9 yr/old girl dies after being forced to run for 3 hours

[Prancer]

Most stereotypes comes from a place of truth. The harm of stereotypes isn't that they are big lies, but that believing in them universally causes us not to see when they are not true, with varying consequences some of which are benign and some of which are harmful.

In that case, everyone should easily guess which state currently has the highest rate of child abuse cases, if indeed the stereotypes are coming from a place of truth. And the "winner" is:

Spoiler

Massachusetts

which took the title away from

Spoiler

California

Y'all get those?

And everyone should be able to identify that five states with the highest child abuse resulting in death rates, too.

Spoiler

Kentucky, South Dakota, Florida, Nebraska and Missouri, in that order

[milanessa]

I certainly thought you did. Your original post was certainly implying something but it was hardly specific.

I was implying that Hannahclear is not a jerk based on what she posted.

[IceAlisa]

Apparently you missed my fried chicken and watermelon picnic story.

I did not.

[Sasha'sSpins]

Yeah, I missed the stepmother part on the first read. And they updated the article to note that she gave birth yesterday. I feel very badly for that newborn.

I did too which is why I corrected my original post.

I hope that newborn baby is taken from her late half-sister's stepmonster and she is raised in a loving home.

[danceronice]

In that case, everyone should easily guess which state currently has the highest rate of child abuse cases, if indeed the stereotypes are coming from a place of truth. And the "winner" is:

Spoiler

Massachusetts

which took the title away from

Spoiler

California

Y'all get those?

Well, I guessed, but living there could make anyone violent and I know it's a lot less tolerant than some people like the rest of the country to think....

[zippy]

OMG, corporal punishment and child abuse is NOT 'socially acceptable', 'the norm', or 'part and parcel' of the culture in Alabama. However, it does seem that painting an entire population of people with one brush is perfectly socially acceptable. How nice. Yes, it may still be in the books for the schools - the state legislature is run by a bunch of monkeys in suits after all. However, individual school districts have banned it and the actual rates of corporal punishment in schools across the country is declining rapidly, with 4.5% of students affected in Alabama as of 2006. Yes that's too high but in no way does it translate into child abuse being socially acceptable, especially when you're talking about what was done to this child. Knock it off.

[Sasha'sSpins]

Legality of Corporal Punishment in the US

Interesting. Too bad I grew up in Philly, PA. at a time when corporal punishment was very much allowed in the schools. And at home most of my friends and I got spanked, the belt, a switch to the legs cut off from a piece of hedge, or some combination thereof. I grew up in a multi-cultural working class neighborhood and that seemed to be the norm. I also remember nuns and lay teachers slapping students nearly every week in the classroom-or striking them with rulers. My public school friends told me teachers or the principal could spank them with a paddle after obtaining a parent's permission. As far as I know in Catholic school the teachers never bothered to call parents when they hit someone. I remember once the principal lined up a few boys who had bullied one kid-and she slapped them one by one right down the line. It never happened to me but I was one terrified little girl in those years ('70's). My youngest sister on the other hand told me she never witnessed corporal punishment of any kind doled out to anyone in her Catholic schools.

[Ziggy]

So?

If you hear of a homophobic incident occurring in California, do you automatically say it's expected because California voters approved Proposition 8?

The hypocrisy is really something, never ceases to surprise me.

If something is legal, it is more likely to be socially acceptable.

If something is illegal, it is less likely to be socially acceptable.

And yes, approving Proposition 8 could potentially result in an increase of homophobic sentiment and incidents.

OMG, corporal punishment and child abuse is NOT 'socially acceptable', 'the norm', or 'part and parcel' of the culture in Alabama.

You're talking about two different things. Obviously, child abuse is not socially acceptable anywhere under any circumstances and people who perpetrate it find ways to convince themselves that what they are doing is discipline and not abuse.

As for corporal punishment, I couldn't easily find any research (but then I didn't really look at academic databases) but I am willing to make a bet that the majority of people in Alabama do support corporal punishment.

ETA: There's your figures. Not Alabama but US-wide: http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...,56808,00.html

Sixty-one percent of all respondents felt regular spanking was an acceptable form of punishment. Even more surprising, thirty-seven percent of parents of young children believe it's acceptable to spank children younger than two. And as a corollary befitting the old adage "spare the rod, spoil the child," fifty-six percent believe a 6-month old baby can be spoiled by too much attention.

