Yaad Bwoy Intergalactica: 2008/1: Globalization of Race: Marxism, Garveyism, & Rasta
Yaad Bwoy Intergalactica:
Globalization of Race: Marxism, Garveyism, & Rasta
Don’t Mess with My Myth!… Not While US Be Having a Elephant-Ass ‘Race’!
Isn’t it interesting how much the discussion of the issue of ‘Race’ is like physical exercise? How so? Simple. The more we try to avoid it, is the more we need it.
Now that the matter of ‘race’ has been brought front and center like overdue Malcolm X American chickens rushing home, some people are scampering (or trying to), some are whimpering, some are weeping and moaning, full of attitudes of innocence, trying to hide from the reasoning. Naturally, the stress of such unwelcome activity is causing much gnashing of teeth, not to mention the pain that comes from suddenly having to use muscles long allowed to wither from avoidance of said exercise.
The present racial/moral deficit could be the result of careless apathy, crippling laziness, paralyzing fear, or acute depression…or maybe something much worse. How else to explain this terrible atrophying of human conscience, this wholesale abandonment of goodwill, not to mention good sense? Whatever the reason; there’s a race being run, and the stakes are huge. And most of us are woefully unwilling, and unprepared for the contest.
This exercise in American-style get-‘fit’-quick reminds me of the exhilaratingly militant, sweaty, and gloriously painful, days of soccer training as a youth. The days of learning that the prize was worth the pain. Now, as I enter my sixth decade, I give thanks daily for the health-benefits of the discipline that came with doing those extra exertions, then; the extra burn of additional crunches after the end of the mandatory daily practice; and voluntarily running the extra miles up the into the magnificent hills, from Papine, past Industry Village to Gordon Town.
Ah, those were the days; of stubborn sand training on the beach. And the nights of climbing the fence at UWI’s swimming pool to steal some laps…and risk drowning, because so many of us couldn’t swim, but were too proud to admit we were scared of diving off into the deep end. Ah, yes! I can still feel the life-asserting aches and pains, and the risks of real damage —psychological and physical— amidst the striving after victory, vindication, or at least justification. I would do it again though, given the opportunity. It made me healthier, stronger, braver, and hopefully a better person.
Unfortunately, the difference and the deterioration of the human, social, and physical environments of Papine, Tavern, August Town, Hermitage, and even UWI, is starkly exemplified by the difference between then and now; between Tavern alumni Rastaman dj/chanter Brigadier Jerry then, and Munga, the so-called Gangstafari, or August Town’s Sizzla Kalonji’s slide from moving, motivational lyrics into sex-and-gun drama.
Thank Jah that reggae artists of the caliber of Dwayne Stephenson who still have the “audacity of hope.” Some of us remember when and how the guns and the coke came calling on our youths, and mourned as the soccer field became the battlefield; when youth stop making the ball run and started to making the blood run, cold.
Meanwhile, the largely Eurocentric book-socialists of the 1970’s UWI find themselves in disarray, presently, just as the crisis of capitalism is exposed to even the staunchest imperialist today.
So, Mr Right and Mr. Left, Tell I Wheh yu get Fiyu Mythos From?
I well remember their Hegelian-Marxist-Leninist mantra that ‘race wasn’t/isn’t an issue.’ The Eurocentric mythos of Jamaica’s left was clear from the seventies, and it continued even after the European socialists/communists were telling Moscow what to do with their democratic centralism! It continued even after Gorbachev had started to dismantle Russian hegemony with his Glasnost strategy. I clearly remember my own long-running arguments with some of UWI’s infantile-left leadership; all in the spirit of ‘critical support’ of course. But then, as far as they were concerned, how could I-man know anything of pertinence? After all, I was/am just a poor, uneducated, son of the working class, defending the alleged ‘religious opium’ of Rastafari, and the working poor, while barely avoiding being accused of ‘mysticism’ and called “reactionary lumpen,” by the now-proven left-opportunists. Because I was ‘merely’ a youth activist from the organic reality, of the local community; and the island-wide youth club movement of the sixties through the seventies wasn’t really seen as ‘revolutionary. Nor was Pan-Africanism. Nor was Rasta.
