Lenoardo dicaprio is Willie Lynch!..just kidding
Let me start with a clarifying point. I am not a positive black man. I do not buy Bean Pies. I don’t own Dashikis. I am not Mr. Super black. Arrested development is my current favorite tv show, seconded only by Angel/Buffy. My favorite dish is goat cheese pesto lasagna (My secret ingredient is lemon soaked eggplant), and yes, I date stringy haired white women. I am no thug, but I do not run from that street shit some seem scared of. That does not make me positive, only a survivor of the cracked out streets of Harlem circa 1980-1990. My point is that I make no claims of authenticity about negritude, it is a tedious claim at best.
However, I was raised by authentic hardcore intellectual activist negroes. And while I may be a disappointment to them, I learned some of their lessons well. To wit: How to make a slave by Willie Lynch is completely and totally false! NO for real! I know everyone from Wu-tang (By the by the pretty Toney album is like self help for former thugs, purchase it ya’ll) to Talib Kweli. If you are a black person in the US, no doubt you heard or were even possibly raised with the myth of some white slave owner who documents the breaking of the negro spirit in order to fashion a competent docile field hand. I rank this tale among one of the greatest science fiction stories ever produced for black audiences, in part of its near universal appeal , not to mention its humanistic view of slavery; In my mind the notion that people have to be taught to abuse and denigrate others speaks of a natural ignorance I simply don’t believe human being possess.
Be that as it may, continue to dance with me on the point that the willie lynch narrative is a total fiction (By the way, if anyone knows of any thesis work that examines the multiple Lynch narratives please send it my way). Ok so this non positive negro(myself) goes to the movies yesterday to fulfill familial obligations and checks out The great debaters. By and large the movie does not offend. The best twenty seconds was no doubt Denzel's verbal sparring with preacher ghost dog. Shut up, I know his name, but he'll always be ghost dog to me. I am an old time fan of Denzel and so I watch and enjoy…except for the woman casting her affirmations “Umm-hmm!” and her aspersions “Now you know that’s not right”, in her outside voice, directed at the screen while sitting behind me. Yet and still, I remain clam…UNTIL THE WILLIE LYNCH B.S is cited in the film by Denzel! Come on, Denzel, Oprah! Get with it. It’s the 21st century, we can’t be quoting lies about black people to black people in movies anymore!
The point of all of this is simple: Oprah and Denzel are not the king and queen of all black people and the word lynching did not come from a slave owner named Willie Lynch. And my resident niggerologist agrees with me. I’m happy to take on any challengers about this one, so long as you come at me with more than something you found on the internets.
posted by afrogeek at 3:13 PM
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14 Comments:
prove it is false. you want people to prove that it is tru, but you haven't proven that willie lynch is false. sow us somethig, non internet generated. the challenge goes back to you.
Huh? Prove that Lynch letters are false? Let's start with Which letter. Find me a source with an authenticated point of origin, i.e. not a reprint, and I can begin to break down language styles, the questionable need to request such information and any other background data. Also, although these are internet sources check
http://www.africanholocaust.net/news_ah/willielynch.htm#DEAD
http://manuampim.com/lynch_hoax1.html
You're pretty dumb. The movie was a PERIOD PIECE and they wouldn't know if the "Lynch Letters" were falsehoods. At the time (with all of the lynchings, beatings, and general evil going on) ANYTHING geared towards negative attacks on African Americans would be taken as gospel. Also, it's a movie. The filmmakers needed to contextualize that brutal era, thus the trope of Willie Lynch.
Oh yeah? Well..you're pretty dumb! The willie lynch narrative didn't really gain popular distribution until the 80's. So one could make the argument that the debaters wouldn't have heard about it. And to contextualize the beatings, lynchings and general evil, couldn't they have used the ..I don't know BEATINGS, LYNCHINGS, AND GENERALIZED EVIL like James Farmer did in the movie? And so the fuck what its a movie? That means there is no responsibility to correct historical fallacy? Stop being intellectually lazy and use some critical insight. And you're dumb. And your mom got a rip in her couch. And eat a dick. And any other third grade rebuttals I can think of.
I think I've used more critical insight than you ever have on this blog. You seem to want to be this self-deprecating intellectual, when you are an arrogant and judgmental prick. You want the world to conform to your limited view or it. There is no doubt that you are intelligent, but are sorely lacking in even the most rudimentary social skills. I bet you are a disappointment to your folk, and that’s too bad. To the subject at hand: just because the internet help to popularize the lynch writings, doesn’t mean the material wasn’t around at the turn of the century. Are the papers fake? In the Lynch variation, probably 95% to the affirmative. But (if you did deeper research instead of being petulant) aside from the linguistic anachronisms, there were some letters sent to various slave colonies in the Caribbean that told junior slave owners how break their slaves faster and more efficiently. So the Lynch Letters were probably an amalgamation of all of these various letters (some of them are on view in the DR and Jamaica). Stick to superheroes and your closeted gay step fantasies because you’re out of your league. Also, movies don’t have to factually or historically accurate. If you want truth, investigate primary sources. Otherwise, you’ll only get misrepresentation.
