Yohuru Williams, founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas, was featured in a NPR story on WXXI News out of New York.

With a focus on the multidisciplinary artist Lex Marie, the process behind her art, and what it means in regard to discipline in Black households, Williams spoke on the link between corporal punishment and African American history.

Williams says that in order to have these discussions, Black families have to reimagine how they think about discipline.

“I think a lot of parents – black parents – struggle with this because there is this inherent knowledge that this is the way that we came up. And there is this belief that, well, you know, … maybe we’re more stable, maybe we’re more durable, maybe we’ve been able to endure more. We’ve developed a particular type of grip because of this experience,” Williams said.

Williams said it’s time to have an “honest” conversation about the historical legacy of corporal punishment within the Black community. “That would be far more communal and affirmative of human dignity and the dignity of Black life,” he said. “Coming out of the Black Lives Matter movement, you kind of look back at this, and you go, ‘We understand it from a historical standpoint.’ But from a humanistic and community-centered, restorative justice practices standpoint, there’s something that just doesn’t sit right with me about the practice. And I think we owe it to ourselves as a community to revisit that.”