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The myth of Garvey and Rasta
Published: Monday | August 16, 2010 3 Comments and 0 Reactions
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Martin Henry, Contributor Tomorrow marks the 123rd anniversary of the birth of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, perhaps the greatest black leader and philosopher of the 20th century (not forgetting Martin Luther King Jr), and one of the greatest of all times.
Professor Carolyn Cooper claimed in her column yesterday, 'Claiming Garvey and Rastafari', that Garvey would certainly endorse the inaugural Rastafari Studies conference hosted by the Institute of Caribbean Studies at the UWI, Mona this week. Garvey may possibly have been willing to endorse the conference for some reason, but not for the reason of affinity between himself and Rastafari on some critical points.
One of the prevailing myths of the culture is that Marcus Garvey was some kind of proto-Rasta. The Rastafarian movement, aided by 'scholarship', has (mis)appropriated Garvey as a special icon of the movement. Professor Cooper has previously functioned as a medium for bringing messages from the dead, like Morris Cargill, and may indeed have a message from Garvey. But from Garvey's own copious words while alive, it is extraordi-narily doubtful if he would ever be a locksman dragging on the [COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]sacramental[/COLOR][/COLOR] chalice and shouting "Selassie I, Jah Rastafari" and 'bun Jesas'.
Inchoate movement
[COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]Rastafarianism[/COLOR][/COLOR] is a rather inchoate movement, something which we hope a serious conference of scholarship about Rastafari will have the courage and honesty to explore. One of its principal proponents, Mutabaruka, is an atheist. Others venerate Selassie I. Some are respectful of [COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]Jesus[/COLOR][/COLOR]; others want to bun him. For some the 'blessed hope' is repatriation to Africa. Others have dropped out of Babylon but will sell brooms and vegetables to the Babylonians, while still others, the pop musicians perhaps and academics being the best examples, have accommodated Babylon and are using the system to their advantage, while 'chanting down Babylon'. Some are polygamists. Others are monogamists. Some lick Arnold, some don't.
A few things hold the movement together with any kind of coherence: veneration of Selassie I, either as god or great man-hero; the sacramental herb; and black pride - the last being perhaps the only point of real contact between Garvey and Rasta.
Incontestable record
It is a matter of incontestable record that Marcus Garvey detested Selassie I and severely chastised him for his conduct as emperor of Abyssinia in the war with Italy and in the treatment of his own people.
Listen to Garvey: "Haile Selassie ... kept his country unprepared for modern civilisation. He resorted to [COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]prayer[/COLOR][/COLOR], feasting and fasting, whilst other nations were building up armaments ... .
"When Haile Selassie departed from the policy of the great Menelik and surrounded himself with European advisers, he had taken the first step to the destruction of the country.
"Why he kept the majority of his countrymen in serfdom and almost slavery is difficult to tell. Why he refused to educate the youth of his country to help him to carry on the government and lead the masses in a defensive war against Italy cannot be understood.
"If Haile Selassie had only the vision, inspired with negro integrity, he would have still been the resident emperor in Addis Ababa, with not only a country of twelve million Abyssinian citizens, but with an admiring world of hundreds of millions of negroes [around the world]."
Garvey had more nasty things to say about the Rasta-venerated Selassie I. But listen to this one on Solomon: "The new negro does not give two pence for the line of Solomon" which is venerated by Rastas. "Solomon was a Jew. The negro is no Jew."
Despite her supporting quotations, Cooper is far from being right, and certainly not honest, in her assertion that Garvey had a "daring conception of God" with which [COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]Rastafarian[/COLOR][/COLOR] thought and theology, such as it is, coincide. While rejecting the Europeanisation (the whitening) of God, Garvey was close to being an orthodox Christian. It is more likely to the Ethiopian Orthodox church, which retained purer conceptions of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ than almost anything in Europe, that Garvey would be aligned, not Selassie I-venerating Rastafarianism.
Garvey through Cooper: "We negroes believe in the God of Ethiopia, the everlasting God - God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, the one God of all ages." As orthodox as Christianity comes and anchored in the Apostles' Creed."
'Righteous' cause
"Our cause", Garvey said, "is based upon righteousness. God Almighty is our leader and Jesus Christ our standard bearer." 'Bun Jesas'? Jesus the first great reformer had the blood of all races in his veins, Garvey said. "The Church is the most beneficent institution, the greatest civilising agency; the institution which is the begetter and ward of the rights and privileges, the freedom and liberty, not only of the community, but of the individual."
And as a personal profession of faith Marcus Garvey wrote: "I believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost; I endorse the Nicene Creed. I shall never hold Christ or God responsible for the commercialisation of Christianity... ."
The Rastafarians and their apologist scholars cannot just be left alone to misinterpret and misappropriate Garvey, his faith and his philosophy. They cannot just be allowed to make things up as they go along and foist falsehood upon us because it serves their interests.
At odds
Sociologically, Garvey would be at odds with much of Rastafa-rianism. He was an unabashed capitalist and advocated wealth and power - not dropping out of Babylon, or repatriation - as the key to the advancement of the black race.
Garvey was a serious advocate of science and almost certainly would have had strident objections to the use of a herb religiously or otherwise that evidence suggests may worsen the lackadaisical attitude of 'the negro' against which Garvey complained so much as an obstacle to the progress of the race.
Garvey actively engaged politics and founded the People's Political Party whose extra-ordinarily progressive 1929 election manifesto remains as relevant - and as unfulfilled - as it was then. Rastas have tended to philosophically and practically withdraw from political engagement and to call down fire pon Babylon.
Garvey was no Rasta.
[Quotations from Ken Jones', Marcus Garvey Said ...]
Martin Henry is a communication consultant. Please send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.
