Kirk Franklin’s Son Has Us Facing Generational Toxicity Head-On, And Whew.

Because of this, we have also (mostly) experienced toxic parenting in some form.

Hear me out.

Kerrion Franklin, 32, the son of gospel phenomenon Kirk Franklin, recently revealed a viral, explicit back-and-forth between himself and the award-winning recording artist on social media, which allegedly revealed threatening words from father to son. The call went absolutely apeshit on Al Gore's internet, opening Pandora's Box from the rooter to the tooter, causing all of us to have the conversation of what's normal and what's plain ole toxic. The Instagram post was captioned:

"This is why I'm done. No father should speak to their children like this. If I have any issues it's because of this type of treatment that I deal with behind closed doors."

According to the caption, the argument was not a thing of the past. He continued:

"Hanging up in my face, No apology, no compassion, no effort. Stop telling me to go home to my family I don't even know where they live. I don't think I'll ever trust my father to be alone around him ever again. I didn't want to do this. I probably won't release the entire recording because it's too embarrassing that I'm even dealing with this. No matter what ppl think I pray my dad deals with his deep hatred toward me. I don't feel safe around him at all. This recording is recent it is not from 2018 just to clarify. I'm going to learn from these experiences, live my life in peace and make beautiful art."

Watch the clip below:

Since, Kirk has publicly apologized, saying:

"Recently my son and I had an argument that he chose to record. I felt extremely disrespected in that conversation and I lost my temper and I said words that are not appropriate and I am sincerely sorry to all of you. I sincerely apologize."

"I'm not perfect. I'm human and I'm gonna make mistakes and I'm trying to get it right. Please keep me and your family in your prayers."

But Franklin may have been a hair too late as the fire had already started.

Many were cracking jokes about the situation:

They instantly came to the defense of Kirk, refusing to entertain the conversation of "canceling" him. After all, most of us understand this type of conversation in some form.

But, for some, they simply wanted to know, "why is this normal?"

I think back to a conversation that I had on the matter where a gentleman straight up labeled this sort of behavior toward children as abuse, which I agreed with. He then went on to say that parents who speak to their children this way are bad people and bad parents—black and white, no in between.

This caused me to go from agreeing with him about this type of behavior not being the best form of parenting, to angrily defending my parents, which—get this—is a form of Stockholm Syndrome (a classic case of psychological trauma). Hey, don't shoot the messenger.

As a generation, are we abused? Have we all been placed under a scope of trauma that we have no idea we're facing? Did Kerrion hold a mirror up to the Black community?

And most importantly, are we all equally fucked up because of this, and too focused on humor as a coping mechanism to even realize it?

Let's talk about it.