite game, toy or privilege taken away. As adults, we learn how quickly our freedoms to drive, or even to live among our peers can be restricted or taken away as a result of bad decisions and behavior.
According to Aquinas, punishment functions as a medicine inasmuch as the fear of punishment restraints or discourages a person from behaving badly. Positively speaking, the threat of punishment acts as an incentive to do right, in that, one can continue to enjoy the freedoms and privileges that he has grown accustom to, such as, enjoying the taste of food or his or her blackness. In my case, it was the ability to enjoy the privilege of breathing and using my butt for sitting.
Now, I’m sure that you are wondering why such extreme threats? I mean, why would a loving mother threaten to knock her child into another time zone? I’ll answer that, it’s because she loves them and wants to beat the Hell out of them! In other words, she understands that her threats of punishment can help guide and restore right reason and order in her childs behavior. This is why the punishment is usually preceded by the question, “Have you lost your mind?” or “What in the world was you thinking?”
The reason she made her threats so extreme is that she wanted to make sure that the punishment your will opposes is greater than the pleasure your will desires. Growing up, I had many desires to do wrong, but my desire to taste food and stay black were of greater importance to me. The problem today is that our young people no longer fear the consequences of their actions and therefore indulge the pleasures of their will. Parents today tell little Johnny to go to his room and stay there, to which Johnny replies, “thank you,” After all, he has a computer, TV, cell phone and the latest Wii Play Station.
Now with the exception of Joe Jackson, most parents have not successfully knocked the black off of their kids (poor Michael), and I do not encourage physical abuse as a means of punishment, but what I am encouraging is that we restore and instill a healthy respect in our youth in the idea that bad ideas have bad consequences in this life and in the next.
