Analysis and Reflection

     This fifth blog entry is a reflection of my past work. I have written about racial issues that pertain to the United States. My re-occuring themes seem to be the importance of education for African Americans so we may be able to overcome the influence that slavery  has psychologically had over our people. I would say that the nature of my posts has remained the same, but the depth and thoroughness has increased in the past weeks. The reason being that at first I saw writing blogs as a mere annoyance and waste of time. Although after a while I soon found a certain jubilance in writing down my thoughts and researching on racial topics that piqued my interest. The thing that truly suprises me when I re-read work is that I've had the same or similar theme in every blog. The Idea worth re-visiting would be Barack Obama's speech, "A More Perfect Union". Since this was the first topic i blogged about, I feel as if I didn't have any idea on how to blog and did not write an adequate blog. The aspects that I value most in the blogging is the research and in the way I am free to display my thoughts openly.
     My strengths are research and critically reading/analysis. The weaknesses I've noticed in myself are in-class essays, and outlines. I have learned greatly in the area of critically reading, in contrast to expository writing. In addition I am a lot more comfortable with technology because of this class, and Howard University. Although I must be honest, when I write I usually do not take a global perspective into consideration. When I write, I try and write about issues that interest me, which are mainly issues that pertain to African Americans.

Convocation Speech

           Dr. Ben Carson spoke on the purpose of a University. He said that a university's purpose is for us to expand our minds, and not to be put in a container. So he asked how we can have progress if we are taught not to say what we think, and not to think a certain way. Next he spoke about how fortunate he was to have a mother that supported him academically. His mother was illiterate, but forced him to read two books a week while in elementary school. Dr. Carson hated it at first, but over time he began to realize that he could go anywhere through the pages of the books he read. Then after a while he figured out that he could control his own future, and he went from the bottom of the class to the top of the class in the span of a year. In addition, he said that a requirement of success is to take self-responsibility. Afterward when Dr. Carson got into med school his advisor told him that he wasn't cut out for medicine. So Dr. Carson thought about his situation and looked at his own strengths and weaknesses. Then saw that he excelled in classes that required more reading and less listening to boring lectures. So instead of going to the boring lectures, he would study and read. Med school after that went great for Dr. Carson. He implored that us young people must learn to be encouragers, and to come up with new way of thinking. In conclusion Dr. carson asked a very important question. "If we only do what has been done before, how can we progress?" So our generation must take a step forward from the last and create a new ay of doing things. Dr. Carson's  convocation speech was a true testimony to self responsibility of education.

The Effects of Willie Lynch

     Our blogs are supposed to be on current events, but I want to speak on Willie Lynch because  there are evidence that the effects of Willie Lynch are still around. Willie Lynch implemented a plan to make sure that slaves would be dependent upon their slave masters for at least 300 years in his speech addressing the American slave masters. It is 2010 and  Willie Lynch is still around. Willie Lynch plan was to take  the differences of the slaves and make them bigger until the differences became self perpetuating. His three essential ideals for controlling the slaves were fear, envy, and distrust. Willie Lynch said that he first divided the slaves by age. He  took the old slave and young slave, and put them against each other (distrust). Secondly he divided the slaves by color (envy). All slaves were originally dark skinned, so the slave masters introduced the white gene into the black woman  until they got a baby that was brown. Then they put the white into the brown until you attained a lighter brown, and then again until you had a slave that could almost pass as being white, but not enough to be accepted as white. He did this in order to put the dark skinned slave against the light skinned slave. The shade of the skin may have led to self racial hatred. Thirdly the slaves were divided on whether they have coarse hair or fine hair (envy). Fourthly they were divided them on if they live in the north, south, East, or west (distrust). Could this be an influence on gang violence? Fifthly Divide them again on status on the plantation, the house negro or the field negro. Lastly he said to divide them on the size of the plantation of one master to the size of another plantation. Consequently enough, this was not enough to create a slave. Willie Lynch believed you needed to break a negro in order to create a slave. Willie Lynch said, " Both horses and niggers are no good to the economy in their natural or wild state. Both must be broken and tied together for orderly production." This is where the fear factor comes in, in the breaking of the Negro Woman. The slave master paid attention to the woman and her offspring because they were the future of the slave generations. Now he said, "Take the meanest and most restless nigger, strip him of his clothes in front of the remaining male niggers, female, and the infant nigger, tar and feather him, tie each leg to a different horse faced in opposite directions, set him afire and beat both horses to pull him apart in front of the remaining niggers." The Slave masters now have made the negro's woman and infant watch this ordeal, and the woman will be frozen psychologically and she will no longer look to him, but look to the slave master for dependency. Although now when she produces a female child, she will make them just like herself. Independent of the male, but dependent of the master. Then the woman will break her male offspring out of her natural protective instinct herself, and they will grow up with a strong body but a weak mind. She will be out front and the man will be behind her and frightened. Now is this why the ratio of black women to men is so large in college? Lastly Willie Lynch said, "Being a fool is one of the basic ingredients of any incidents to the maintenance of the slavery system." Thus, we were kept down as a people through ignorance and lack of education. The slave masters wanted to control language and knowledge, or sooner or later the slaves would be in the house of the slave master talking to them "man to man", thus the end of their economic system. Then in order for us to rise as a people is directly related to what were oppressed by and we must take it back for ourselves.

"Willie Lynch Letter: The Making of a Slave." Final Call. Web.  1 Oct. 2010. <http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/perspectives_1/Willie_Lynch_letter_The_Making_of_a_Slave.shtml>.