Untitled

Written by Nefertiti N.

I love Black people. We are such a beautiful people…compassionate, forgiving, spiritual…simply beautiful. And partly because of that the most gruesome evils have been inflicted upon us as a people, spanning centuries and continents. Malcolm X puts it quite succinctly, “Any intelligent, honest, objective person cannot fail to realize that this white man’s slave trade, and his subsequent devilish actions are directly responsible for not only the presence of this Black man in America, but also for the condition in which we find this Black man here.”

Even in the face of the most arduous and intolerable conditions, we find a way not just to survive, but to live. Which is why I’m completely baffled at the behavior of some of my beautiful Black brothers and sisters. As I stood there in the department store trying to figure out why this white woman was getting better service than I from a Black sister, I quickly realized that this happens all the time. Time and time again I’ve seen it – my Black sisters and brothers interacting with white strangers like long lost friends and eyeing their fellow Black people with guarded suspicion…Why? Why is there this open friendliness, this need to make white people comfortable while a fellow Black brother or sister is thought to have some ulterior motive???

I have a theory – the psychological terror inflicted upon us a people still persists to this day.
In 1772 a slave master wrote a letter to his colleagues instructing them on how to destroy the Black man’s mind, his dignity, love for family, love for one another… Dubbed the Willie Lynch letter, it explicitly demonstrates how seeds of innate distrust can be sown…and over hundreds of years, the trees that sprouted from those seeds are still bearing fruit. And understandably so, since this physical and psychological horror lasted hundreds of years, extending beyond the era of slavery, and really – let’s be real – not that long ago racism was law. It is still law, by the way, just unwritten law. Racism has become such a part of American culture and has been so deeply entrenched that we continue to perpetuate it, which was the aim….Willie Lynch states, “The Black slave, after receiving this indoctrination, shall carry on and will become self-refueling and self-generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands.”

And yes, I have read the works of the scholars who state that the Willie Lynch letter is a hoax. Whether it is or not, as far as I'm concerned, is irrelevant. Structural racism is the ongoing legacy of racism and is evident, for example, in the disproportionate numbers of black and brown people stopped by police and arrested for simply being black and brown as opposed to the comparatively low numbers of white persons stopped--the statistics are staggering. Lack of access to health, poverty, and a hopelessness that morphs into internalized oppression (indoctrination that has become self-refueling) are all lasting aftershocks of our history. And "our history" includes the lynchings of the Reconstruction Era, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Era, to today, where racism (external and internalized) persists. Slavery was designed to destroy the Black man's mind, body and soul and our relationships with each other---and while it didn't destroy us, it sure did damage us---and that's what the Willie Lynch letter conveys.

And to people who say “get over it” – who do we say “get over it” to? As a good brother of mine said once; do you tell a person who has been raped to get over it because it was too many years ago?

An earth shaking experience such as we have had as a people is bound to have long lasting aftershocks. The question should be – How do we handle it? What do we do?
I have no answers...yet.