The Belt, the Bible and the Biopic: What Michael Got Right About Black Discipline and Trauma
Lawrence Ware of The Root uses a scene from the Michael Jackson biopic to explore the cultural, historical and religious roots of corporal punishment in Black families, tracing the practice from slavery through the present and making the case for a new approach to discipline rooted in liberation rather than survival.
There is a scene in Michael that gave many Black folks who watched it flashbacks. Early in the first act, during Mike’s years with the Jackson 5, he and his brothers struggle to meet their father’s demanding standards. It is during this segment that we see Joe Jackson take off his belt and whip a young Michael for failing to meet expectations.
The audience I watched it with was shocked and scandalized by what they saw on screen. One woman sitting two rows ahead of me had to wipe away tears once the scene ended. Black folks in the audience, especially those over 40, were not surprised by what we saw. The scene may have triggered some PTSD, but it did not scandalize us.
The reason? That was how many of us grew up.
Many younger Black folks have no experience with being forced to go outside, look at a tree, and pick out a switch that would be used on them. And many millennials and GenXs made a conscious choice not to continue the practice of corporal punishment that we had to endure.
Yet even if we do not continue that practice, something strange happens when we see scenes like that. We feel a pang of defensiveness. We think to ourselves, ‘yeah, I do not do that anymore, but it wasn’t that bad.’
So, when people call it abuse, we cringe even if we understand why they say it. There were many who disciplined their kids, and this is hard to believe, out of what they believed was love. Let’s talk about the two reasons why.
Slavery
I gotta get deep on this for a second. Bear with me. Whipping kids as a means of correction is not something our ancestors brought with them from Africa. That was something they learned once they were brought to the New World.
During slavery, the switch and the belt were not just tools of punishment. They were also used to control Black bodies and extract labor. Enslaved parents lived with an almost constant fear that if they did not correct their children for stepping out of line, a white overseer would step in and do it. And when they did, it was far more brutal.
Once we were freed, that fear did not disappear. It became embedded in our culture. What began as a survival tactic under state sanctioned violence was passed down and came to be understood as discipline. After 400 years, something that was forced on us as a method of control was absorbed and reinterpreted as a way to protect and prepare our children for a hostile world.
Religion
I may lose some of you here, but we must address the way that religion (specifically Christianity) has shaped how Black folks understand this kind of punishment. The Jacksons were Jehovah’s Witnesses, so for them, and many other families like them, this was not just cultural. It was biblical.
Many Black folks see the Bible as the unfiltered word of God. So, when they read a scripture like Proverbs 13:24 that says, “he who spares the rod hates his son,” they take that to heart. Pair that with Proverbs 22:15, which says, “folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction drives it far from him,” and what you get are generations of Black parents using the rod (or the belt, switch, and extension cord) to teach discipline.
You have to understand that in their reading of those verses, the rod is not just permitted, but necessary. It is framed not as a sign of harm, but as one of love. The problem is how those verses were interpreted.
The rod could be seen as timeout or losing something a kid loves. It does not have to be a physical form of punishment. But if someone is reading the Bible literally, it is understandable why they might feel like that kind punishment is necessary to correct a child. And therefore, hitting a kid with an extension cord makes sense to them.
What we saw in the movie is an extreme example of how this kind of punishment has been used historically. But we don’t have to live like that anymore.
We are in a moment where we get to choose something different. Kids can be bad, no doubt. But discipline does not have to mean harm. We are moving from a culture of survival to a culture of liberation, and that shift requires us to put the belt down and do something better.