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Title: The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave by Kashif Malik Hassan-El ISBN: 0-948390-53-0 Publisher: Lushena Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $3.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.44 (9 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Not just a lie--an insult to African Americans
Comment: Its not just that this "letter" never existed. After all, even a fake letter could have a heuristic purpose as a fictional device to spark discussion. It is damaging to African Americans today first of all because it presents a particularly misogenistic vision of the African American "problem" (Blacks are controlled by reversing male/female roles and putting women in front--so one supposes Blacks should "rebel" by putting Black women back in their place). Secondly, it recreates the fallacy of white omniscience. Every Black problem is traced back to an omniscient white man who lived 300 years ago and planned the perfect way of suppressing Blacks. Whites are all-powerful, Blacks are simply their tools. The letters seem to derive their "authenticity" by the fact that they seem to reflect a number of themes in the field of race relations, such as divide and conquor, but most of this is then assumed to have been "known" by this omniscient white man 300 years before the fact.
The history of slavery is much more complex than this so-called "letter" implies, and it was much more ethically nuanced. It was precisely the fact that slaveowners did NOT know what they were doing that led them to fear and loath their slaves, and this tendency increased after the end of slavery proper as African Americans were "freed", but still needed to be subjected to forced labor.
Read this book if you want a good laugh, but don't waste your time getting angry about this "letter": get angry at what really happened over 300 years of American history.
Rating: 3
Summary: False, True; Helpful, Yes
Comment: It is true that there is no actual evidence of the existence of this letter, however that does not mean we can't critique the "spirit" of the so called Willie Lynch Letters. For example, we can use the essence of the Willie Lynch Letters to examine how it can be juxtapose with the Declaration of the Rights of Man-1789 or how it compared with the ideas and attitudes of the Virginia Legislature of the era. It can even be used to dissect European cultural thought and behavior.
Although this letter in actuality is quite possible false, it can be a helpful tool if used in the proper context.
Rating: 1
Summary: Fiction passing as fact
Comment: It's really sad that so many African-Americans not only beleive this "urban legend" (to put it in decent language), but that so many seem not to care that it is not really true. Anyone who does not care about the truth is in big trouble. For the record, the "Willie Lynch" letter was actually a recent creation, as evidenced by the language used. It was actually created in 1993 as a chain letter which spread like a bad disease throughout Black America. Research indicates that it was "loosely adapted" (to put it nicely) from a section of Anatoli Vinogradov's fictional 1935 novel "The Black Consul" that dealt with Napoleon's supposed plans to divide and conquer the Haitians during the Haitian revolution.
We Black scholars and professional historians should take this as a wake up call to get out of the ivory tower and teach the masses REAL Black history to keep them from being misled by the clever crackpots who collect cash by confusing the credulous. The REAL story of the damage done to Blacks from slavery may be found in actual slave narratives like "The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass," and detailed studies by legit scholars such as Carter G. Woodson's "Miseducation of the Negro" and Kenneth Stampp's "The Peculiar Institution."
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Title: Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson ISBN: 086543171X Publisher: Africa World Press Pub. Date: January, 1990 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois ISBN: 0486280411 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: May, 1994 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
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Title: Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery by Na'Im Akbar, Na'im Akbar ISBN: 0935257055 Publisher: Mind Production & Assoc Pub. Date: August, 1996 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: The Isis Papers (Yssis Papers/Keys to the Colors) by Frances Cress Welsing ISBN: 0883781042 Publisher: Third World Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1991 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington ISBN: 0486287386 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: October, 1995 List Price(USD): $2.00 |
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