Honestly

[Yohuru] Williams[, founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas] says 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 this practice. And I think we owe it to ourselves as a community to revisit that."
D.C.-area artist turns belts into a conversation about discipline

I'm always dubious of calls for an "honest" conversation about things, mainly because the person making the call seems to appoint themselves the arbiter of what constitutes honesty. And since calls for honest conversation presuppose that the discourse to that point have been somehow dishonest, this tends to place the person into the position of somehow knowing the minds of others.

I understand Mr. Williams' viewpoint in this, but not everyone is a humanist, community-centric believer in the tenets of restorative justice. Accordingly, they're likely to have a different understanding of corporal punishment and its effects on the broader community. While I understand that the practice of corporal punishment doesn't sit right with him, that doesn't create an obligation for the community at large to come to an understanding that does sit well with him. Or that the current understanding is not an honest one.

There's nothing wrong with advocating for one's position. But I'm not a fan of the idea that it's the only genuine way of looking that things.