Orlando Warren

Lynchings and Other American Pastimes Orlando Warren

The pastimes referred to are even more than what has happened, and still happens, to people of African descent in our country. Our American Pastimes are the remnants of our collective American past, especially when it comes to acts of violence against the helpless-whether the helpless are the so called Other by group designation, or morphs into the Other because of differing world views. And, of course, there are those who become the Other because the perpetrator, be it stranger or family member, has never felt any other way. The legacy of the damaged is to continue what they know best. Lynchings and Other American Pastimes attempts to answer, through its stories - by and about people of color - the question of whether America can and will purge itself of its legacy of racial hate, which has been passed down from generation to generation. It is not meant to address only those who call themselves black, but people of differing hues, differing economic and political designations, who are all too similar when it comes to the damage - the havoc - that our pastimes reek on ourselves. . . and most on those we love.