The Willie Lynch Letters, really?

Earlier today I received an e-mail from one of my estranged aunts about a picture caption on my myspace page. The picture is of my sister and I in the stands of our cousin’s graduation with a little girl in the background trying to get into the picture. The caption reads “There’s a little dark girl trying to get into the picture in the back.” The e-mail that was sent to me included the fact that Egyptian queens and princesses were considered beautiful back in their prime (okay…), super model Christy Brinkley is hot (I’ve never heard of her…) and the mentioning of the Willie Lynch Letter (a speech given almost 300 years ago). Obviously bothered, I had to respond to her damn e-mail. The following contains an excerpt from the e-mail (actually, the whole e-mail minus a few sentences) and starts out with a quote from her e-mail to me. She spelled perpetuates wrong…


“Society pertuates that light or white epitomizes what beauty is i.e. Super Model Christy Brinkley or light skinned girls with long straight hair in the black videos is what is use to symbolize what beauty is. As a result the "Willie Lynch Letter" is in full effect!”

This shit never fails does it? I make a joke on my myspace page about a girl who is obviously of the darker nation and every black woman in her 40s and 50s who experienced the Civil Rights Movement first hand has to jump on my back as if statements like yours are helping to end the proliferation of racism and sexism in the United States. As an educated black man who happens to hold grudges, I’m more than offended that you’d throw the “Willie Lynch Letter” in my face not knowing the circumstances. Sure, I’m a light skinned brotha who pointed out that some young woman is darker than I, but there was nothing more to be read into that. I didn’t say that she was an ugly dark skinned girl (which she obviously isn’t) nor did I say that I wouldn’t be attracted to a woman whose skin is darker than mine (because I’m definitely not that shallow).

I know what’s going on with race relations in this country, and in reality, I feel that everything that is learned about racism, sexism or ageism (if we really want to get technical about that damn speech given almost 300 years ago), is learned in the home. The experiences that are learned from our families are the experiences that we take with us into the real world, and I’ll hold that truth to be relevant until my days on this earth are up and only the words that I’ve written over the years live on – which is why I took immediate exception to this e-mail. The “Willie Lynch Letter” was written to keep African-Americans divided and to keep plantation profits up. If one thing remains true from that letter, it’s Lynch’s statement that black men and women will carry on and will become self-refueling and self-generating for hundreds of years – and this truth was never more evident to me than a few months back when you, Auntie Bridget, tried splitting my immediate family apart by attacking my mother through both my sister and me.

I don’t know what you wanted, but I do know that you went about it the way slave masters from the 1700s would have loved for you to do it. I’ve taken that experience and learned that everyone in the world can be as cut-throat as they need to be to get what they want, even if it means coming between family. I understand where you’re coming from as a black woman, because I lived exclusively with black women for five years of my life. However, I don’t need you, or anyone else, throwing that “black is beautiful” bullshit at me because that phrase is the epitome of the propagation of reverse-racism. Instead of seeing colors, how about “people in general are beautiful.” If for some reason I happen to find a white woman extremely attractive and marry her, it isn’t because of societies perpetuation of what is or is not beautiful, it’s because I have found her beautiful (or intelligent or hilarious or all of the above). We need to give up this “media is controlling beauty” argument because it’s just become an excuse for why black women are losing black men. Instead of consuming so much of the mass media, why not go out and create your own reality.

Further more, instead of chastising me for pointing out the obvious, why not go after the black men and women across this country who live and die by what is written in the Bible. This country was built by the hands of African American’s who had their basic rights as humans taken away by white men who need the cheapest labor possible to make this the “world’s greatest country.” I mean, there are specific passages in the Bible that men used to justify slavery and prolong subjugation as long as possible. In the wake of the Civil War, Jefferson Davis, the president of the confederate states after the South broke away from the Union said, “Slavery is an established decree of Almighty God. It is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation.” We hear about everything morally right about the Bible ad nauseam, but the same people who were oppressed because of this book continue to warship the God who condones such an evil practice of the human race. In Exodus, the guidelines for buying, selling, and treating slaves is clearly outlined. In First Timothy, we learn how slaves should look at their masters and in both Matthew and John it clearly states that slaves are not better than their masters.

I want to read your assumptions about how I feel about women of color as much as I want to hear anything about race equality, sex equality or class equality from the mouth anyone who totes a Bible around with them all day and claims that the way of the Lord is the right way. I’m tired of being preached to about race issues from people who don’t look at things from both ends of the conjectural spectrum. I merely pointed out that a girl was dark skinned to get a laugh from a couple of friends on my myspace page, something no one should ever take seriously. Had I known that I was going to get “The Lynch Letters” thrown in my face like I’m just some average ignorant nigga (a phrase not to be taken literally, please, spare me) maybe I would have written a more controversial caption.

This shouldn’t be a big deal.

Stay Hideous,
PB