http://www.uky.edu/StudentOrgs/AWARE/archives/lynch.html
Today at work, we had a series of presentations for Black History Month. There were various presentations ranging from the birth of the black sorority and fraternity, to talks about African culture and African games. The presentation my coworker and I (but mostly him...actually completely him) gave was on the infamous Willie Lynch speech of 1712. Above is a link to the speech, and some quick background can be found on Wikipedia, but I encourage you to read the speech before continuing, as you will not get the full impact of what I am talking about otherwise.
There is much debate as to whether the story is contrived or real, but regardless it still sends a powerful message to generations past and present. As the speech goes, Lynch devised a plan on how to control slaves more effectively than with hangings. He told the slave owners to cause division among slaves based on age, "'Color' or shade, intelligence, size, sex, size of plantations, status on plantation, attitude of owners, whether the slave live in the valley, on hill, East, West, North, South, have fine hair, coarse hair, or is tall or short." He asserts that distrust and envy will be greater among the slaves than admiration and trust, and that the slaves must love and trust only the owners. Finally, he claims that if this method is used rigorously, it will create a cycle for generations.
And he was right. You could go through each category he listed and find correlations in today's black community. For instance, some of you may have heard arguments about whether lighter skinned black people are more stuck up, or better looking, than darker skinned black people. Some of the mentality can be attributed to the fact that the fair skinned black people were given house jobs as opposed to field jobs, as well as better clothes and over all treatment. Another correlation you see is between where a person lives. Today's communities as a whole claim West Coast, East Coast, "Dirty South", and "Killadelphia", just to name a few. And even within those, several more microcosms will form till neighborhoods are split into "territories". Finally, fine hair versus coarse hair, or as you may have heard, good hair versus bad hair. There is no such thing as good hair or bad hair, however these are just a few of the mentalities and stereotypes that are perpetuated in our society.
Of course, this is not completely due to the actions taken by slave owners, but the remnants of the mentality instilled in slaves remains. To shed more light on this, consider this theoretical experiment. Five gorillas (and if you do not believe gorillas would act this way, substitute the animal at your leisure) are placed in a room with a banana on the ceiling and a ladder leading to it. Every time one of the gorillas reaches for the banana, they are all sprayed with ice cold water. Eventually the gorillas start to restrain one another if any gorilla tries to go after the banana so soon no gorillas go after it. When this happens, one gorilla is replaced by a new gorilla and when this gorilla tries to go after the banana, it is restrained by the others. Eventually, it learns not to go after the banana, and when this happens a new gorilla is substituted for an older one, till there is a total of five new gorillas. However, none of them go after the banana, even though they do not know why. It has become a characteristic passed on from one generation to the next to not reach for the banana, even though the new generation doesn't know why.
To bring this to a close, it is important for not only the black community, but all minority communities to understand their history and the attitudes and mentalities upon which our society was formed. In all communities, there is division based on shade, sex, and where you live among other things. Furthermore, even if you do not identify with your historical motherland, it is important to know where you come from. Knowing where you came from helps you decide where you are going and it is still part of your history. Understanding the stereotypes and mentalities that have made us who we are as a people today is the first step to breaking them and succeeding.
Black History is not something long past to be forgiven and forgotten. Black History is struggle that we must remember, embrace, and use as an impetus to change.
Black History is Our History. Black History is Our Story.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
In Honor of Black History Month...
Labels: africa, black history month, Community, culture, slavery, Willie Lynch
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7 comments:
I feel ashamed that this entry came after "why I Fired My Secretary" post... but let me add my two cents anyways
I see a lot of racial division in my home country as well. I hear my aunts in Sudan talk about how "lighter skinned girls" are prettier than "darker skinned girls" and a lot more I don't have the space to talk about here.
Essentially, there is an inferiority complex that needs to broken. I didn't understand until recently what James Brown meant when he said "I'm Black and I'm proud". Black power and pride could be the way one of the gorillas fights back to get the banana.
this is a deep rooted issue...
I believe you can find it in almost every culture. However, just the fact that all of Africa has been under the control of Europeans, some being independent less than fifty years to this day, just exacerbates the problem.
It all comes down to people realizing that beauty in today's terms is really just a social construct. Being comfortable with one's self makes your good attributes shine.
I wouldn't say our concept of beauty in human beings is just a social construct... it's a result of nature. In terms of evolution, we choose our mates partly by the way they look, and preferences by human beings do show overlap. Go to practically every society today and ask what is beautiful in a partner and you will get some correlation.
The big one is health.. or at least anything we interpret to denote healthiness (which is what make-up, hair products, etc. are designed to do, fake a healthy complexion). Moreover, men like features in women that denote high estrogen levels in developments (big eyes, broad hips and.. other big things). Women tend to be physically attracted to whatever denotes high testosterone level (broad shoulders, for example).
In the Dominican Republic, most people think that there is good hair and bad hair. If you are a woman born with bad hair (usually not smooth or soft to the touch), you're probably going to spend a lot of time working on that, and, of course, being born with good hair usually makes it easier for you to get a guy. Usually, it doesn't have too much to do with race; Dominicans are so racially mixed that skin color and hair type don't necessarily correlate. Is it "racist" to call one type of hair bad and another good? To go back to the first point, we're attracted to health, hair being one of the most powerful indicators of long term well-being.
Some of these questions I can't answer myself....
I agree that human beings as a species also undergo natural selection and that what you said about big hips and broad shoulders really does apply.
However, this does not explain skin tone preference. I don't see the correlation between skin tone and overall health... I am leaning more towards this being explained by social constructs... what a shame.
Yea. I think that what the speech focuses on are the inconsequential differences in our species. Like joey said, we are naturally attracted to things that denote high estrogen levels, such as broad hips, and the like. However, social constructs come into play because the women that were considered desired at that point in time were slender, fair skinned, and straight haired. The slender part almost goes against what we should naturally want, if you accept the arguments about what evolution has us seek.
But the fair skinned and straight (good) hair is partially a result of the fact that house slaves were lighter and had straighter hair than the field slaves. Basically, the lighter you were and the straighter your hair, the better you were treated.
And these mentalities are still in our society today. It tears apart our communities as a whole when minorities who "make it out of the ghetto" are called sell outs, and when minorities who talk "properly" are called white wannabes.
Whats wrong with wanting to talk properly?!
The health aspect of our beauty decision is really just that, a part of it. So definitely our concept of beauty still comes from history and social constructs.
The good hair/bad hair isn't really explained by that in the Dominican Republic, though, Bobby.. Dominican slavery was very different from United States slavery (as it was in most of LA, except perhaps Brazil): slaves could buy their own freedom and the mentality was still very much of the slave as a person with rights rather than property who could be, for example, separated from his/her family. There were also very few European-Dominican women in the island, so eventually the children of slaves were substantially from the slave owner. These men weren't going to let their sons and daughters grow up as slaves.. and it gets complicated after that.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is this: unfortunately, racism and prejudice remain pervasive in our world, and efforts should always be made to root them out no matter how deep they go. However the concept of race changes considerably across the world, and it would be wrong to try to understand racism around the world from the traditional American view of race and racism. The issues of race in the United States arise from different factors than those in Sudan, than those of the Dominican Republic.
True. However, I will say that I think a good deal of the issues of race and social constructs world wide stems from European views, as they had a hand in 'colonizing' the world.
Also, what's interesting is Lynch claims to own to plantation in the Carribean, so I wonder if it is still relevant to other parts of the world. I mean, I think in cultures worldwide, you see this trend where lighter skin is better than darker skin, lol.
I wish I could create a Gapminder program to see this.
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