Black betrayal again

Dr. Orville Taylor, Contributor

This morning, in 1925, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, still the greatest black man to walk earth, after Jesus (who was also black), woke up to his first day in federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia. He was convicted for what other Jamaicans of notoriety have done, more recently, to bring the country into disrepute.

Garvey was, for all his insight and foresight, naïve and too trusting of his fellow blacks in the United States. His crime was mail fraud, arising from the sale of stocks in his Black Star Line. It was a sort of Ponzi scheme, according to the prosecutors.

However, the sobering revelation is that there were a number of influential African-Americans, such as Robert Sengstacke Abbott, who had worked assiduously to ensure that he was convicted. This is the lesson to be learned: Black people have been some of our worst enemies, since the first encounters with Western historians.

Indeed, this is the scourge of the race, as there is the shame of being black or African, and there has always been a sort of apology or envy from the powerful, more privileged among us.

Without the collaboration of the jealous black elites who railroaded him, he likely would not have been convicted. Moreover, the evidence was not imposing that he deliberately misled investors into a failing scheme. There is a big difference between having poor business sense and fraud.

Eventually deported in 1927, he was to have another experience with the black elites in his native land and was imprisoned for simply seeking a higher degree of honesty and transparency from the holders of the law. Perhaps this would warrant him being called "another mental case", by a current parliamentarian, who, like an irrelevant DJ, constantly speaks with great effluence, in order to get a 'forward'.

Still, Garvey knew the kind of society we needed to have created, and most importantly, recognised that there was a link between sociopathic behaviour and lack of a national/racial sense of self. It is not high science, among traditional peoples, within metropolitan societies: Those who show the most respect and knowledge for their culture and history are more socially and psychologically adjusted. Thus, they feature less in crime and other pathologies.

For example, semi-Westernised Native Australians, though comprising around 2.5 per cent of the population, are 25 per cent of prison residents. Similarly, the Inuit in Alaska are a mere 0.1 per cent of the inhabitants but constitute 1.0 per cent of prison inmates. The lesson learnt here is that people, caught in an identity no-man's land, are, as Garvey declared, "twice defeated in the race of life", and are mortally dangerous to all, including members of the society who think their history and culture are unimportant.

Therefore, the teaching of black pride and history is not simply a matter of appeasing some essentialist elements in the society, who, characterised as barefooted, Rasta-loving, keep pushing for obscure intangibles, such as repatriation and, more recently, reparations. Our first native national leaders, elected on the back of the black working and underclasses, since 1944, had an obligation to create a society that embraced what we are: a black society.

OUT OF MANY ...

Today, in 1962, a Jamaican delegation, headed by Premier Norman Manley and fellow Comrade, Florizel Glasspole; Labourites, deputy leader of the Opposition, Donald Sangster; and Robert Lightbourne, signed the Independence Agreement with the British government for political liberation to take place six months later. We eventually agreed upon a motto, 'Out of Many, one People', the English equivalent of the American, 'E Pluribus Unum.'

Nevertheless, America, despite its official doctrine of racial and ethnic equality, is a white, Anglo-American society, and it is white culture that is accepted as the norm. Comparably, when the state of Israel was created in 1948, it had no misconception that it was a Jewish state, despite the population being only 75 per cent Jewish. England is 92 per cent white. If we add the five per cent of Jamaicans, whose blackness is forced down their throats whenever they travel north, we have 95 per cent, including those using myriad bleaching applications.

We totally lost our way. In the 1960s, the number of red marks against the administration and its suppression of blackness showed a sort of identity schizophrenia. Three years after the Coral Gardens Massacre, where the State faced off with Rastafarian elements, Queen Elizabeth II visited her subjects in her former colony. But then mere weeks later, Haile Selassie, the deity of the 'movemant', also touched our soil. Yet, within the same administration, black-oriented books were banned, but Martin Luther King invited, Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael was 'whitelisted', and UWI lecturer Walter Rodney prevented from returning to his job.

The irony is that it is Rastafari that has kept our gaze on our ancestry and perhaps prevented the nation from descending into anarchy. Though not originated by Rasta, reggae has pushed us internationally. Notably, in 1980 as Zimbabwe celebrated its Independence, the two Jamaican iconic names were Manley and Marley. Separated by a single letter, one might easily say, move your 'R' or get the 'L' out. This is the pinnacle of the iceberg.

DEEP BETRAYAL

I sense deep betrayal that there is any dispute over the plans to develop lands surrounding The Pinnacle, the 'birthplace of Rastafari'. That there is a privately owned title, for me, makes no difference. We know that if Government wants your land for national development, it can take control of it and simply compensate you. If a locale, building or set of ruins is declared a heritage site or something similar, we know what the powers of the Government are.

Imagine if there were plans to 'develop' Bustamante's Blenheim, Manley's Drumblair or some place of national significance. Can you conceive of the privately owned Rose Hall Great House and Estate being turned into a housing scheme?

For the first time in my career, I regret not being a lawyer; because I would represent the Rastafari for free. Isaat Mabrok!

Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer in sociology at the UWI and a radio talk-show host. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.