The letter by Willie Lynch still holds the attention of the public to this day. Throughout the years, it has become a part of the debates about race, oppression, discrimination, and the rights of Black people in the US. Even many public figures believed in the reasons for the oppression of Black people provided in the letter. However, scholars now oppose the letter’s authenticity, claiming that it was fabricated. Thus, this led to the public questioning the reasoning behind Willie Lynch’s speech. However, beyond the debates about the authenticity of the letter, it provides a reductive approach to analyzing the complex systems that caused the enslavement of Black people. In other words, the socioeconomic and political factors are ignored, as the letter implies the easy solution to the oppression of Black people. They are advised to get rid of the slave mentality to improve their situation, dismissing the need for meaningful social change (Atkinson, 2020). Therefore, Willie Lynch’s letter is of little importance to Africana Studies, as the field deal with nuances of Black experience and history, showing how it influences people holistically.
Despite the critique of its meaningless nature, Africana Studies focuses on every part of the Black experience in the US history and current reality, providing deep insight into racial issues. The main problem of the White-dominated view on history and social science is that it ignores all the sides of the patterns that influenced the events and led to the current outcomes, according to Karenga (1993). Similarly, if only the reasoning of Willie Lynch is taken into account when analyzing slavery, it dismisses all the other aspects. Furthermore, Willie Lynch’s implication that only the mentality of a slave is what prevented Black people from being free mirrors that of White groups (Lynch, 2018). These groups seek to deny the need for social change that would address the ingrained racial discrimination in socioeconomic, legal, and political systems. Thus, by nature, Africana Studies cannot take Willie Lynch’s letter as the only truth about slavery.
References
Atkinson, M. (2020). Post Traumatic Slave Disorder and Relationships: Revisiting Relations of Black Men and Women. Web.
Karenga, M. (1993). Introduction to Black studies. Racism: Essential readings. Web.
Lynch, W. (2018). The Willie Lynch letter and the making of a slave. Ravenio Books. Web.