Civic Cipher 112622 The Willie Lynch Letter (Part 2)

to it on this show. Well, we never took the time to actually break down what it is, and of course I can't get into the whole thing, but I'm going to share some key points with you to just kind of make that breathe a little bit. And then, of course, for our way black History fact, we're going to talk about American slavery again compared to slavery elsewhere in the world. So a lot to stick around for. First and foremost, let's discuss be Aba. How to become

a better Ally Baba. This Weeek's Baba sponsored by Major Threads, where high fashion meets timeless men'swear. Visit majorthreads dot com to find out more. So what we want you to do to become a better ally is watch a movie? A movie, A movie, a movie Man. The movie is called is That Black Enough for You? On Netflix? Is that Black Enough for You? I'll read a bit from celebrated writer and film historian Elvis Mitchell. Is That Black

Enough for You? As both the documentary and deeply personal essay, the film examines the crack and power of cinema from a perspective often overlooked, the African American contribution to films released from the landmark era of the seventies. It's a deep dive into the impact that point of view on movies as well as popular culture. A love letter to film, it poses questions they've never been asked, let alone answered.

Crucial artistic voices including director Charles Burnette, Samuel L. Jackson, will Be go Over, Laurence Fishburns and Dea and others. Artists offer their distinctive prism on the creators and films that dazzled and inspired, providing insight into the history of black representation going back to the earliest days of cinema and the cultural impact of witnessing unapologetic blackness. Had a chance to watch that.

society that is very important. You don't even realize how important it is until you have someone like this tell you how important it is to be represented in cinema and see the impact, the cultural impact and the ripple effect. And once again, everything kind of starts off black and then gets repackaged for the masses. So again, is that black enough for you? On Netflix? Now? The Willie Lynch Letter,

let me give you some background on Willy Lynch. So there is this letter that this gentleman allegedly I have to say that this is important. It's largely been suggested that the letter is not a first hand account, it's not an original letter from an original person. This has largely been the consensus in so far as we know from the community scientific literary community that researches these. So we have to assume this is a work of fiction.

With that said, is exceptionally profound, and we still recognize the truths written in this work of fiction.

As Q mentioned. So, the WILLI Lynch letter basically is Willy Lynch's a support supposedly in an old white man who is a seasoned slaver and teaches other slavers, slaveholders, and slave masters the best way to get orderly production from their slaves without having to perpetually, perpetually, yes, without having to lynch all of them, you know, Because there's a there's a statement that I'm not sure if I put in a notes here, but I know it to be true just from being familiar with this letter. He

says effectually that human beings. Oh, I'm sure he doesn't refer to black people as human beings. But we have a natural tendency to seek our customary freedom. So our natural state is not to be captured and you know, imprisoned or enslaved. Our natural state is to be free. Compares us a lot to horses. Us by us, I mean black people. Now, before I get into this any further, please take a moment. It might take you thirty minutes, maybe thirty forty five minutes to read through the whole thing.

It will change your life. Read it once a year on Juneteenth, if nothing else, Okay, just to remind you of the legacy that slavery can have. I know, I know, we don't like talking about slavery either. I know you don't like hearing about it. We don't like talking about it. But this kind of helps us bring it full circle.

So you understand why it's important that we talk about it, Why it's important that we address it, Why it's important that we talk about things like reparations, Why it's important we talk about things like systemic racism, and what it is that we need to move forward as a people so that we're not constantly on the bottom of the list for healthcare outcomes, and on the bottom of the list for income inequality, and on the bottom of the list for police brutality, and the injustices and the criminal

injustice system, and so forth and so on. We don't want to be there. It's not our natural state. We don't celebrate being there. We need to fix it, but we need to have these important conversations. I'll continue, all right, So again, Willie Lench, you writes this letter, and I guess delivers a speech to other slaveholders in the South, teaching them how to get as you mentioned, perpetual servitude out of black people. And I want you to listen to this letter for the brilliance of this because it

makes sense. That's why it's in the I believe it's in the Library of Congress, even though they acknowledge it's a work of fiction, or they suggested may be a work of fiction. That's probably why I were to say that they still keep it on the archives as an important document that is exceptionally relative to relevant, sorry to American history. So I'll read through it and will pop back and forth me in UQ.

