Willie Lynch - Speech or Presentation Example

Essay on the Lynch Speech Introduction The origin of the William Lynch speech is dubious, but circulation through the Internet in the late twentiethcentury drew attention to it. (1). The Lynch Speech The alleged speech is supposed to have been delivered on the banks of the James River by William Lynch, who was supposed to be a slave owner in the West Indies. In 1712 there were many slave revolts in Virginia that caused concern in the slave owners in Virginia. William Lynch had earned a reputation of maintaining strict and authoritarian control over his slaves.

He was brought to Virginia to impart and instil in the slave owners the means to establish control over the slaves and prevent them from revolting. The dubious nature of the speech stems from the fact that the purported author of the speech William Lynch was born thirty years after the speech. (1). The alleged speech focuses on solving the problem that slave owners of Virginia in maintaining control over their slaves, through the methods that William Lynch had refined through their use on slaves in his plantations in the West Indies. (2). In essence the advice given to the slave owners of Virginia to maintain control over their slaves is based on the divide and rule policy used successfully by the Romans in the past, and the British in more recent times, to maintain control over their much larger colonies.

The basis of the divide and rule policy lies in enlarging the differences within the targeted set of people to such an extent that they act as divisive forces to rend the people apart such that they hate those that are marginally different through color, caste, or religion and look more favorably on those subjugating them. This is the advice found in the text of the alleged William Lynch speech “I have outlined a number of differences among the slaves: and I take these differences and make them bigger.

I use fear, distrust, and envy for control purposes”. (2). The advice given in the speech is not restricted to just the masters of the houses of the white slave owners, but also for the women and children, such that there is no area among the white slave owners from where respite is offered on this strategy. The speech contains the self-belief that indoctrinating the black slaves to look upon even the slight variances among themselves including color, age, and sex with “fear, distrust and envy” or social reengineering as the cure all for retaining control and dominating the black slaves, not just in the immediate times, but extending for hundreds of years. (2). The alleged speech reflects the manner in which the black slaves were subjugated into slavery.

Following the advice was supposed to keep the blacks enslaved for centuries, but in about a hundred and fifty years, slavery came to an end in America, refuting the effectiveness of the advice in subjugating the blacks into slavery for centuries. Furthermore the impact of the advice appears more to have brought the blacks more together in their “fear, distrust and envy” of the majority white population in America, such that there has arisen in the African Americans that the cause of all their problems are the white American majority. (3). Conclusion The alleged William Lynch speech reflects the social reengineering strategy adopted by the white slave owners to keep their black slave population under subjugation and without revolting against their masters.

This strategy may have given them immediate gains for a short period, but in the long run united the black slave population to look upon the majority white population with fear, distrust, and envy. Works Cited 1. Lynching: Webster’s Quotations, Facts and Phrases. San Diego, California: Icon Group International, Inc. 2008. p.42. 2. “Willie Lynch: The Making of A Slave”. 2009. . 3. Rollins, James. The Curse of Willie Lynch: How Social Engineering in the Year 1712 Continues to Affect African Americans Today.

Bloomington, Indiana: Trafford Publishing. 2006.