Since British slave owner Willie Lynch gave his speech on how to control slaves at the colony of Virginia in 1712, it seems like a lot has changed to improve for Black American citizens (Lynch ¶ 1). The Emancipation Proclamation officially abolished slavery in America, and the civil rights movement throughout the 20th century brought the right to vote, desegregation, America has its first Black President, and recognition of other rights for equality for Blacks fought for by the American Civil Liberties Union, NAACP, and other organizations focused on rights and opportunity. At the same time, it seems very little has changed. Unemployment for Blacks at the end of 2011 was at 16.7%, “its highest level since 1984,” in comparison to an 8% unemployment level for whites (Censky ¶ 2). If things have improved so much for Blacks, it seems like such a disparity should not exist. However, an expert from the Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy program at the Economic Policy Institute, Algernon Austin, says, “I do think the fact of racial discrimination in the labor market continues to play a role” (Censky ¶ 7). Looking back at Willie Lynch’s speech, it is evident that many of his suggestions to Virginia’s slave owners are still in practice today in various forms.
Willy Lynch criticized the slave-owners’ current methods of using fear and murder to intimidate slaves into being controlled. Lynch’s primary idea behind controlling slaves was to use techniques so that “the slaves themselves will remain perpetually distrustful” (Lynch). His methods involved pitting the slaves against each other at various levels using “fear, distrust, and envy” (Lynch). He mentions several factors used to create this fear, distrust, and envy, including age, shade of skin, intelligence, gender, coarseness or fineness of hair, height, location of homes, and so forth. “It will control the slaves for at least 300 years,” Lynch claimed, “any member of your family . . . can use it.”
Unfortunately, the echoes of Lynch’s ideas about control, pitting Blacks against each other, have lived up to his expectation as lasting 300 years. An article in Time titled “Is Obama Black Enough?” says, “For years pundits excoriated young black kids for attacking other smart successful black kids by questioning their blackness. But this is suddenly permissible for presidential candidates” (Coates ¶ 5). Just because the pundits were telling young black kids not to attack each other for being smart, successful, or for other reasons does not mean it did not happen, and the election of Barack Obama as President served to highlight the practice.
Director Lee Daniels’s film Precious depicts Lynch’s ideas in several ways. The abusive relationship between Claireece "Precious" Jones and both her parents illustrates several ways blacks use distrust to belittle and keep each other and themselves down. Precious endures sexual abuse from her own father and gives birth to two children because of this; her fear and hatred of him is understandable. Her mother belittles her for any reason she can come up with, including her intelligence, obesity, cooking skill, and so forth. She claims Precious is to blame for the children Precious has borne, screaming at her about taking away “her” man. If it were not for the direction of Blu Rain, the teacher at the alternative school, the students would quickly descend into a pattern of similarly belittling each other. There are many uplifting examples of members of the Black community helping each other to move forward and escape the confines of their pasts, but it is clear that it is not easy to escape from long-held ideas.
It is likely that other slaveholders had the same ideas as Willy Lynch, though never gained his notoriety by actually making a speech about it. The effects of this kind of control are not limited to the Black community, either, though they may be prevalent there. In any elementary school, a child of any race is bullied and harassed for daring to be more successful or ambitious than the others. The trickle-down effect may not work very well in economics, but it seems to have worked its devious magic when it comes to the ideas of people like Lynch, pitting the downtrodden against each other to keep each other under the heavy feet of people in control.
Works Cited
Coates, Ta-Nehisi Paul. Is Obama Black Enough? Time, 1 Feb 2007. Web.
Censky, Annalyn. Black Unemployment: Highest in 27 Years. CNN Money, 2 Sept 2011. Web.
Lynch, Willie. Willie Lynch Letter: The Making of a Slave. The Final Call, 22 May 2009. Web.
Precious. Dir. Lee Daniels. Perf. Gabourey Sidibe, Mo’Nique, Mariah Carey, Lenny Kravitz. Lionsgate, 2009. Film.
