Eng 101 – LynchEssay Preview: Eng 101 – LynchReport this essayJoy CooperEnglish 10110/17/17Martina JonasLynch        The word lynch sends shivers down my spine. Every time it is uttered gruesome images of bloodshed, tears, and death pop into my mind. As stated in the Oxford English Dictionary, the early use of the word lynch implied the infliction of punishment such as whipping, tarring and feathering, or hanging. Now, lynch means to condemn and punish (inflict sentence of death) by lynch law. The word Lynch originated in the U.S. by Captain William Lynch. Andrew Ellicott believed lynch was first formed in Virginia around the year 1776. An article in the Southern Lit. Messenger (1836) 2 389 contradicts Mr. Elliot’s time frame stating, lynch was formed in the year 1780. Along with making the word lynch into a credible action verb, Captain William Lynch wrote The Willie Lynch Letter and The Making of a Slave, which is a vivid letter instructing slave masters in the way of controlling African American slaves by setting them against one another. The word Lynch was created with the intension of inflicting barbaric punishments among innocent people that happened to be born with the wrong skin tone. The thought of the word alone makes me anxious.
I chose the word Lynch because it resonates within me. I think it is important to know the trials and tribulations my ancestors faced in order for generations after them to live cohesively with other races. Knowing my history prohibits me from taking anything I have for granted. It also rains in my impending naivety from rising to the surface. If I didn’t learn my history, I would constantly forget that racism is still alive and thriving. It may not always be blatant but a hatred as strong as racism is enough to cause people to kill in cold blood. My history is a reminder that because of my skin tone I have to work twice as hard as those of different races in order to succeed and watch my back while I’m at it.
Loren K. Allen, a professor of history, sociology, and social justice at the University of Louisville, wrote that
“As a young person in his late 30s, I saw many similarities with a Native American youth who is now coming from a black family, and those parallels would not hold out for another 50 or 100 years. In other words, the similarities could not stand the weight of racism and racism still continues. It’s too early to tell how the present cultural landscape might be reshaped in many ways to address it.”
So why does this matter, particularly to young black folks in the U.S.?
Well, that’s really the interesting question in the case of Native American youth. According to National Research Council (NRAC), a national research organization, there are about 1.3 billion people living in the United States in a population of 669 million, or roughly one-fifth of the 1.3 billion people who lived during the Civil War in the U.S.
In the 1960s, when Congress was trying to pass the Civil Rights Act to create jobs that would allow immigrants from black and Latino backgrounds to enter the U.S., the National Research Council wrote a study titled The Young White Man: The Politics Behind Racial Identity in America. The results of this study led researchers to conclude that when it comes to white Americans living in a black community, the most important factor is cultural and economic status.
[Native Americans are] undervalued and disadvantaged, and in certain situations, not at all socially accepted or accepted.
For example, among the most socially conservative groups in our country, we have the white working families. At least 80 percent of the men and women who work in construction or construction-related occupations in our country live in one or more of these four economic groups. In fact, almost half of women are considered men’s and 80 percent of our white male colleagues are part-time contractors and many of these jobs are outsourced to manufacturing.
And it’s particularly significant when you look at this country as a whole or the region at large where white unemployment continues to skyrocket.[Racial and ethnic identity have never been more important to American culture than the way that racial and ethnic groups live our country.]
In a statement released in 2012, White House deputy director of civil rights David Duke told the AP:”
When we say we are not racist to the point of violence, that only refers to the people we are attacking because of who they are. When I say the term racist when I use our word, it is using the word racist, and my word against the racist who is attacking me because of my race of origin. […] And it is simply not true to describe the white supremacy of the recent wave