Published: Monday | August 16, 2010 3 Comments and 0 Reactions
Garvey
Garvey
1 2 >
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Martin Henry, Contributor Tomorrow marks the 123rd anniversary of the birth of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, perhaps the greatest black leader and philosopher of the 20th century (not forgetting Martin Luther King Jr), and one of the greatest of all times.
Professor Carolyn Cooper claimed in her column yesterday, 'Claiming Garvey and Rastafari', that Garvey would certainly endorse the inaugural Rastafari Studies conference hosted by the Institute of Caribbean Studies at the UWI, Mona this week. Garvey may possibly have been willing to endorse the conference for some reason, but not for the reason of affinity between himself and Rastafari on some critical points.
One of the prevailing myths of the culture is that Marcus Garvey was some kind of proto-Rasta. The Rastafarian movement, aided by 'scholarship', has (mis)appropriated Garvey as a special icon of the movement. Professor Cooper has previously functioned as a medium for bringing messages from the dead, like Morris Cargill, and may indeed have a message from Garvey. But from Garvey's own copious words while alive, it is extraordi-narily doubtful if he would ever be a locksman dragging on the [COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]sacramental[/COLOR][/COLOR] chalice and shouting "Selassie I, Jah Rastafari" and 'bun Jesas'.
Inchoate movement
[COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]Rastafarianism[/COLOR][/COLOR] is a rather inchoate movement, something which we hope a serious conference of scholarship about Rastafari will have the courage and honesty to explore. One of its principal proponents, Mutabaruka, is an atheist. Others venerate Selassie I. Some are respectful of [COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]Jesus[/COLOR][/COLOR]; others want to bun him. For some the 'blessed hope' is repatriation to Africa. Others have dropped out of Babylon but will sell brooms and vegetables to the Babylonians, while still others, the pop musicians perhaps and academics being the best examples, have accommodated Babylon and are using the system to their advantage, while 'chanting down Babylon'. Some are polygamists. Others are monogamists. Some lick Arnold, some don't.
A few things hold the movement together with any kind of coherence: veneration of Selassie I, either as god or great man-hero; the sacramental herb; and black pride - the last being perhaps the only point of real contact between Garvey and Rasta.
Incontestable record
It is a matter of incontestable record that Marcus Garvey detested Selassie I and severely chastised him for his conduct as emperor of Abyssinia in the war with Italy and in the treatment of his own people.
Listen to Garvey: "Haile Selassie ... kept his country unprepared for modern civilisation. He resorted to [COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]prayer[/COLOR][/COLOR], feasting and fasting, whilst other nations were building up armaments ... .
"When Haile Selassie departed from the policy of the great Menelik and surrounded himself with European advisers, he had taken the first step to the destruction of the country.
"Why he kept the majority of his countrymen in serfdom and almost slavery is difficult to tell. Why he refused to educate the youth of his country to help him to carry on the government and lead the masses in a defensive war against Italy cannot be understood.
"If Haile Selassie had only the vision, inspired with negro integrity, he would have still been the resident emperor in Addis Ababa, with not only a country of twelve million Abyssinian citizens, but with an admiring world of hundreds of millions of negroes [around the world]."
Garvey had more nasty things to say about the Rasta-venerated Selassie I. But listen to this one on Solomon: "The new negro does not give two pence for the line of Solomon" which is venerated by Rastas. "Solomon was a Jew. The negro is no Jew."
Despite her supporting quotations, Cooper is far from being right, and certainly not honest, in her assertion that Garvey had a "daring conception of God" with which [COLOR=blue !important][COLOR=blue !important]Rastafarian[/COLOR][/COLOR] thought and theology, such as it is, coincide. While rejecting the Europeanisation (the whitening) of God, Garvey was close to being an orthodox Christian. It is more likely to the Ethiopian Orthodox church, which retained purer conceptions of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ than almost anything in Europe, that Garvey would be aligned, not Selassie I-venerating Rastafarianism.
Garvey through Cooper: "We negroes believe in the God of Ethiopia, the everlasting God - God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, the one God of all ages." As orthodox as Christianity comes and anchored in the Apostles' Creed."
'Righteous' cause
"Our cause", Garvey said, "is based upon righteousness. God Almighty is our leader and Jesus Christ our standard bearer." 'Bun Jesas'? Jesus the first great reformer had the blood of all races in his veins, Garvey said. "The Church is the most beneficent institution, the greatest civilising agency; the institution which is the begetter and ward of the rights and privileges, the freedom and liberty, not only of the community, but of the individual."
And as a personal profession of faith Marcus Garvey wrote: "I believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost; I endorse the Nicene Creed. I shall never hold Christ or God responsible for the commercialisation of Christianity... ."
The Rastafarians and their apologist scholars cannot just be left alone to misinterpret and misappropriate Garvey, his faith and his philosophy. They cannot just be allowed to make things up as they go along and foist falsehood upon us because it serves their interests.
At odds
Sociologically, Garvey would be at odds with much of Rastafa-rianism. He was an unabashed capitalist and advocated wealth and power - not dropping out of Babylon, or repatriation - as the key to the advancement of the black race.
Garvey was a serious advocate of science and almost certainly would have had strident objections to the use of a herb religiously or otherwise that evidence suggests may worsen the lackadaisical attitude of 'the negro' against which Garvey complained so much as an obstacle to the progress of the race.
Garvey actively engaged politics and founded the People's Political Party whose extra-ordinarily progressive 1929 election manifesto remains as relevant - and as unfulfilled - as it was then. Rastas have tended to philosophically and practically withdraw from political engagement and to call down fire pon Babylon.
Garvey was no Rasta.
[Quotations from Ken Jones', Marcus Garvey Said ...]
Martin Henry is a communication consultant. Please send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.
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