By Lenrod Nzulu Baraka

The Willie Lynch letter, a purported list of suggestions made by a Caucasian West Indian plantation owner to his counterparts in Virginia USA, had as its central thesis the notion of creating all kinds of divisions between enslaved people of African ancestry. The objective behind the divisions was to keep Black people so fractionalized that it would become impossible for us to form ourselves into units sizable enough to mount a challenge to Caucasian supremacy.

In the Willie Lynch parable, Virginian planters are advised to exploit existing differences between people of African ancestry.  Some of the exploitable differences mentioned in the letter are age, color, gender, intelligence, plantation location, hair texture, height, and geographical location. By setting each group against the other and by creating a climate of distrust and envy, Willie Lynch assured his Virginian audience that they would maintain control over their enslaved population for hundreds of years.

While it is true that the historicity of the Willie Lynch letter is in doubt, the reality of divisions among people of African ancestry is very real.  The multiplicity of cultures and languages on the African continent has always proven to be a challenge for the creation of a United States of Africa. The invasion of Africa by Arabs and European only served to augment existing differences between African people as Arab and European languages, religions, and culture took root.

The conditioning process in the Diaspora served as a melting pot to forge a new kind of Black person who was neither fully European or fully African.  The new Negropeans were not divided by the traditional languages and cultures of the African continent. New divisions however quickly evolved among Black people in the Diaspora. In addition to the differences based on a new phenotype that emerged as a result of the sexual exploitation of Black women, our Diasporan ancestors also imbibed many of the biases and prejudices of their colonizers especially in the religious arena.

Our Black ancestors were indiscriminately indoctrinated into the religious, political, educational, and cultural mores of whichever group of Caucasians were at the head of the food chain. Black Catholics learned to be distrustful of Black Protestants. Black English speakers were suspicious of Black French, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese speakers. Our Black ancestors were conscripted into just about every skirmish that developed among Europeans.

In the contemporary setting, very little has changed.  Rather than following the sensible example of the US, China and India, post independent African leaders chose to carve out their own little or sometimes big niches of power and privilege.  The Black political directorate on the African continent decided to leave inviolate the arbitrary and often insane boundaries drawn up by Europeans at the Berlin Conference in 1884.

The reality that Sub-Saharan African nations are at the top of every list of the world’s poorest nations, should serve as a warning that something is dreadfully wrong on the African continent. Post independent Africa is yet to see its finest hour and the window of opportunity seems to be closing fast for some African nations that are on the verge of erupting into secessionist and civil wars.

The population explosion on the African continent is a cause for both rejoicing and concern especially if the rising population is not managed efficiently.  If Black African leaders are unable to raise the standard of living for people in Sub-Saharan Africa, a refugee crisis of Biblical proportions seem almost inevitable. It is much too late in the game for Black African politicians to be playing the same old useless political games.

The Caribbean attempted and failed at the creation of a united Caribbean federated state.  The West Indies cricket team which kept alive the concept of regional integration proved over the years that we here in the Caribbean are better and stronger when we do things together.  Our pusillanimous politicians like their peers on the African continent continue to flirt with oblivion trying to swim alone in an ocean filled with hungry sharks and other predators. 

Black people on the continent and in the Diaspora, as we reflect on the Willie Lynch parable, should become settled in our minds that we are Black first and foremost.  Our Blackness therefore must become the foundation of a unity that takes precedent over religion, politics, education, language, and gender. Birthing a new Black civilization demands that we jettison every divisive tool that has been used in the past as an impediment to our emergence.

Perpetuating the current political and economic status quo on the continent and in the Caribbean will only serve to retard the progress and development of the global Black collective.  Poverty has a way of creating pathologies in behavior. If Africa and the Caribbean are to avoid the fate of becoming regions of beggars begging from beggars, then visionary leadership is needed that will coalesce the genius, talents, energy, and resources of the global Black collective into a viable force that can reshape the political and economic landscape of Africa and the Caribbean.

Lenrod Nzulu Baraka is the founder of Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Center and the author of The Rebirth of Black Civilization: Making Africa and the Caribbean Great Again.