Oh the joys of Mr or Ms random shit talker on the blog:
Ok,so where is the critical insight that you've used? If you're the same anonymous poster from the beginning is it in
A. asking me to prove a letter is false without providing evidence for which letter?
B. Calling me dumb...for what reason I'm not sure.
C. Defending a critique of the movie by calling it a period piece while totally ignoring the fact that its a period piece about debaters, which at the very least requires you t source your facts? Not to mention the fact that they most likely wouldn't have had access to the "Willie Lynch letters, where we get lynching from"
D. Trying to insult me by naming me as the very things I've named myself?
You're like fifteen years old and never gotten laid, right? Aren't you? Come on, I know you are.
I'm not self deprecating, I'm honest. I am organic intellectual who has a furtive relationship with academia proper. What you perceive as arrogance is actually ire that so many black people take in these damn letters as true. I believe its shit like sourcing the damn things in a Oprah/Denzel production that makes us look and possibly be intellectually lazy. As for the world conforming to my limited view, I do believe you've just described the human experience, and while I am part of the social creature called humanity i know the world is a lot bigger than what i see. However, sometimes I see what others don't see or in a way they don't see it. In those times I do chose to privilege my vision. Got a problem with it...Eat a dick.
And yes, slave masters did send letters to their other slave master friends, or business partners to figure out how to get more productivity out of their slaves, much like modern day business people do when it comes to factory workers. Now if a labor organizer in the 30's was to bring that up, I'd have a lot more respect for him than if he references "THE FUCKING WILLIE LYNCH PAPERS" which is what this post was all about. I never said that there weren't slaver correspondences. I'm referring specifically to the Willie Lynch papers. So my research is tight, ya fuckwad. Why? In part because I have examined the primary sources as far as the Cornell library could take me.
I think you're mad at my attitude more than my points, and to be fair , Yeah I am a ball buster. But on the other side, don't ever come at me with the throwaway line "You're pretty dumb" and not expect some kind of in your face comeback. Now if you had led with your "Stick to superheroes and your closeted gay step fantasies because you’re out of your league." then I might have given you a little more space to air your irreverences, which are still totally specious.
P.S-Are you one of those guys that is still mad about me calling Stomp the Yard the gayest movie this side of Monster cocks 2: I'll bugger you? Relax homie, you can be in a frat and not be gay...I guess
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8ibq55fdxY
Gostei muito desse post e seu blog é muito interessante, vou passar por aqui sempre =) Depois dá uma passada lá no meu site, que é sobre o CresceNet, espero que goste. O endereço dele é http://www.provedorcrescenet.com . Um abraço.
You call people out about not identifying themselves, but who are you? We know who the other infrequent contributor is, because he has the guts to sign his name. We also know that he does things like write books, lectures and other stuff. Who are you and what do you do?
Steve WB
Huh? First off, I don't give a shit who identifies themselves on this ting or not, that's Shawn's beef. More power to him but it truly isn't my issue. As for who I am, I'M AN AFROGEEK! Do I lecture? Yes, thus far at Cal, Sf State, and with high schoolers at an upward bound program. I've also taught popular cultural theory and a hip-hop aesthetics class. And yes I've published as well, though mostly through periodicals and online. Great. Now what? Am I authentic now? And what the hell does this have to do with Willie Lynch? Are you the same anonymous poster as before Steve? Where's all this hostility coming from Steve? Is it because of what I said about your mom and the eat a dick comment? That's just how I talk Steve, don't take it so personally. It's jokes man. Put the haterade down and generate your own blog/thoughts.papers/books, whatever and stop hating on what I do. I know I'm not everyone's flavor and if i'm not yours, that's cool, really. But you are spending a lot of time on this, getting way too internet heated, and drifting way off the fucking point.
It is still working after all this time intelligence, size, sex, weather they live in the valley, on a hill, East, West, North, South, have fine or coarse hair, or is tall or short. I assure you that distrust is stronger than trust, and envy is stronger than adulation, respect, or admiration.you have just touched on several points that Mr lynch made.
As to weather the letters were valid or not is just window dressing the fact that the woman out front man behind family structure was developed and implemnted during the slavery years and once again reintroduced during the 60's with the welfare system, that states a woman could have as many children as they like but must not have a man staying in the home make one of limited intellect as myself think that hmm if it quack like a duck it might be something to this. Also I challenge any black american to speak in the tounge of their ancestral home! their are just to many things in this supposed false letter that touches on the nerve of the american black experience.
from anonymous
Whether th letters are false are not is not as important as us as a peolple putting more effort into varifying our sources.If us as people foster a "peripheral view" of prossesing information,the truth about our selves and others will remain hidden.
P.S.
afro-geek, you are a tad "abrasive"; that is my personal not professional opinion.
I wil not fall victim to "fundamental attribution error"(the tendency to make internal attributions over external attributions in explaining the behavior 'or in this case, views,'of others). We judge each other to much and asimple disscusion on authenticity turns into wholesale condeming, mudslining and total divergence from the topic at hand.Thank you brother Afo-GEEK for bringing up the subject.
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