New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: Let's dispel a favorite urban myth

New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: Let's dispel a favorite urban mythLet's dispel a
favorite urban myth

The lies are supposed to be behind the Nation of Islam now. But I am not so sure. Whenever its current leader, Louis Farrakhan, takes to the podium, something like the truth and its cousin, logic, head for the hills.

The "Willie Lynch" story that Farrakhan delivered at the Million Man March became part of the unquestioned "folk wisdom" of the sidewalk, barbershop, beauty parlor and student "understanding" of the black predicament.

The talk was about a supposed speech given in 1712 by William Lynch, a slaveholder who was lecturing his fellow chattel owners in the best ways to keep the slaves divided. It is a perfect example of the "big lie" theory. Tell a big enough lie and it will become its own truth. At the Million Man March, Farrakhan presented a piece of "truth" that had been hidden from black people.

Now it's 10 years later, and after a Millions More Movement, the Lynch lie maintains its position as potted history passed off as fact. It has ingrained itself so much into our culture's consciousness that Prof. William Jelani Cobb of Spelman College had to sweep away this rhetorical piece of dung on his Web site jelanicobb.com. Cobb was disturbed by how deeply this has penetrated the thought of black Americans across classes and professions. A decade later, people repeat it over and over. The rapper Talib Kweli has even cited it in his material. According to Cobb's Web site, it has taken on the life of a factoid, something that seems true but is not.

The only problem is that Farrakhan's talk was no more than a historical bean pie in the sky. A trumped up example of paranoid "insight," it revealed nothing.

The Nation of Islam, when Malcolm X was alive, and when its founder, Elijah Muhammad, called the shots, prided itself on revealing the truth to "so-called Negroes" who were deaf, dumb and blind to their history. The wool had been pulled over their eyes by the white man who was no more than a devil invented 6,000 years ago by Yacub, a mad black scientist.

The white devil was destined to destroy the civilized world created by black men and take reign, but would be pulled down when UFOs, spaceships flown by black men and filled with dynamite, would rain down explosives on America until it was set ablaze. It would burn for 777 years, cool for another 777. Then it would become a paradise and all black people who had been smart enough to emigrate to Africa could come back. (Actually, I assume the descendants of those who left, but you never know.)

Fast forward to 2005. The mad scientist is no more, but the William Lynch lie continues, permeating the fabric of modern-day black society.

Cobb was rattled to the point that he had to take Farrakhan's fairy tale apart, piece by piece, even noting that the language itself was not authentic. It was clearly written far, far later than it was supposed to be.

Unlike the "doctor" whom the Nation of Islam presented at the Million Man March as a man who had found a cure for AIDS, the William Lynch myth remains current snake oil.

If we think the masses are deserving of the truth, then we have to ask why more people are not involved, like Prof. Cobb, in seriously questioning Farrakhan.

We have been waiting a long time for this and will continue to wait as the Farrakhan spin becomes an ever more serious condition of vertigo.

Originally published on October 20, 2005