Will Smith Blames Slavery For Bad Black Parenting

Will Smith is at it again, this time he finds himself defending the way he parents his children. According to Will, black folks in particular find their family life so bad because they have been conditioned to think a certain way as a result of slavery.

 “There are definite similarities. I grew up in a family business so my father, my mother and all my brothers and sisters worked in the family business, so that’s really the only way I know how to parent. In real situations, you are going out in the real world and you are earning real money. The things you say and do in the world will affect the family for real. My style of parenting is very similar to that of my parents, minus the concept of ownership. Continues....

I think that, specifically in African American households, the idea coming out of slavery, there’s a concept of your children being property and that was a major part that Jada and I released with our kids. We respect our children the way we would respect any other person. Things like cleaning up their room. You would never tell a full-grown adult to clean their room, so we don’t tell our kids to clean their rooms. Actually, we tell our kids ‘you don’t have a room, that’s our room and we are letting you borrow it.’ So the same way you would say to an adult if you let them use car, you say, ‘Yo man, clean my car! Don’t drive around all filthy like that!’ And it’s perfectly reasonable for you to want an adult to clean your car, so we feel it’s perfectly reasonable to ask our kids to clean the rooms that we are letting them use.”

If you grew up in a Black home then you could argue the idea of getting whooped or told what to does conjure an image of slavery. However, parents have to set restrictions on their children. We know your mama used to say “I’m your mother NOT your friend!” and hopefully you can thank her for that.