In the year 1712, a speech was given by slave owner, Willie Lynch on the banks of the James River on how to control and make a slave. He spoke of methods to use that, if used properly, "will enslave a n***er from generation to generation and for centuries to come. Take control of their minds and then mold their minds into an image that you want them to have of themselves which can last for centuries."

Is there power in thoughts and words? Can human lives be affected, altered and controlled by these thoughts and words? Does it matter how we think and what thoughts we may happen to entertain? The answer is an unequivocal YES! There is vibratory energy to all thoughts and the greater the emotional force behind words, the more power they have to affect lives, fates and destinies. Those of you who have benefited from the power of prayer know exactly how this can be so.

The subconscious mind is a receptacle where emotions, feelings and thoughts are harbored. The positive or negative power emanating from this receptacle will be the determining factor as to how your day - to - day living unfolds. People such as Anthony Robbins, Les Brown, Denis Waitley, Zig Ziglar and many others have, for years, held motivational seminars instilling and advocating the power of positive thinking. They understand the power of the mind and how the built up negative or positive energy released from it can affect one's life.

Their entire approach is an appeal on how to release a certain force of positive thoughts from within, and understand the power of these thoughts, thereby making these individuals very much in demand as motivational speakers. In short, they teach how to free up your mind for the better good and utilize the power of the mind to its greatest potential.

The methods that Willie Lynch encouraged to be used, and were indeed used, would make all of the scenes in the TV series, Roots, appear to be mild and tame in comparison. The USA is a proud and great country and is none to proud of an infamous 294 years of a very dark, ugly and damnable time where it - in this 21st Century - would be very difficult to imagine how man was able to sink as low as he did to steal and abuse the minds of a race of people.

To understand the present, we can't ignore the past. Especially when books such as The Bell Curve are written, creating a feeding frenzy by the white media, taking all the lies in at face value and then running with them to suit their own conscious relieving purposes. Books of such nature take a look at the present, and put a spin on things, finding it totally convenient to ignore revealing answers from the bowels of a deep, dark and disturbing past history of a nation.

Most certainly, there should be cause for alarm with the high rate of black incarceration, drug and alcohol addiction and the poor performances in our public schools. Are there issues within the Black community that needs to be addressed? Yes, there are. However, not a single one of these issues will be resolved as long as this country finds it far more convenient to remain in a state of denial. And this is a state both White America and Black bourgeois middle-class America share equally. It is the economically poor, disadvantaged minority who are the scapegoats and sacrificial lambs in this quagmire of stench. Is this country really naive enough to believe that the Katrina episode can't and won't happen again in other parts of the country where similar deplorable conditions exist?

The power that can emulate from a word, or a series of words, can have a most profound affect on a person’s welfare and life. To tell a child that he or she will never grow up to amount to anything, if heard often enough, can have a most profound and chilling effect on that child's life. To fill a child's mind with positive reinforced self imagery can prove to be very rewarding and fruitful for that child's life. The subconscious mind is indiscernibly powerful - beyond imagination - and should be treated with the greatest of respect, since whatever is fed into it will materialize. The color of one’s skin, insofar as the "mind" is concerned, is totally irrelevant.

There is no word on the face of this earth with the negative destructive power as that of the n-word. Its very presence and usage by the African American community is living proof of how effective Willie Lynch's prognosis of creating a particular image can last for centuries. The n-word is a word that, over time, has mistakenly been taken to be nothing more than a racial slur, which is an erroneous assumption. This word is heavily laden with a psychological demeaning and degrading impact that serves as a self-generating and self-refueling reinforced psychosomatic conduit to those who have been conditioned to accept its low vibratory rate of an all-consuming energy. When someone takes a gun with only one bullet in the chamber, spins the chamber, puts the gun to their head and pulls the trigger, it's known as Russian roulette. The continual insistence of some African American, on having a love affair with the n-word, is simply another form of Russian roulette. The mind isn't a toy and the continual treatment of it as though it is one,is a gross error in judgment. The Black community must learn to overcome the Willie Lynch Syndrome.

H. Lewis Smith, author of Bury That Sucka! A Scandalous Love Affair With the N-word. Founder/CEO of the non-profit organization United Voices for a Common Cause.

is published every Thursday.