But before that I shall assume sorry. I shall assure you that distrust is stronger than trust, and envy is

stronger than adulation, respect or admiration. So this letter basically starts off with him saying that we need to separate these people, We need to create a class system, that this type of hair is better than that type of hair, this type of skin is better than this type of status on a plantation is better than that type of status, you know, to create nb, to create division and to separate these folks who are all slaves, but to basically,

what is it stratifying? Is that the word I'm looking for?

the title of the letter. All right, you must use the dark skinned slaves versus the light skinned slaves, and the light skinned slaves versus the dark skinned slaves. Que that's sound familiar, Yeah, oh yeah, all right. You must use the female versus the male, and the male versus the female. You must also have your white servants and overseers distrust all blacks. It's necessary that your slaves trust and depend on us. They must love, respect, and trust

only us. Gentlemen, these kits are your keys to control. Use them, have your wives and children, use them, never miss an opportunity. If used intensely for one year, the slaves themselves will remain perpetually distrustful of each other. All right, let us make a slave. What do we need? First of all, we need a black I wish I could say this to you, but the FCC is listening, So we'll say a black inward man, a pregnant inWORD woman,

and her baby inWORD boy. Second, we will use the same basic principles that we use in breaking a horse, combined with some more sustaining factors. What we do with horses is that we break them from one form of life to another. That is, we reduce them from their

natural state and nature. Whereas nature provides them with the natural capacity to take care of their offspring, we break that natural string of independence from them and thereby create a dependency status so that we may be able to get from them useful production for our business and pleasure. Now I cut that out of the middle of a paragraph. That's a deep one. You know, we gotta again. This is the reader's digest, of the reader's digest. But please

read this. I'm just giving you some some key points here. But as you know, you know he's he's suggesting that we need to change the family dynamic. You'll you'll I'll make that point a little bit further as I continue to read, or rather he'll make the point. You'll hear me illustrate that on his behalf, and a lot of

things may come together for you. You know, when you think of like the angry black mama trope, you know, the strong black woman trope, you know that is a function of that that it was born out of necessity. You'll you'll see in just a minute, this is why that is a character in our society where we all know this is not a woman that you want to have a problem with versus, you know, a black man. Now, there is such thing as an angry black man. But in your mind, which one do you think you can

appeal to more? Probably the black man. You don't want to win an angry black woman. I don't want to wit an angry black woman. You know what I'm saying. I know what that person has gone through and what that person is trying to protect. So I'll continue, all right,

here's another passage. Accordingly, both a wild horse and a wild or nature natural sorry inWORD, is dangerous even if captured, for they will have the tendency to seek their customary freedom, as I mentioned, and in doing so might kill you in your sleep. So what is he saying here? Be afraid of these black people because what we're doing to them is wrong. It is not natural for them, and they may kill you in their attempts to return to their natural state, which is that of being free. So

what does that do? That not only creates division within the ranks of black people in the society, but it also creates a further divide, and it kind of compromises your human capacity to empathize. You know, they'll kill you if they get the chance. Who wants to be friends with someone who might kill them? Now, let's keep them over there. You know, this is the same thing that happens when we think of the you know, the prison

industrial complex. You know, you've got to bear in mind that there are absolutely bad people in this world, and there are good people who end up in the criminal justice system because of technicalities, because they're political prisoners, because of whatever quotas that governments have to maintain in order to satisfy the privatized prison industrial complex. And so it's important that you do not feel empathy for those people

who are subjected to human rights vilization violations. This is something that's true in a lot of areas in society, not just with black and brown people, not just with prisons. But you know, stay woke, all right, I'll continue. Therefore, if you break the female mother, she will break the offspring in its early years of development, and when the offspring is old enough to work, she will deliver it up to you for her normal female protective tendencies will

have been lost in the original breaking process. For example, take the case of the wild stud horse, a female horse and an already infant horse, and compare the breaking process with two captured inward males in their natural state, a pregnant inward woman with her infant offspring. Now it's about to get heavy, okay, so buckle up, take the stud or sorry, take the stud horse, break him for limited containment. Completely break the female horse until she becomes

very gentle. Whereas you or anybody can ride her in comfort, I don't love that.

