(ThyBlackMan.com) A picture of a child who appears to be two or three years old has been circulating all around the Internet. Some people think it’s adorable, some find it shocking. The baby is holding a can of Bud Light, and appears to be gulping it down as quickly as any other sports fan in the vicinity.
The image was posted on Webstagram by a man named John Cogar, who works for a group called Party City. The caption below the image says, “Starting early these days.”
The image was allegedly taken during the recent beating that the Cleveland Browns took from the Detroit Lions.
I’m not sure how other people feel about the image, but there are some clear
and simple thoughts that come to mind for me. When I see this picture, I am reminded of my older brother figure (actually an uncle), who died a little over a year ago. He (Donald) was my closest male mentor and my greatest disappointment because of the struggles he had over the years with substance abuse, incarceration and many of the other ailments that serve to destroy the lives of black men everywhere.
As I struggled to gain perspective on my “older brother’s” challenges with alcoholism, a relative gave me the origins of his addiction. I was told that, when Donald was an infant, his father used to take him to the bar across the street from his house. During these trips to the bar, he would give the little boy alcohol, largely because everyone in the bar thought it was adorable to see a two-year old baby staggering across the room.
Years later, Donald’s desire for alcohol was so strong that it destroyed him and cost him everything he had. He lived the last few years of his life in homeless misery and was later hit by a van in the middle of the night, dragged 80 feet down the street, destroying his spinal cord and giving him severe brain damage. After three years in a wheel chair and barely getting by on Medicaid, he died from a series of infections.
This is one of the reasons I personally have little tolerance for anyone who thinks that it’s funny to give alcohol to children.
Our kids deserve a chance to be successful and shouldn’t have their lives destroyed by ignorant adults who don’t understand the dangers of substance abuse. My 12-years teaching at Syracuse University allowed me to see what alcoholism does to ruin the lives of young people, and how horribly irresponsible we are when it comes to warning our children about the dangers of binge drinking. As a result, there are countless rapes, assaults and drunk driving deaths that could have been easily prevented if some of us were to embrace at least a tiny inkling of common sense.
So, the picture of the little boy drinking beer is not cute, it’s not funny. It’s a tragic reminder of how irresponsible parents can be inadvertently determined to do irreparable harm to their children before they even have a chance to succeed.
Our kids deserve better than this.
Staff Writer; Dr. Boyce Watkins
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition. For more information, please visit http://BoyceWatkins.com.