Lauryn Hill said she’s not upset after her daughter Selah Marley opened up about being beaten with a belt and other childhood traumas she endured. Instead, the singer said she “encourage[s] it,” but refuses to be judged for her parenting skills.
“Selah has every right to express herself,” Hill wrote Thursday in a lengthy post on Facebook. “I encourage it, but she also got the discipline that Black children get because we are held to a different standard.”
“The discipline was seen through the lens of a young child, who also had no place to reconcile me as mom, and me as a larger than life public figure. It took me a while to realize that my children, and probably everyone who knew me saw me in this duality,” she continued. “To me, I am just me. If I am guilty of anything it is disciplining in anger, not in disciplining.”
Hill also had a message for critiquing fans: “If you come for me, come for your own mama, and those absent fathers—come for them too, your grandparents, your great grand parents, your great great grand parents, your great great great grand parents, Caribbean parents, African parents and everyone else damaged and judged for being Black and forced to conform and assimilate to western standards of ‘order’ shaped through the filter and lens of anti-Blackness.”
In an Instagram Live post, Marley, who is Hill’s 21-year-old daughter with Rohan Marley, revealed that her mother was “very angry” when she was a child, recalling how Hill used a belt “as she beat us” to discipline her and her siblings. “All Black parents were on that slave owner sh–,” the younger Marley said. She also noted her father was largely absent during her childhood.
After her comments went viral, the model warned fans to not “go bashing my parents—especially my father. I never said that I did not love them. I said their shortcomings created trauma that I now need to consciously and actively heal from.”
Hill, who has five other children, said that when it comes to her daughter, “we’re both learning and healing, and each of my children has a similar story and journey. All of you in a rush to crucify someone, careful who you string up or nail up.”
Meanwhile, the elder Marley apologized to his daughter.