increase the amount of pressure that you apply him. I reading that correct, proceed Take the meanest and most restless inward, strip him of his clothes in front of the remaining male inwards, the female and the inward infant, tar and feather him. Tie each leg to a different horse, faced in opposite directions, set him a fire, and beat both horses to pull him apart in front of the remaining inward. The next step is to take a bull whip and whip the remaining inward mail to the point of death

in front of the female and the infant. Don't kill him, but put the fear of God in him, for he can be useful for future breeding. So what this does, and please read this for yourself. That was a graphic point in this letter. Again, I'll remind you that what I read to you was actually what this says, and actually what happened. You know, you tar and feathered, if you know anything about that, that is painful by itself. Okay, It burns your skin, and then they throw feathers on you,

just as like mocking you. They stick to you, can't get it off, you know that sort of thing. Then they tie you to horses, set you on fire, and then whip the horses so the horses run in opposite directions. And here's her body apart. This happens in full view of a woman who is pregnant and has a baby already. Okay, So the idea here is that she will see that happen,

realize that death is on the menu. Then she will see you grab a whip and beat the other black male slave who put it kindly to the point of death, but you don't kill him, and then she will be left frozen in fear. She will realize that she is helpless. Her protector has now been destroyed in front of her.

And the reason that it's important that she witnesses it is so that she will then raise her children in reversed roles because if nothing happens to her, she feels like, Okay, let me make sure that these people do not trip. I have a little boy. I do not want to see my boy get ripped apart in front of me. That is that type of trauma.

on the same page. This what happened to you if you break break the eggs that you were supposed to be making for breakfast, or if you weren't quick enough and washing the master's clothes or whatever, you know, that sort of stuff. So you get whipped in front of everyone else, they see the blood, the flesh chunks, you know, getting whipped off your back, and everyone else would bear witness to that trauma. It would then traumatize them and keep them frozen in fear. Right, So this is kind

of the result of that, you know. But it starts with showing the black woman what can happen to the black men, and then you raise again, you raise your children in reverse roles. You raise the woman to be the strong one, the one to negotiate, the one to appeal, the one, you know, whatever, all these things. You raise the man, your male child, rather to be submissive, to be you know, you don't want to have any problems

with these people. Let's, you know, keep you in the shadows and make sure you get to work and you work, and then when your work is done, then you know whatever, we can have our party on Sunday during church or whatever.

doing so, you spoil good economics. When in complete submission, she will train her offspring in the early years to submit to labor when they become of age. So this is about as much as we can cover from this letter, and it kind of shows you. Gives you a glimpse into the mentality of a slaver right, of a slaveholder, of a slave master, which is not something you often get.

which is a little bit more of the same. Today's Way Black History Fact sponsored by hip Hop Weekly magazine All the latest in hip hop culture, is available at hip Hopweekly dot com. Today's Way Black History Fact comes from the Guilder Lehrmann Institute of American History. In Today's passage was written by Stephen Mintz. The title is Historical

context American Slavery in Comparative Perspective. All right, I'll start of the ten to sixteen million Africans who survived the voyage to the New World, over one third landed in Brazil. Between sixty and seventy percent ended up in Brazil or the sugar colonies of the Caribbean. Only six percent arrived in what is now the United States. Yet by eighteen sixty, approximately two thirds of all New World slaves lived in