The Rases in Grenada who helped to topple Gairy’s regime were barely tolerated by those they helped put into power, and were quickly marginalizes, and marked for death or, at least, persecution. The same thing applied in Jamiaca; where the Rasta phenomenon remained something of an embarrassment to the new ‘educated’ elite, despite the fact that then, as the bearers of the African banner of Ethiopianism and Garveyism, along with the Black working poor, and other Africa-centered people, I&I set the play, made “thrue” pass, that enabled Michael Manley to score a decisive political win in 1972, with the ‘rod of correction’ from Haile Selassie I firmly in his hands.
But, the chance that Jamaica would come to grips with its racial-cultural identity in a socio-political way only existed for a brief moment; i.e. between the Rodney Riots of 1968 and the early years of the nineteen-seventies. That was before the book-leftists took over the commanding heights of Michael Manley’s socio-political revolution, which had started to allow Jamaica’s Black suffering ‘massive’ a little more. The Jamaican left-intelligentsia took over, insisting that the only choices Jamaica had was between Washington (white) and Moscow (white).
Is it any wonder that they, and those who gained their creds under their UWI-left-led, alleged ‘color-blind’ leadership, never made any serious attempt to put Marcus Garvey in his rightful place in the pantheon of The World’s Greatest Thinkers, as a Senior Philosopher…and Unashamedly Black, like the theology of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr.
Get on your mark! (…of the Beast, or otherwise). Get Set…!!
We can hope, pray (and work it!) that the people of the United States, and the rest of the world with them, will be able to look back at the present time of ‘racially’ charged recognition-and-admission; looking back from a future place-n-time of justice, mercy, and reconciliation; and be truly thankful that, for the first time, at last, we came to our senses in time (pun intended), at the turn of this new millennium. Pray that we all become better people, as Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I admonished, “…larger in outlook…”
It’s not going to be easy. But it’s not as if we have any choice. Because, even though there are some who still think, despite the collapsing of most systems (natural, cultural, and synthetic), despite their on-going bluff and bluster and violence, and despite their evident and presumptuous assurance of escaping to another safer place —presumably off-planet— the ‘game’ of ‘race’ is just about over for this stage of human ‘development.’
As I write this, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., is having a quiet, intense, and reasoned teevee conversation with PBS’s Bill Moyers, an excellent and relatively humane journalist, who, among other things was President Lyndon Johnson’s press secretary; and who, therefore, had a front row seat to the drama of the Dr. Martin Luther King/Civil Rights era.
Reverend Wright, like so many of his pastoral predecessors, including Dr. MLK, has helped to bring the reality of the on-going cultural-racial-economic antagonism out into the open…again. Not that the antagonism is hard to recognize, IF one wants to see it. Anyone who has kept tabs on the cultural-racial-economic war trumpeted by such notables as Ronald Reagan, Bill Bennett, Patrick Buchanan, and Rush Limbaugh and the hosts of The Mediacrity, right and left, not to mention the average middle-American white citizen, has long been aware of what time it has been/is. We all have been too (justifiably) scared, not to mention unprepared, to deal with the real King Kong standing in the living room, staring at us. And no pile of religious dogmatic (whether Judaic, Islamic, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Hebrew-Israelite, or Rasta) monkey-crap is going to be big enough to hide behind.
The Raging War For The Minds of Humanity
Firstly, anyone who has been an observer of the global Hollywood-ization phenomenon and it’s neo-liberal make-up, is already well aware that the collective mind of much of the world’s population has been shaped by what is probably the most powerful art-form created by man (moving pictures), and which is controlled by what is probably the most racist (it’s a close competition with organized religion) institution on the planet. From the KKK-inspiring “Birth of A Nation” to “King Kong” and all its sequels, to the more recent offerings too numerous to name, the gratuitous killing off of Blacks in movies is so old and established a routine, that we hardly bother to mention how boldly obvious and blatant it is; so much so that it has become a kind of pervasive sick joke that even Blacks have come to ‘accept.’ Sadly, as we watch Blacks surge towards their own Black-Hollywoodeification, neither the economic gains, nor the ‘glamour and the glitter’ can blunt the obvious pricks of the many thorns in that bed-o-roses. (raspect to Bro. Buju Banton).
