Product Description

The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave is a study of slave making. It discribes the rationale and the results of Anglo Saxon's ideas and methods of insuring the master/slave relationship.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22829 in Books
• Published on: 1999-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 30 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780948390531
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
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Customer Reviews

It took me a year to find this book, it was worth the wait.
The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave by Kashif Malik Hassan-El is an in your face expose of the way it was and the way that we continue to let it be. Wake up people, you were brainwashed three hundred years ago and it has not ended. The plan was so expertly executed that this indoctrination has become well ingrained in our society. We are doing it to ourselves every time we refer to someone as a "redbone" or talk about "good hair". Lets give it a break, people. Lets begin to see beyond the physical attributes that we have been taught to think is beautiful or ugly. Let us remove certain derogatory terms from our vocabulary. We need to think of each other as precious commodities that can not be wasted, spoiled or abused.

Most of the reviews of this book, miss the point
First and foremost, I would have to agree with those that have classified this the "Willie Lynch Letter" a work of fiction and an urban legend, however that isn't, or at least shouldn't, be the point. I agree that those that teach the event described in the book as an historical fact, do all people including African-americans, a dis-service. However to concentrate on whether or not the event described is true without looking at whether the larger events are true, "throws out the baby with the bath water".

The facts are that the methods described in the book of how to produce enduring slaves, were certainly used, Blacks were in-fact divided based on everything from gender to skin color. They were systematically brutalized. The psychological effects of the brutality of chattel slavery are still affecting the descendents of slaves today.

It would be better if those that rate this book poorly based on its historical accuracy instead rated it based on the theoretical model it provides, rather that concentrating on the fact that no one named Willie Lynch ever gave the speech described in the book, they should look to what it can teach us about the pathology of slavery and how to heal it.

Those of us who know, should make sure we dispel the illusion that this book is based on historical fact, however we should not lose sight of the fact that the methods of producing slaves described in this book are true regardless of who did or did not present them.

Fiction passing as fact
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."