The Man (Lynch letter)

This system and society was not designed to empower those of us that look like you and me/ but rather to promote its prosperity through the eradication of our communities/ in 1712 limits were placed on me far before my conception became reality/ and 302 years later these methods have proven to be the most successful demise of a cultures identity/ but we as a people aren't the only ones who have suffered through some kind of adversity/ you see the Jews suffered through Hitler and his reign/ and the Indians battled through the pilgrims plagues/ cultures, identities, persons abused, battered and raped/ significance killed and their history blemished with the actions "the man" took to diminish their names/ and yet their history is rich and engraved with the stands and achievements they made to change the game/

So why do we/ my community continue to use "the man" as an excuse for the advancements we fail to obtain?/ why have we allowed 302 year old limits to become out name/ and regulate how we live and raise our children to this day/ If Lynch never wrote his letter would it still be this way?/ Sometimes I have to sit back and ask myself if the past is really still to blame?/I’ve read the Lynch letter and I know what is says/ It says to break the Black man, then break the Black woman, and in turn she'll raise the Black child, male or female, broken in their image/ put man against women, that is husband against wife/ field against house, that is dark against light/ old against young, that is wisdom verses ignorance/ then sit back and watch because this is the method by which you'll gain your slaves obedience/...

Ah, nail on the head, hammer strikes its blow/ the truth was hidden in writing and we all know how that story goes/ Lynch himself said his method was a guarantee/ so effective that the results would be prevalent for 100s of years to see/ he said to break the Black man take his mind/ strip one bare for all to see/ tar and feather him/ then to instill that they are weak/ bullwhip the observing males until death is nearly their defeat/ but make sure the women and children are there to see/ this intricate detail proved instrumental in breaking the black woman and thusly the black family/...

Because now the protective male image her Black man once was, she no longer sees/ and psychologically she has become frozen in a state of independency/ and instead of raising her children how they used to be/ out of fear she raises them in reverse psychology/ teaching her son to be mentally weak, which leaves him dependent, but strong physically/ and she raises her daughter to live in her frozen state of independency/ so they learn to protect the now psychologically submissive male/ and raise their children in the shadows of what men and women used to be/ hmm something about that is eerily familiar to me/...

The letter goes on to say to maintain your slave communities/ use crossbreeding to strip them of their natural identity/ create them in so many shades until they become confused about who they are/ and they become half of who they used to be/ they'll be forced to believe that what is told to them is true/ and their history will remain obsolete/ because their reality is that they are and will remain in your servitude/ and as long as you diminish their values, the only thing they'll have left to value is you/...

Now by this I’m confused/ since Black history and current events show me this is not true/ because if it were there would be no me, as I am today, and there would be no you/ civil rights would fail to have existed/ as would MLK and Malcolm X/ and you better believe Barak Obama would never have been president/ so having accomplished all this, it brings me back to say is the past really still to blame?/ why does is seem that as we progress one step, we regressing three?/ is it in order to maintain the ability to blame "the man" for initially raping us of our names, cultures, identity and prosperity?/...

Could it be that we remain ignorant to the system that was devised to keep us at bay/ because even though we are physically free our minds remain shackled and chained/ and the only way I see for us to truly be free and regain our identity/ is for us to better educate our children and stop repeating history mentally.

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-Mela` J.