Willie Lynch

“The Making of a Slave” was a speech given by Willie Lynch who was a British slave owner from the West Indies. In 1712, Lynch was invited to deliver the speech at James River in the colony of Virginia. The purpose of his speech was to help the Virginia slave owners learn tactics that would help get their slaves to obey. The tactics were supposed to bring division to the slaves by turning different classes of slaves against one another. The speech sparked interest because of the relation to it and current problems that exist within the African American community. The speech has left a dent in history that dates back to the period of slavery.

Willie Lynch preached self-hatred and self-destruction of the African American slaves of his time by causing confusion between the African American people. These traits have been passed to each new generation of African Americans over several hundred years. As a race, we must understand the self-destruction that lies within us in order to devise solutions to fix the problem. The goal of Lynch was to put fear into the slave for the white slave masters and to also turn them against each other because of the different features. These features consisted of: the old black male versus the young black male, dark skinned versus the light skinned, and the female versus the male. Each problematic situation among the selected groups of African Americans is still face to this day, three hundred years after the speech, in which Lynch states in the address.

In the African American community, current problems lie within the social, economic, and educational aspects that can be referenced back to the Willie Lynch letter, “Making of a Slave. “It has always been stated, “If you want to withhold information from Black students, put it inside a book.” This quote suggests that African Americans are lazy and they do not value the importance of an education. The number of African American students who successfully complete their educational...