the truth of the matter is...
The 19 year old recounted an experience in his memory of going with another boy to the washroom. He remembers the boy's arm bleeding and the boy crying tears which wet the front of his shirt, he remembers his own confusion and feeling like wanting to cry. The teacher had used Caesar to rain down the blows on the boy, some boy she used to pick on a lot. Caesar was her name she used to inflict the state-approved punishment on the child. Much like what Salome Hooper wrote about her niece at Springlands Nursery.
This all happened at the Caribbean Studies Association Conference : Understanding the Everyday Occurrence of Violence in the Cultural Life of the Caribbean
All kind of violence talk here.. gender based violence, political violence, epistemelogical violence, systemic violence, some racial violence, homophobic violence, oppression.. but were it not for Ms Judith Toppin and me, this whole conference and concern about violence would have excluded beating children.
Yeah, we know - beating children is okay and condoned by the 'majority' of Caribbean and we who don't like beating children must hush hush and not be foreign and so on. So those who don't like gender based violence and state violence and homophobic violence but form the majority, some don't want to be challenged. I keep in my head a 4am argument with an articulate intelligent brave gay identified man from Jamaica who believe that children, boys need licks.. and my own horror that a man who dont believe that God fearing people should buss his ass fuh his wickedness and bad behaviour, would beat children. And dis man friken me when he talk loud,much less a child. And in the gender workshop, many people hint at it, but the delinking.. one woman say "many women use corporal punishment in the home, but the truth of the matter is that men and boys are involved in the public violence.."
The irony of course is that I am here to be travelling between the 'gender based violence' and the 'homophobic violence" . The Programme Chair was good to allow a late panel.
But then when I start talking to people at the conference, a woman "from Guyana" say "Wait,they still beat children hay.."?
I realise that many of the academics from the conference live in places where it is a given that they don't beat children - the norm if you like. Domestic violence used to be okay, now it no longer okay and all the research and activism is to keep changing the culture in which domestic violence happens.
However, the same is not happening with the beating children.
The research though in the Caribbean is consistently concluding- everybody parents, teachers and children like it so we will keep it.. and the horrible report "Towards a Culture of Peace and Civility" which was done by academics in Trinidad in 2004, which concluded you got to beat children.. picture Minister Hazel Manning and this highly intellectual team at Hilton Hotel talking about how to beat people who cannot beat you back. Merle Hodge did a great reply to the report.
None of the research seems to look at the possibility of change, at the kind of work that quietly goes on, that the masses do not get exposed to. The Pickney Project in Guyana , and other initiatives around the Caribbean ask people to reflect and think and change. This has to be researched, to inform the policies including the funding policies which deal with 'peace building' and which exclude and limit the work needed to engage people to change their attitudes to beating children. This "acceptable part of culture" therefore becomes irrelevant when we talk about violence. I was angry the whole week, because I could not find a way to say this for anyone to get people to listen... and I was glad to leave. I managed though to experience other things
This all happened at the Caribbean Studies Association Conference : Understanding the Everyday Occurrence of Violence in the Cultural Life of the Caribbean
All kind of violence talk here.. gender based violence, political violence, epistemelogical violence, systemic violence, some racial violence, homophobic violence, oppression.. but were it not for Ms Judith Toppin and me, this whole conference and concern about violence would have excluded beating children.
Yeah, we know - beating children is okay and condoned by the 'majority' of Caribbean and we who don't like beating children must hush hush and not be foreign and so on. So those who don't like gender based violence and state violence and homophobic violence but form the majority, some don't want to be challenged. I keep in my head a 4am argument with an articulate intelligent brave gay identified man from Jamaica who believe that children, boys need licks.. and my own horror that a man who dont believe that God fearing people should buss his ass fuh his wickedness and bad behaviour, would beat children. And dis man friken me when he talk loud,much less a child. And in the gender workshop, many people hint at it, but the delinking.. one woman say "many women use corporal punishment in the home, but the truth of the matter is that men and boys are involved in the public violence.."
The irony of course is that I am here to be travelling between the 'gender based violence' and the 'homophobic violence" . The Programme Chair was good to allow a late panel.
But then when I start talking to people at the conference, a woman "from Guyana" say "Wait,they still beat children hay.."?
I realise that many of the academics from the conference live in places where it is a given that they don't beat children - the norm if you like. Domestic violence used to be okay, now it no longer okay and all the research and activism is to keep changing the culture in which domestic violence happens.
However, the same is not happening with the beating children.
The research though in the Caribbean is consistently concluding- everybody parents, teachers and children like it so we will keep it.. and the horrible report "Towards a Culture of Peace and Civility" which was done by academics in Trinidad in 2004, which concluded you got to beat children.. picture Minister Hazel Manning and this highly intellectual team at Hilton Hotel talking about how to beat people who cannot beat you back. Merle Hodge did a great reply to the report.
None of the research seems to look at the possibility of change, at the kind of work that quietly goes on, that the masses do not get exposed to. The Pickney Project in Guyana , and other initiatives around the Caribbean ask people to reflect and think and change. This has to be researched, to inform the policies including the funding policies which deal with 'peace building' and which exclude and limit the work needed to engage people to change their attitudes to beating children. This "acceptable part of culture" therefore becomes irrelevant when we talk about violence. I was angry the whole week, because I could not find a way to say this for anyone to get people to listen... and I was glad to leave. I managed though to experience other things
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