the American South. For a long time, it was widely assumed that Southern slavery was harsher and cooler than slavery in Latin America, where the Catholic Church insisted that slaves had a right to marry, to seek relief from a cruel master, and to purchase their freedom. Spanish and Portuguese colonists were thought to be less tainted by racial prejudice than North Americans, and Latin American slavery was believed to be less subject to the pressure pressures of a competitive

capitalist economy. Remember in the section before, you know you don't want to ruin sound economics, like we're not human beings. You know, we talked about the slave trade. You know, once you introduce the economics. Now, rather than warring tribes warring for the sake of whatever their disagreements are or

a land territory resources. They're warring just because they need to get more slaves so that they can It's like an arms race anyway, I'll continue in practice, Neither the church nor the courts offered much protection to Latin American slaves. Access to freedom was greater in Latin America, but in many cases masters freed sick, elderly, crippled, or simply unneeded

slaves in order to relieve themselves of financial responsibilities. Death rates sorry death rates among slaves in the Caribbean were one third higher than in the South, and suicide appears to have been much more common. Unlike slaves in the South, West, Indian slaves were expected to produce their own food in their free time and care for the elderly and the infirm. The largest difference between slavery and in the South and

in Latin America was demographic. The slave population in Brazil and the West Indies had a lower proportion of female slaves, a much lower birth rate, and higher proportion of recent arrivals from Africa. In striking contrast, Southern slaves had an equal sex ratio, a high birth rate, and a predominantly African born population.

The average number of children born to an early nineteenth century Southern slave woman was nine point two, twice as many as in the West Indies. You're starting to kind of see how it was different even from Latin America. The slavery in the US was different. And so the folks who tried to hide behind the fact that slavery who's practiced around the world are ignoring the fact that the legacy of the slavery that was practiced here is

a different beast. Slavery sucks all around the world, had no positive impact on anybody who wasn't white or you know whatever. But yeah, anyway, I continue and the West Indies slaves constituted eighty to ninety percent of the population, while in the South only about a third of the population was enslaved. Plantation size also differed widely, and the Caribbean slaves were held on much larger units, with many

plantations holding one hundred and fifty slaves or more. In the American South, in contrast, only one slaveholder held as many as a thousand slaves, and just one hundred and twenty five had over two hundred and fifty slaves. Half of all slaves in the United States worked on units of twenty or fewer slaves. Three quarters had fewer than fifty.

These demographic differences had important social implications. In the American South, slaveholders lived on their plantations and slaves dealt with their owners regularly. Most planters placed plantation management, supply, purchasing, and the supervision in the hands of black drivers and foremen, and at least two thirds of all slaves worked under

the supervision of black drivers. Absentee ownership was far more common in the webs when the West Indies, where planters relied heavily on paid managers and on a distinct class of free blacks and lattos to serve as intermediaries with the slave population. Another important difference between Latin America and the United States involved conceptions of race, and Spanish and

Portuguese America, an intricate system of racial classification emerged. Compared with the British and French, the Spanish and Portuguese were much more tolerant of racial mixing, an attitude encouraged by the shortage by a shortage of European women, and recognized a wide range of racial gradiations, including black, mestizo, quadroon,

and octoroon. Don't ever use those words. The American South, in contrast, adopted a two category system of race, in which any person with a black mother was automatically considered to be black. So again, there's a lot more reading that you can do there one more time. It's at the Gilder Lehmann Institute of American History. This passage was written by Stephen Mintz and the title is Historical Context, American Slavery and Comparative Perspective.

learn this history. So we know this, and we recognize that you don't. And you know, we have a show, we have a couple of microphones and some satellite dishes around the country. So recognizing that you may never have these conversations, these are things that may never make their way into your world, These passages may have otherwise never shaped your worldview. We felt it was important to share it with you today and we appreciate you listening. We

hope that you take this and digest it. Obviously, this is available as a podcast, so you can download it and run it back again, or of course you can look everything up yourself, but that's going to do it for us today on Civic Cipher. Once again, I'm your host, Ramsy's job.