Spare the Kids by Stacey Patton

Author:Stacey Patton [Patton, Stacey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8070-6105-3
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2017-01-18T05:00:00+00:00

Yet, the fight continues to be an uphill battle. These modern-day freedom fighters have been unsuccessful in the courts. In 2010 a federal lawsuit was filed on behalf of a Tate County, Mississippi, high school student requesting a ban on paddling in the state, claiming the punishment was unfairly applied based on gender and race. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of William Cody Childress, a sixteen-year-old student at Independence High School, who claimed he was struck twice “with excessive force” for looking at a camera in class in September 2009. The student said the paddling was so severe that it hurt him to sit or use the restroom for days. A federal appeals court declined the student’s request to pursue his lawsuit.21

A few years later, in March 2014, a federal appeals court rejected the lawsuit of a Mississippi eighth grader, Trey Clayton, whose paddling by a school administrator caused him to faint and then fall face-first to the concrete floor, splitting his chin, breaking his jaw, and shattering his teeth, court papers said. According to the lawsuit, the paddling left bruises and welts on Clayton’s buttocks. Clayton and his mother sued the administration, Jerome Martin, and the school district under the Eighth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment’s due-process clause. A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans ruled unanimously that it was bound by the US Supreme Court’s 1977 decision in Ingraham v. Wright, which upheld the constitutionality of corporal punishment in schools.22 Movements seeking bans on corporal punishment in schools have faced similar intransigence within the political structure. Two congressional bills, H. R. 3027 and H. R. 5005, were introduced in 2011 and 2014, respectively, by Representative Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) and H. R. 2268 in 2015 by Representative Alcee Hastings (D-FL), but did not make it out of committee.

Outside of Mississippi, many black leaders and communities staunchly support and defend corporal punishment as a necessary part of rearing and educating their children. The Nation interviewed Troy Henry, a black board member of St. Augustine High School in New Orleans, who said, “We feel as if we know what is best for our kids.” In 2011 Henry fought against an effort to abolish corporal punishment at the all-male and historically black Catholic school because “the margin for error is much smaller in black communities, especially for black boys.”23 Messages like this tell the world that something is wrong with our children and they can succeed only with constant intimidation.

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