Who knew?
It’s is the darndest thing. I’ve just learned that I am a victim of white supremacy.
The country has warmly embraced the actions of Toya Graham, who upon seeing her son participating in the Baltimore riots, let him know in no uncertain terms that he did the wrong thing.
BALTIMORE — A mother who was caught on video smacking her 16-year-old son around after he threw objects at police said when they made eye contact, he knew he was in trouble.
“I’m a no-tolerant mother. Everybody that knows me, know I don’t play that,” Toya Graham, a single mother of six, told CBS News. “He said, when ‘I seen you,’ he said, ‘ma, my instinct was to run.'”
Graham received wide praise from people on social media and even the Baltimore police commissioner, who said more parents should have taken charge of their children like Graham after the riots started.
Graham said she saw her only son wearing a hoodie and mask amid the protesters demonstrating just hours after a funeral for Freddie Gray, a black man who died after suffering an unexplained spinal injury in police custody.
“At that point, I just lost it,” she said. “I was shocked, I was angry, because you never want to see your child out there doing that.”
She’s gained the admiration of the mentally sound part of the country. Of course, liberals don’t see things the same way. “Why is America celebrating the beating of a black child?” ask Stacey Patton.
It’s not surprising that a black mother in Baltimore who chased down, cursed and beat her 16-year-old son in the middle of a riot has been called a hero. In this country, when black mothers fulfill stereotypes of mammies, angry and thwarting resistance to a system designed to kill their children, they get praised.
“He gave me eye contact,” Toya Graham told CBS News. “And at that point, you know, not even thinking about cameras or anything like that — that’s my only son and at the end of the day, I don’t want him to be a Freddie Gray. Is he the perfect boy? No he’s not, but he’s mine.”
In other words, Graham’s message to America is: I will teach my black son not to resist white supremacy so he can live.
I learned from Ms. Patton that I too am a victim of white supremacy.
The kind of violent discipline Graham unleashed on her son did not originate with her, or with my adoptive mother who publicly beat me when I was a child, or with the legions of black parents who equate pain with protection and love. The beatings originated with white supremacy, a history of cultural and physical violence that devalues black life at every turn.
Damn. I too am a victim of white supremacy.
I used to get beatings from my dad and I probably deserved much of it. The “physical violence” employed by Toya Graham is absolutely nothing compared to what I got. Nothing. To call what happened to Michael Singleton a “beating” is beyond stupid. More than anything, Michael was embarrassed and that really was the point of it. And you know what? If my 16 year old kid participated in those riots, he would have been the victim of white supremacy too when I caught him.
Stacey Patton is an idiot. A blithering idiot.
And she has company. The Huffington Post also wants a dip into the idiot pool.
“Dear White America: Toya Graham Is Not Your Hero” writes Julia Craven.
Every story needs a hero, and the media and white America has found a star in Graham, the African-American mom who slapped and pulled her teenage son out of the protest Monday afternoon. But is all this praise coming from a friendly place? History, and a closer look at what’s going on, suggests not.
Then the nitwit author ventures into the twilight zone. She compares what happened to Michael Singleton to what happened to Adrian Peterson’s son:
Knowing that Graham’s primary motivation was to keep her son safe from police violence, would so many white observers have been as sympathetic to the beating she laid out? “Let’s be honest: many white folks are reflexive critics of the greater frequency of corporal punishment in the black community. Witness the media horror at Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson beating his young son,” wrote Joan Walsh in Salon. “If Graham beat her child like that in the aisles of CVS, you can be sure somebody would call CPS.”
This is what happened to Peterson’s son (image via TMZ):
Peterson’s son suffered wounds that drew blood. He had cuts on his hands and his legs. Peterson admitted striking the boy in the testicles. The boy was four years old at the time. Michael Singleton is 16 years old, is taller than his mother and the worst injury he suffered was humiliation. You have to be galactically stupid to draw a comparison between these two incidents. You might even call it craven.
Wanting to keep your child alive is not a racial issue. Discipline is not a racial issue. It is execrable to try to weave racism into them. It’s unfortunate for Freddie Gray that Toya Graham was not his mother. He might be alive today.
Sorry, Ms. Patton. Toya Graham is a good mom. She is my hero, whether you like it or not.
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
Great post, DrJ, and I wholehearted agree — “Discipline is not a racial issue.”