In considering the underlying racist religion-ism, mythology and philosophy, so effectively sold by religion, education, and especially Hollyweird, that allows so many Americans (Blacks as well as Whites) to justify their self-righteous outrage against David Walker, Marcus Garvey, Paul Robeson, Dr. King, Louis Farrakhan, and most recently, Jeremiah Wright, Jr, I still remember Bill Moyers’ impressive PBS interviews with arch-mythologist, Joseph Campbell. In those interviews and his books, especially “The Power of Myth,” Campbell pointed to a need for a new, “planetary” mythos. In doing so, he was saying essentially the same thing as Emperor Haile Selassie I, who insisted that we must become a new kind of human being…for which our education and experiences have not prepared us…larger in outlook…able to move beyond loyalty to nations, to loyalty (and loving care) toward a whole planet.
It is not clear whether Joseph Campbell was saying the same thing, or for the same reason; because the role of academia —especially social scientists, anthropologists, psychologists, and economists— has been as skillful as it has been powerful in the debasement, depredation, and destruction of non-white peoples around the world. It was not surprising, therefore, to discover that George Lucas, in preparing to create the new space-age mythology of the “Star Wars” movies, sequestered Campbell at his (Lucas) Skywalker ranch. The pity is that Lucas’ “Star Wars” was/is still about (surprise!) war and conquest, and that the ‘stars’ in his version of a “new heaven and a new earth” are mostly still supremely white. White supremacy is certainly persistent— whether in a galaxy far, far away, or here and now, on planet Earth.
Yo!, Sideliners, Anyone For Some Sit-ups? Or Some Pull-ups? Or is it ‘Crunch’ Time?
So, in the here-and-now, here on Planet Earth, 2008, we have to escape the sticky, stifling grasp of the triple powers of Hollywood’s, Academia’s and Religion as they service the age-old white-supremacist agenda; and come to grips with issues of not only race, but also economics, and mind-control. And learn how they play out against, or with, each other in this Elephant-Ass race to the White (say what?) House. (Oh, how I would love to have Richard Pryor around to crack on this election).
On a more serious note, I continue to wonder how Bob (Marley) would chant on this present situation. One Love, you say? Yeah. Right. I’m still trying to figure out what exactly is it about the word “UNTIL…” (as in “until that day…) that we don’t understand? So we hide from our collective work and responsibility on behalf of the same poor, oppressed, blind, and imprisoned sufferers charged to us by prophets; Isaiah, Yahshuah, Marcus Garvey, Haile Selassie I, Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright, and so many others; and we presently hide behind a perverted singing of, irony of ironies, the Rastaman’s “One Love.”
Thankfully, some people (Whites as well as Blacks) understand the clear difference between seeking revenge and simply seeking justice. And racial justice is as good a place to start as any.
But, like Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein during Watergate…always follow the money.
The bottom line, beyond the ever present smoke-screen of ‘Race,’ is this: The greed-driven, religion-justified, white-supremacist, genocidal Fascism that Ethiopia’s Haile Selassie I and Ethiopia resisted so valiantly in 1935 to 1941 — while challenging the world’s conscience to do the right thing or face the global consequences — has never died out.
Therefore the challenge to resist the militaristic corporate greed of Fascism still stands. Ironically, this is, in fact, the very mission that too many alleged new-age Rastafarians couldn’t seem to care less about, as they increasingly try to distance and insulate themselves from challenging issues of race, class, and caste, while cozying up to the Babylonian Beast.
White supremacy, Greed, and Fascism, (or, as it inventor Benito Mussolini described it “Militant Corporatism”) and their resurgence in Europe —and in an America Empire that is, by its own admission, the self-described re-incarnation of the philosophical and cultural glory of Greece, and the offensive military attitude of the (allegedly Holy) Roman Empire— are still the real enemies of the planet, NOT ‘race’ or racism.
Race is merely a still-very-effective smokescreen. And that smokescreen has to be cleared up, even as we race into the future, hopefully towards peace with justice, and mercy. And true prosperity. For all.
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So, fellow contestants or cooperants, fellow racers, fellow strugglers, fellow fallen fighters…as Nesta Marley say: “Rise and take your stand again.” it’s about time.
And remember, ultimately it’s really about justice, not revenge. Let’s reason…let’s start with economic justice.
Guidance.
