WHEN Marcus Garvey was urging us black people to take charge of our own
destiny and become great, almost a century ago, some admired him, while
others thought he was some sort of quack. In this season of
Emancipation and Independence, one has to ask: Was Garvey preaching to
the wrong people?
At the time when he was preaching, my race, the black race, was the most
insignificant on the planet. Africa was under the control of Europe.
We blacks in the West were totally dependent on the great white powers
for our very existence. Garvey didn't think that black people should be
at the bottom of the barrel — being so insignificant and dependent. In
this respect, he was one very unusual black man indeed.
I strongly suspect, though, that Garvey would have still felt the need
to preach the same message today, almost a century later. Though we
blacks have made some progress, we still have a very long way to go.
While some of that progress has been had through the efforts of other
peoples, other things haven't changed at all.
Take black Africa today. While preaching, and even before, Africa was
controlled by the Western powers. Her natural resources were being
maximised to the fullest to the glory of these powers. Africans on the
continent were either powerless to alter the then situation or willingly
gave away these resources.
The same is true today. These days, it is China that is maximising the
resources of Africa to create a Chinese superstate. Just as it was in
the days of slavery, when we gave away our own for trinkets, we are
still doing the same today. The trinkets then were used kitchen
utensils, old clothes and even cats; while today, they are cellphones,
laptops and shiny new cars. Garvey would have buried his head in shame
at the way his message has been ignored.
We in the West also really didn't give two cents about his message
either. Our island nation-states in the Caribbean are too insignificant
to influence any global issue, except entertainment. Maybe Garvey
meant we should be great entertainers; as that is the only area in which
we seem good. Nothing great in governance, science and technology can
be truly attributed to us black people -- as we keep our exploits to
ourselves, or sell them still for trinkets. Garvey would be very
disappointed indeed.
We demonstrate how contrary we have been to his message by our actions.
We think our own universities are worthless. As such, we crave for the
Oxfords, Cambridges, Harvards, and MITs. We think our music is good
only when it is validated with an American Grammy. We see our societies
as totally hopeless — which explains why we fight so hard to get visas
to live in the white paradise of North America and Europe. What was
that "Africa for Africans" message again?
I said before that Garvey would have been disappointed, but I sometimes
wonder. In the end, it seems, even he became a realist and realised
that he may have been preaching to the wrong people after all. When the
time came for him to retire, he didn't choose his Jamaican homeland or
his African would-be homeland. No, looking at things realistically, he
decided that the best place for him after all was Britain.
Maybe the reason he failed to convince us black people that we can be a
great people is not only because we think he was nuts — maybe he never
really believed his own message either.
July 30, 2013Jamaica Observer
