The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave Paperback – January 24, 2014

This book sears the soul. I am reading it aloud to my children and at various points find myself choked up by the raw emotion it evokes. It is unfathomable that black slaves were treated with such a degree of disdain and hatred because of white colonists love of the almighty dollar. That whites would literally rip the strongest black man they owned into two after tarring and feathering him, tie his appendages to two separately facing horses, and whip the horses until they ran in opposite directions should make us all weep.It takes a great deal of grace not to feel revulsion when I look at whites after reading such accounts of what their ancestors did, especially in light of the racially charged climate we live in today, with the hateful rhetoric being spewed from the Oval Office on a daily basis. I know better than to allow my heart to close and isolate myself from engaging with those who don't look like me. I have friends who are white with good natures, but it seems there is always a point that just can’t be crossed because of a lack of understanding or maybe refusal to acknowledge this part of their history because it is entirely uncomfortable to confront the pain of another when you have no real solutions to assuage that pain.Irregardless, real conversations need to be had about the depth of the pain and suffering white America has inflicted on people of color and not brush it aside as if it were just another blip in the series of other great historical events. The division and psychological trauma inflicted on blacks is still felt today despite the chains of bondage being shed physically.I am determined to teach my children the whole of American history, not just about Columbus sailing to America. Who gives a doggone?? His sailing to America is what also brought slavery to her ports. That is not celebrated! History is always told from the perspective of the ruling class and here in America that happens to be form a white vantage point, thus it is whitewashed to omit more salient details such as the atrocities of Christopher Columbus.I am hopeful this rising generation will be agents of change because they seem less fixated on what divides us, but make no mistake, even progress does not mean eradication-race will always play a part in how we see others because if is such a blatantly obvious distinguishing characteristic-even when we say it doesn’t. This book should be mandatory high school reading so the depth of the racial divisions can be put into context both between whites and blacks, as well as fair-complexioned blacks and darker-complexioned blacks.It takes a determined resolve, books like this one, dialogue, and supporting and striving to understand one another to make real change. I am grateful for the knowledge this book imparts despite the horrific and barbaric pattern of behavior demonstrated by white Americans who perpetuated and profited from slavery. It has enlightened me even the more and reminds me that only the strongest slaves survived the atrocities of slavery, and I proudly descend from their bloodline.

Interesting

Very educational

Very interesting read.

recommended

It's hard to rate this book using this stars system for if one designates it as only one star it gives the impression that it was not a good read. If one rates it as five stars it conceivably would indicate you liked its text. Therefore, at first let me say that I am rating it with five stars, not because I "liked" its contents but because while it is quite shocking, it is concise, to the point, and informative! For me, that was enough to get all the stars available. The book is published with a date in 2014 but I know from reading the text that Lynch is not alive and was not alive in 2014. Whomever published the letter is either ashamed of the content or who, for some other reason, desires to keep their identity hidden from scrutiny because of it. One minor thing I learned from the letter is that "Lynching" is a term loosely used to refer to the hanging of a person but the book made it clear that it was a term coined to describe the manner that Willie Lynch taught white slavers to “make” (and I do mean "make" as in "create") and govern slaves by using the females, raping females to create even more slaves for economic profit, and deliberately preventing slaves from learning to read so they wouldn't learn the strategy the white man was using on them! The things he "taught" via this "letter" to slavers "way back when" that were being passed down from his superiors in the Monarchy, was something I will never forget! I will pass it down in my family with my own writing about that period of time (Commentary: On Improving The Black Experience) as soon as I can finish writing it, for these things are not generally a matter of record that is readily available. Things like banning the teaching about racism in public schools for fear of hurting the feelings of white students, using the very law that was intended to protect Blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities from discrimination by white folk. It's ironic to say the least.