Spirit In the Dark

I read Willie Lynch's speech called "The Making of a Slave", originally delivered in 1712 to slave owners in Virginia. Lynch, a slave owner in the West Indies, believed he had a fool-proof method in breaking slaves from their old lives, free in the African continent, to their new lives as slaves and subservient beings. He compared the process to breaking in a horse, using the proper analogies to effectively get his point across. I read it and saw parallels to what is going on in society today.

He starts out by breaking the slaves down by human characteristics: age, size, color, attitude, gender, plantation status, etc. Then, he believed that for "proper economic growth", it was necessary to pit one category against the other (old vs. young, light-skinned vs. dark, popular vs. unpopular), creating a chaotic pool of distrust amongst each other. His principle was that "DISTRUST IS STRONGER THAN TRUST AND ENVY STRONGER THAN ADULATION, RESPECT OR ADMIRATION." He thought that by keeping the slaves distrustful of each other that not only would it lead to them trusting only the slave master, but that they would not group for the common goal of uprising.

Once he categorized them, the next principle to keep in mind was to "keep the body and lose the mind." He said that the key was to focus on the women and children. He believed that the older generation would be too set in their ways and too stubborn to change. A normal family structure is developed with the male as the head of the household, with both parents being providers for their children. This leads to a strong male figure to raise sons to be men and the daughters to be women, each being productive members of society.

Lynch said the key was to strip down and burn the strongest male of the bunch in front of everyone (he used the antiquated draw-and-quarter technique, whereby each of a person's limbs are tied to a different horse and the horses ordered to run in separate directions). He also said that you should beat the next strongest male NEARLY to death (not to kill him, because then, he could not produce). He said the aim of this was to put the fear of God in the men of age, but especially the women. He thought that by seeing the alphamale of the group demoralized and beaten down, that it would DESTROY her image of the black man and force her into the position of independence and leadership. Her maternal instincts would kick in, forcing her to teach their sons to be weak and dependent on her, but physically strong. All the while, they are teaching the daughters how to live to be leaders, twisting the balance of nature. Lynch believed that as long as the women had it in their heads to teach the children not to become independent that they would not even THINK of introducing the idea of fighting against the slave master's cruelty for fear of her children's lives.

Then, the idea of crossbreeding was introduced. He said that in order to produce a diversity of slaves, there must be white seed planted into the black women. This would create a subrace of light-skinned children, though still Negro, possessed the look and texture of the white man. This would lead to further disarray and classism within the slave culture, where the slaves would come to favor those which are lighter, seeing their lighter skin as a step up and the darker slaves as something less.

Finally, he believed that it was ESSENTIAL to eliminate thei native tongue. He believed that knowledge of a person's language could equal power by reading into the language of a society. He feared that if a person knew your whole language, that they could not be fooled by illusive jargon, stating that "BEING A FOOL IS ONE OF THE BASIC INGREDIENTS OF AN INCIDENTS TO THE MAINTENANCE OF THE SLAVERY SYSTEM." He believed in talking and teaching them a sequence of illusionary language patterns, so that they would know just enough to communicate to each other and become self-sufficient without them striving to know more and gain access to the hearts of people to push for change or revolt.

I read this intently and realized that although I despise the nature of the subject, he was right. They were using the same tactics that a pimp does, whereby they contort the normal thought processes of the mind of the right people to filter down to others, all the while using their bodies for the economic profit of the master. I thought of the 20th century, where the black people were free and began to get knowledge about what should and shouldn't be. Though Lynch warned that there would be a period where this cycle of interdependence would break and remake itself, the blacks began to rise up, demanding the freedoms and liberties they so rightly deserve.

HOWEVER, somewhere, the message got lost, and blacks are falling BACK into Lynch's model. The principle of the "independent woman" is being forcefully pushed around like a shopping cart in a grocery store. Dance songs, usually created for the purpose of having fun, are subconciously teaching women to rebel against the authority of the male being the head of the household ("put your middle fingers up and holla 'fuck your man'", for example). The notion that "men ain't shit" and "you don't need a man" are being accepted facets of life, with each factor falling into place. Our males are being fed the notion that book learning is for suckers (learning the language), but the hustle is lucrative (physically strong).

Black men who sexually conquer many women, often leaving offspring in their tracks, are praised amongst their peers. Women are fed the notion that raising a child alone is okay, and at the first hint of trouble, he can be eliminated from the equation, creating the "just me and my baby" outlook. Black people have a tendency to favor dumbing down their language, preferring to speak in slang, rather than professional linguistics. Those that do seek knowledge and speak as they should are looked at as "Uncle Tom's" and "fake" and "not keeping it real." They rejoice in hanging out at a corner store, begging and bumming, rather than aspiring to hang out in country clubs and constructive, artistic outlooks. A book is the enemy. We favor a hip-hop magazine that gives us a summary of the music business and focus on current trends, rather than researching and doing our own literary dirty work to start trends of our own. School is a chore and the club is our birthright. We will stumble around with memorizing the Preamble, but will learn a Soulja Slim song in an hour.

The concept of the faceless "white man" is taught, whereby Caucasians are seen as somehow a better race, and black people will do their best to fix themselves up around them and respect them, only to denegrate and put down their own kind. They favor "red/yellow boned" people to date, convince their women to straighten their hair, and powder their faces. The strongest males are gunned down in the streets, leaving their sometimes bastardized children with a warped view of what it takes to survive. The males that ARE able to survive and gain knowledge, often times move away, rarely lending a hand to help the "heathen Negros" that revel in the self-destructive patterns of drugs, sex, and death.

However, as Kanye West says, "the white man gets paid off all that." They own the record labels that put out the murderous rap lyrics that sink into the minds of the black youth, who are not taught the concept of aesthetic distance. They allow for the influx of illegal narcotics into the black society, so that the white folk may pass through to purchase them for leisurely usage, but leave the lingering effect of the drugs in the impoverished black communities. They own the TV stations that show the modern-day minstrel shows that run all day, every day on television. They steal our fashion sense and mass-produce it, selling it right back to the communities that started it. They dress their children up and some white children see black life as a method of rebellion. Some white daughters seek out black men for the purpose of pissing off their parents. They model dildoes in the mold of the black man's penis and whore the physical being of the black man/woman for economic gain. Ass injections, collagen, cosmetic surgery of many forms is created to emulate and imitate the natural sexiness of the black woman's curvature.

I say all that to say this. My African-American people, own your right to knowledge. It's been said that knowledge is power, and it is true. The Black man is the most copied man on the planet (true words from Paul Mooney), and we should be in the upper echelons of society because of it. However, we have allowed Willie Lynch's ideals to seep back into our heads and make us retreat to our lower levels of comfort. Break the ties, make FAMILIES (not babies), rise up, be the kings and queens that you are. Men, praise our black queens, women worship our black kings. Step out of the box and see the beauty and money there is to be rejoiced in as the Lord has provided. Let us not rely on the lazy methods of survival, but rather embrace the struggle. Nothing comes easy (EVER), and believe me, when you have reached the promised land, you won't be able to help not wanting to bring your brother and sister along. Power to the people.

-B

P.S. The entire speech can be found here.