On September 15, I sent the following email to my children and my six oldest grandchildren:
I was watching NFL Football on Sunday, as is my habit, but in the Jets-Packers game, after an ugly fight in the end zone, I realized that the rage and violence was out of hand and that I was guilty of supporting this culture of violence by watching it.
Fifty years ago I quit smoking when I realized that it could kill me, which meant I would never see my three (at that time) beautiful children again. Thirty-five years ago I stopped drinking because I was recovering from hepatitis. When I had a glass of wine, it hurt me — it was agonizing — and I once again decided that I wanted to live to see my kids grow up.
Yesterday I stopped watching and supporting NFL football because I don’t want my grandsons and granddaughters to be exposed to that kind of violence. If there is any fighting in their lives, I want it to be the gentle, fun, highly choreographed dance that Amaqui, Kai and Abe [three of my grandchildren] did in “Aphrodite and the Alien” [a 2:46-minute video spoof].
I urge you to read this blog post by my friend, the psychiatrist Justin Frank, the author of “Bush on the Couch” and “Obama on the Couch.” The post is titled “Facing Facts.” And I hate to do this, Chris [my son], because I know how much you love the Patriots, but I urge all of you not to watch NFL football and to stop supporting a culture of violence…for the sake of my children, my grandchildren and your own humanity.
In an Op-Ed piece in the NY Times titled “Punishment of Child Abuse” that ran on September 17, Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of sociology at Georgetown University, in reference to NFL star running back Adrian Peterson’s indictment for “reckless or negligent injury to a child,” wrote:
The lash of the plantation overseer fell heavily on children to whip them into fear of white authority. Terror in the field often gave way to parents beating black children in the shack, or at times in the presence of the slave owner in forced cooperation to break a rebellious child’s spirit. Black parents beat their children to keep them from misbehaving in the eyes of whites who had the power to send black youth to their deaths for the slightest offense. Today, many black parents fear that a loose tongue or flash of temper could get their child killed by a trigger-happy cop. They would rather beat their offspring than bury them.
In the NY Times September 18, Book Review section, Anand Girdharads wrote a review of Jeff Hobb’s new book:
“The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace” seeks answers in the true story of two men, reared in the same mostly black, mostly luckless neighborhood, whose trajectories spectacularly diverge.
One man is Shawn, born to a sweet-talking, drug-pushing father named Skeet, who tries to keep his son from books, fearing they will make him too soft for a hard world. Instead, Skeet teaches Shawn how to fight, intimidate, know everyone on avenues where it’s lethal not to.
In “luckless,” poverty-stricken, tough urban ghettos, fighting and violence are ingrained in the culture – violence is taught to children and in many cases this violence and abusing (and abusive) behavior is ingrained in a child’s personality and soul by brutal “punishment.”
But what can those of us who have not been brought up with violence and abuse and who are privileged, white, upper-middle class and secure do to help reduce the violence and systematic abuse of children and women? We don’t have a Harry Potter magic wand that we can wave to reduce violence in our society.
But we can do what concerned, fed-up citizens have done for eons – protest. Civil disobedience. Stop obeying bad laws – Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King taught us how to do that – and stop supporting a sport that teaches (bounty on hurting quarterbacks), accepts (minor punishments for sexual and child assault) and even encourages soul-shrinking violence.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Uplift your own sense of humanity, agape and compassion. Stop watching NFL football.