[IceAlisa]

If something is legal, it is more likely to be socially acceptable.

If something is illegal, it is less likely to be socially acceptable.

You mean making a child run for 3 hours is socially acceptable? You view this situation as typical???

[skatingfan5]

You mean making a child run for 3 hours is socially acceptable?

I don't know all the details of this story, but reportedly there were witnesses to this (perhaps neighbors?) who saw what was going on and yet apparently did not intervene to stop it. Perhaps they were not aware of how long the child had been forced to run?

[Bostonfan]

One witness was quoted as saying he noticed she was running, but it didn't appear co-erced. Unless someone was looking out their window and watching non-stop for 3 hours, I'm not sure it would register as anything beyond normal child's play if someone only looked out their window intermittently.

[Badams]

I think a lot of times, people just don't want to get involved. As sad as it is...nobody can say for sure how they would act in a similiar situation. I would hope that I would intervene, but who knows? I hope I never find out.

[IceAlisa]

Well, there IS the bystander effect, although in the Genovese case it was a lot more obvious that malfeasance was taking place than it appears to be in this case.

[MacMadame]

In that case, everyone should easily guess which state currently has the highest rate of child abuse cases, if indeed the stereotypes are coming from a place of truth.

No, because coming from a place of truth is not the same thing as being 100% true. Plus some stereotypes live on past their point of truth.

It's like the stereotype of the Jewish Mother. Are there NO Jewish mothers who fit this stereotype? Of course there are. All are Jewish women who are mothers like that? Of course not. Are more Jewish women like this than other ethnicities? Beats me.

But my personal experience is that people fitting this stereotype were more plentiful several decades ago. So it's not just an ethnic stereotype but also a generational one. Which means, if my personal experiences are typical, it is getting less and less true as time passes. But the stereotype will live on way past it's usefulness, as stereotypes tend to do that.

Stereotypes are interesting to me because we humans have a natural inclination to categorize things and lump them together. It's actually a survival technique and it works. If we had to come at every single situation and analyze it as if it was completely brand new with no assumptions about anything or past experience to go by, we'd never have survived in ancient times where immediate dangers were everywhere. Heck, we wouldn't survive now. Can you imagine trying to cross a busy street with having to analyze everything about the situation as if we'd never crossed a street before?

So stereotyping isn't necessarily bad. It's just a tool. But a lot of times the tool gets misused so there is a bad connotation to the word.

OMG, corporal punishment and child abuse is NOT 'socially acceptable', 'the norm', or 'part and parcel' of the culture in Alabama.

Nobody said child abuse is social acceptable. That's just hyperbole.

OTOH corporal punishment is just spanking. And it's the norm in most of the US so it's definitely the norm in Alabama. It's also more socially acceptable in conservative parts of the US, which includes the South.

That said, I didn't read this story and think "Alabama, that figures" because this kind of horrific abuse is not the norm anywhere.

I'm just interested in stereotyping in general and how it does and doesn't apply.

[IceAlisa]

MacMadame, I'd be interested to read some studies or articles about stereotyping if you have them.

[MacMadame]

You mean making a child run for 3 hours is socially acceptable?

Actually, there are circles and situations where this sort of punishment is approved. We've already mentioned that in a team sport environment there is often punishment by performing extreme physical tasks that has led to problems. There are also religious groups who advocate and use this type of punishment.

The extremeness here isn't that they made the kid run around as punishment. It's that they made her run around until she collapsed and died.

And you can't say "well she ran for 3 hours, of course that would happen" because it's not a given. It would depend on a lot of factors whether you could expect that result.

[MacMadame]

MacMadame, I'd be interested to read some studies or articles about stereotyping if you have them.

Most of what I read was pre-internet for college, but I can look around.

I was reading something yesterday about habits and how they develop and are broken and it was a lot of the same mechanisms. We really are hard-wired to go through life thinking as little as possible.

[bek]

I know lots of gym teachers would have students run laps for punishment. But then again gym class was never 3 hours long. I think there's a difference between having someone do 10 laps while monitoring, and having a child run for 3 hours. The fact that the stepmother didn't have the child stop when it was clearly getting to much-speaks VOLUMES.

[IceAlisa]

The army has the "drop down and give me 20" (or so I've heard).

[bek]

The army has the "drop down and give me 20" (or so I've heard).

If the grandmother had told the girl to run 3 laps, it wouldn't have been a big deal.....