The Urban Legend That is The Willie Lynch Letter

. 11/16/2010 . 11 Comments

I continue to be shocked when I hear Black folks refer to the Willie Lynch letter as if it were an actual document of merit. I’ve often told the story of how I came to believe it is nothing but a college prank perpetuated upon gullible Black Americans. I will share this theory one more time and I hope those of you that know people that believe in that nonsense spread the word.

Sometime in 1991 I became a CompuServe client, a user of the very first email system for consumers. CompuServe predates AOL for those that don’t know. Email addresses were still computer based, so to send an email to someone you had to know their “number” which was like 1938329382@compuserve.com.

This was our first access and use of what we now call The Internet or world wide web. Prior to the CompuServe era, the internet had been used exclusively by scientists and educators. Keep that in mind now – no one but weird space scientists and PhD types.

So here comes this Willie Lynch letter.

I got it in my IN-box the first time shortly after I opened my CompuServe account, so this had to be late-1991 or so.  I actually laughed when I read it, recognizing it as a hoax immediately.  Majoring in communications, it was very easy to see that the phraseology and terminology, cadence and sentence structure were decidedly 21st century.

Yet, for some reason Black people like to think this letter is a real document, with historical references and everything though not one of them can say that they did any research to verify its authenticity. This is when that magical word “faith” comes into play.

This letter can be nothing but a prank, a sick joke perpetuated by students from some unknown University or scientific research facility. They put it together and sent it out on CompuServe. That thing has been forwarded and re-forwarded ad naseum ever since – almost 20 years later its still floating around.

Interestingly, every few years a new generation of Black Americans sees it for the first time and falls prey to the nonsense. However, there is no such thing as a Willie Lynch letter. There is no such person as Willie Lynch the slave trainer.

At best this “letter” chronicles the mentality and behavior of SOME African Americans towards each other. I have to say that I see a lot of that nit picking and self-hatred conversation taking place between Blacks that are from the Southern United States – Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Texas and Arkansas. The conversations I’ve heard about skin color and grade of hair from residents of that region does nothing but keep Blacks locked in a slave-master mentality.

Black Americans would do best to forget they ever heard of this nonsense and turn their heads around to deal with what is coming at us in the here and now! Black America, please stop focusing on and worrying about ancient history that cannot be changed.

Deborrah Cooper
Blogger and Columnist
http://www.survivingdating.com/

Deborrah

Veteran social researcher, relationship advice columnist, author and radio host. Author of hundreds of articles on American and black culture, gender issues, singles, dating and relationships. Author of "Sucka Free Love!" , "The 24 Types of Suckas to Avoid," "The Black Church - Where Women Pray and Men Pray," and "Why Vegan is the New Black" all available on Amazon.Com. Her unique voice and insightful commentary have delighted fans and riled haters for 20 years. Read her stuff on SurvivingDating.Com and AskHeartBeat.Com.

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