A study published by Oxford University Press has found a connection between corporal punishment in schools and historical lynchings. The study, obtained by HuffPost, shows that states with higher lynching rates between 1865 and 1950 are more likely to physically discipline students by paddling.
“How much of what students, particularly Black students, face today is a result of what was written yesterday?” the study asks.
Researchers looked at data regarding the frequency of corporal punishment in 10 Southern states and compared it to data detailing historical lynchings. They subsequently found a clear connection between the two. The study also found that rates of corporal punishment are higher in areas where Evangelic Protestantism is prevalent and where educational attainment rates are lower.
In Texas and Mississippi, children between the ages of 3 and 19 are physically punished — often for minor misbehaviors such as chewing gum, talking back to a teacher, or violating the dress code — according to a report from the ACLU and the Human Rights Watch.
Black students were found to be at much higher risk of facing physical punishment in school than their white classmates, despite committing less “serious student misconduct.”
“Even though we’re not studying policing, we’re still looking at physical punishment of Black bodies,” Aaron Kupchik, co-author of the study, said. “The situation Black students find themselves in today doesn’t come out of nowhere.”
For each additional lynching reported in the state, the odds of a Black student experiencing corporal punishment increased by 6%, as opposed to 4% for white students.
The ACLU reports Black students are physically disciplined at higher rates, which “violates the right to non-discrimination in accessing education."
In Mississippi, one of 19 states where corporal punishment is still legal, at least 708 lynchings occurred between 1865 and 1950, most of which targeted Black people. Mississippi is one of the states that administer corporal punishment at higher rates than other states in which it is legal.
In Holmes County, Mississippi, 13 lynchings took place between 1865 and 1950, and in 2015 the local school district paddled 281 students. The wooden paddles used in Holmes County schools are up to 30 inches long, half an inch thick and 2-3 inches wide, according to The Hechinger Report.
“School punishment, in this case corporal punishment, doesn’t arise out of nowhere. There’s a historical trajectory,” Kupchik said. “Though this happened 100 years ago, the rates of racial violence are predictive of how we punish Black students today.”
In states that allow corporal punishment, Black children accounted for 18% of the school population but 35% of corporal punishment incidents in 2012, according to The Hechinger Report. Black children in Mississippi made up half of the state's public school students but received 64% of physical punishments given to those students in 2012.
Implicit and explicit bias may play a role in which students white educators decide to discipline with corporal punishment, according to the study.
“We suspect that schools in counties with more pronounced histories of violent racialized social control, where physical pain has long been used to discipline and punish marginalized populations, are more likely to employ corporal punishment, and disproportionately impose this punishment on Black students today,” the study states.
States often provide legal protection for educators who injure students while paddling them.
Many cases of corporal punishment are not reported, as it "is often administered in a chaotic environment," states the ACLU.
Most states have banned the practice, but students are still experiencing physical punishment across the nation. In Chicago, where corporal punishment is prohibited, 818 school beating and mistreatment allegations against staff were reported in 2009 by CBS 2. CBS reporters found 568 proven complaints and only 24 staff terminations within Chicago Public Schools. Students were hit with broomsticks, belts and a whipping machine, according to CBS 2.
Researchers compare corporal punishment to the likes of whipping and lynchings and said it is a way to set an example and instill fear in other students. Even students who aren’t being paddled experience trauma from corporal punishment.
“Licks would be so loud and hard you could hear it through the walls,” one student said during the ACLU’s study.
Corporal punishment in Holmes County is now prohibited, in part because of Ellen Reddy, executive director of the Nollie Jenkins Family Center, a youth development program for Black children in Mississippi.
“It is a mindset — spare the rod, spoil the child,” she said. “[There’s an idea that] If you don’t spank your child you’re not a good parent.”
Despite paddling being banned, Reddy is concerned that the practice hasn’t fully been done away with yet, saying students may still face pinching and slaps.
“It’s the culture. Not necessarily the Black culture, but the culture of where we are, the deep South. It’s part of the culture in which we have been oppressed,” Reddy said. “We still have not gotten rid of beating our children and somehow thinking beating is going to make them better human beings.”
Black families and authorities are more likely to not oppose corporal punishment in their communities, as they see it as an opportunity to teach children the cruelty they'll face as Black Americans.
“It is well established that black population support for corporal punishment is rooted in concerns for survival in a hostile social environment,” the study notes.
Troy Henry, a Black board member of St. Augustine High School in New Orleans, says that physical punishment helps enforce rules.
“We feel as if we know what is best for our kids,” Henry said. “The margin for error is much smaller in Black communities, especially for Black boys.”