What I saw, was a mother doing the right thing, on a dangerous street in a dangerous situation. Good for her and she should be commended by the MSM for doing what too many are afraid to do. She forced her son off the street. I don’t even care what convoluted perspectives the MSM might have of this event, or what other motives this mother had — fear of police or anything else, . . . Toya Graham cared and she acted.
Sadly, of the thousands out there, she may have been the only one to have done this, otherwise we would have seen more similar videos. This teenager should be infinitely grateful for having a mother who cares.
Toya Graham most definitely IS a hero. She is a single mother with six kids (more examples of Gone, Daddy, Gone?) and doesn’t look very tall as her 16 year old son is a head taller than her. And she doesn’t want her son to turn into a Freddy Grey, a young man with a lengthy criminal record.
I heard a report this morning that Ms. Graham’s eldest daughter is in the police academy. She saw her son throwing rocks at the police and understood that at some time in the future, the police office on the receiving end could be her daughter.
Did she slap him? You betcha. And she tried to pull his hoodie down (I guess that action now constitutes child abuse with the clueless left) and told him to “Get the f–K home NOW.” Toya Graham did was so many parents don’t do; she took control of her under aged son and acted like a parent, not his hood buddies. I guarantee that the humiliation that her son suffered by being chastised by his mom will benefit him in the long run.
” resisting white supremacy” Is that what happens when you loot and burn down businesses in black communities? Who knew??
Everywhere you look in this episode, you see evidence of the failure of liberalism. Liberals running a city full of people denied employment opportunity due to failed liberal economic policies. The result is a riot due to a liberal deciding it is better to let liberal supporters destroy the property of capitalists, the only hope for opportunity and progress. Then, when there is one standout that does exactly what NEEDS to be done, to one level or another, they are lambasted by…. who? Liberals.
Liberals love failure, they promote failure and they provide nothing BUT failure.
The leftist attitude towards this mother is a classic example of their tendency not to fix a problem, but to wring their hands as they come up.with excuses to blame “the system” as a means of laying the groundwork for subsequent claims of needing to throw more tax dollars down the sinkhole of leftist failure for another government run “solution” to the problem.
They will admit that poverty and the lack of jobs is the issue, all while ignoring the cause of the poverty and lack of jobs is due to the poisonous effect of decades of leftist policies.
I saw a friend of mine post that WaPo Patton piece up on FB. There’s another friend who posted a Salon article echoing the same twisted reasoning.
Another FB friend just now shared a much better perspective here.
As a relatively liberal, man loving feminist … calling out white people for appreciating a mother’s right action is over the top. Divisiveness is the villain she obviously supports. I applaud her endeavor to stop child abuse but blaming a millenia old form of child rearing on white supremacy is very narrow. She completely leaves out African cultural predisposition toward corporal punishment in her historic analysis. Your viewpoint is spot on however people are complex and liberal labels are as divisive as race labels. The us vs them mentality needs to stop. Harmony is the gilden ring, let’s focus on achieving that.
Child Abuse/Neglect; Is Baltimore Mom Toya Graham Perpetuating Poverty & Prejudice?
Edward A. Flynn, Milwaukee’s chief of police, “These communities need police. And they need police not just to be present, but to be active in seeking out criminals.”
In his 2015 Grammy award winning Rap Performance titled “I”, Kendrick Lamar writes, “I’ve been dealing with depression ever since an adolescent.”
In the meantime, who is addressing why many people living in poor American communities are depressed, often venting their anger and frustrations by harming their peaceful neighbors?
Has anyone asked Baltimore resident and “Mom of The Year” Toya Graham if she believes she is partly responsible for the recurring cycle of poverty that harms so many children, including her son Michael who she observed committing a depraved act against peaceful people trying to protect the community from other abused or neglected children?
Will Baltimore mother Toya Graham and the hundreds of moms much like her who I met while providing police services to a Rap Hip Hop influenced Brooklyn, NY community, realize she was young and immature for acting irresponsibly and building a family of six depressed children who have to struggle, instead of having one or two relatively happy, peaceful kids she could more easily provide for, school and supervise?
Does Ms. Graham realize she is complicit in adding to the pain and poverty many Americans of all ages suffer?
Rejecting reality, Toya Graham informs CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “At no time is my son a thug.”
I understand a mother’s desire to protect her child as well as her rep as a good mom, though after this remark, how can anything Ms. Graham offers be viewed as truthful?
#protect-kids-from-irresponsible-caregivers