One questions the humanity of the individual whose first thought upon arrival to this island was of how easy it would be to enslave the natives and steal their gold, one questions his subsequent praise as our “discoverer”. One questions our inability to deconstruct myths of superiority and inferiority and establish a common ground upon which we can build a society true to the claims of 1962. One questions, but one has an explanation for it all; how one seed planted can have effects that ripple for centuries, one seed and a whole lot of water.
Others question the authenticity of what is known as “The Willie Lynch Letter”, a letter, apparently written in the 18th Century by a white planter by the name of Willie Lynch claiming to know the secret to mentally enslaving the African, for “at least 3 centuries”. Almost three centuries later, his words reign true. After first experimenting on his plantation in the West Indies, he came up with a simple formula; ‘divide and rule’:
These methods have worked on my modest plantation in the West Indies and it will work throughout the South. Take this simple little list of differences and think about them. On top of my list is "age" but it's there only because it starts with an "A." The second is "COLOR" or shade, there is intelligence, size, sex, size of plantations and status on plantations, attitude of owners, whether the slaves live in the valley, on a hill, East, West, North, South, have fine hair, course hair, or is tall or short. Now that you have a list of differences, I shall give you an outline of action, but before that, I shall assure you that distrust is stronger than trust and envy stronger than adulation, respect or admiration. The Black slaves after receiving this indoctrination shall carry on and will become self refueling and self generating for hundreds of years, maybe thousands. Don't forget you must pitch the old black Male vs. the young black Male, and the young black Male against the old black male. You must use the dark skin slaves vs. the light skin slaves, and the light skin slaves vs. the dark skin slaves. You must use the female vs. the male. And the male vs. the female. You must also have you white servants and overseers distrust all Blacks. It is necessary that your slaves trust and depend on us. They must love, respect and trust only us. Gentlemen, these kits are your keys to control. Use them. Have your wives and children use them, never miss an opportunity. If used intensely for one year, the slaves themselves will remain perpetually distrustful of each other.
Indeed, we remain, perpetually distrustful, envious and malicious towards each other. We each want the other’s clothes, his car, his hair, his food, his house, his money, and his complexion, and we will destroy even ourselves to get it. Ever notice, a great majority of these ‘badmen’ have bleached faces? In concordance with the fact that a lot of them come from the inner city areas of the nation, there is a complex riding on us all, affecting us all negatively. It is worse however for those who feel it necessary to strip one or more layers of their skin in the quest to become lighter, and thus, ‘beautiful’. Ironically, it is also possible, though it is a somewhat rare occurrence, to find the ‘brownin’ with the desire to be darker if only to be accepted and treated as equal by those within her society who tend to (depending on where you go) isolate, or near worship her because she has a little less pigments than the others.
One of the major causes of crime is poverty, but the term I find is relative. There is in the ‘ghetto’, in areas such as my beloved haven Tivoli Gardens in West Kingston, “the mother of all garrisons”, a certain richness of culture and community I find lacking the segregated hills of Upper St. Andrew, where I wave at, but barely speak to my neighbours. In Tivoli, though there are no BMWs in anybody’s driveway, there is across from a cluster of zinc shacks a cluster of shops. Where one can find a video game arcade, outside of which a domino table where the men drink and play, this next to a restaurant, next to a barbershop. When you live in Stony Hill, if you’ve already started the journey uphill before remembering to buy a loaf of bread, odds are that loaf of bread shall remain in the supermarket until tomorrow…I want what they have!
On a serious note though, the poverty problem I believe can be easily solved by doing what Castro (Fidel) did in the 70’s and forcing those capitalist-minded property owners to give up a portion of their vast lands to those in better need of it. I correct myself, this cannot be done easily no one is willing to give up their hard-earned (or easily inherited) property for the betterment of anyone. It is understandable, yes where one has in fact spent the majority of his life single-handedly building his empire that it would be difficult to see it go. However, I am led to believe, due to my own close observations of the type of people of which I speak that there are some who only wish to remain in positions of ‘superiority’, an ideal apparently bought with money, an ideal which many will kill to attain, thus we come to the killing ingredients.
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