Much debate has occurred in the Black community since TV star, Bill Cosby, delivered two candid speeches in May and July 2004, criticizing Black youngsters and their parents for perpetuating their own social ills. “They can’t read. They can’t write. They are laughing and giggling and they’re going nowhere,” commented the popular sitcom dad. Former Democratic Presidential candidate, Al Sharpton, expressed a mixed reaction, citing, “But we also must be careful not to relieve the general community of what they’ve done to our community.” Cosby shot right back saying that Blacks cannot simply blame whites for problems such as high rates of teen pregnancy and school dropout.

As stimulating as the debate may be, some say it represents a much, much deeper problem that is characterized by inheritance. The analysis of Blacks ending up on the bottom of almost every measuring stick of progress in our society, except pure physical application such as athletics, results not from inheritance by genes, but inheritance by the “enslavement of the mind.”

It all started in 1712 when a British white slave owner from the West Indies, William Lynch, made a now famous speech on the banks of the James River in Virginia to American slave owners on how to control their slaves. “I have a fool proof method of controlling your Black slaves, and if done correctly, it will control the slaves for at least 300 years,” stated Lynch, from whose name, the term “lynching” was derived.

“ I use fear, distrust, and envy for control purposes,” he continued. His method was to take the differences among slaves and make them bigger, pitting them against each other using age, color, intelligence, size, sex, fine or coarse hair, status on plantation, attitude of owners, etc.. “But it is necessary that your slaves trust and depend on us (whites). They must love, respect and trust only us,” stated Lynch. “The Black slave after receiving this indoctrination shall carry on and will become self re-fueling and self generating for hundreds of years, maybe even thousands,” Lynch concluded.
That “enslavement of the mind” persists today. Many believe that Bill Cosby spoke out, in his own way, of breaking that mindset. President Lyndon Johnson clearly recognized the continuing saga of Lynch, accompanied by pervasive, subtle discrimination, and issued Executive Order 11246, birthing “Affirmative Action.”

So debilitating has been this psychological breeding from one Black generation to the next that many of the accomplishments of African Americans have been made by those other than decendants of slaves. Sidney Poitier was the first Black man to win an Academy Award, but he is a native of the Bahamas. In the early 60’s, Harry Belafonte was the biggest Black performer in America, but his father was from Jamaica and his mother from Martinique. U.S. Secretary of State, General Colin Powell is of Jamaican extraction and Illinois Senatorial candidate Barack Obama’s blackness has been questioned because he was raised in Hawaii by a white mother and his father is Kenyan. Those Black youngsters, including their parents, who are not compelled to prepare themselves for today’s society, should recognize that they are operating under a slave mentality. And the general public, including immigrants, who think that African Americans only need to work hard to be successful in this country, are ignoring a racist society, and the “enslavement of the mind,” that is unparalleled in history.