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Exhibit B
Here’s my take on the Exhibit B furore that has been going on at the Barbican. I recognise that art is the exemplary expression of the stunning multiplicity of human experience. I recognise that slavery and colonialism is everyone’s history and that everyone should be ethically and politically invested in critically attending to its contemporary manifestations especially…
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Black Bartholomew Diaz and Colonial Pedagogy
Marcus Garvey famously proclaimed: Whilst our God has no color, yet it is human to see everything through one’s own spectacles, and since the white people have seen their God through white spectacles, we have only now started out (late though it be) to see our God through our own spectacles. The God of Isaac and the God…
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Black Academia in Britain
The last few years have witnessed a growing concern with the challenges that peoples of African heritage – Black peoples – face working and studying in the UK higher education system. Issues of the relative absence of Black people in influential positions have taken centre stage, alongside the direct and indirect discrimination that both black students and staff…
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Activism, Academia and Black Community Struggles
Adam Elliot Cooper from Ceasefire Magazine interviews Stafford Scott, with Robbie Shilliam, on Black community struggles, activism and academia in Britain. Stafford Scott was a co-founder of the Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign in 1985, and is now a consultant on racial equality and community engagement as well as co-ordinator of Tottenham Rights. Robbie Shilliam is senior lecturer in International…
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Spiritual Bandung
1863. Te Ua Haumene, the Māori prophet, writes his gospel. Te Ua, born in Taranaki, Aotearoa New Zealand. Raised as a slave of the Waikato people in Kawhia. Builds his own church. Puts it in service of the anti-colonial King movement. Peaceable God has told me twice that his people, Forgetful, Standing Naked, in the Island…
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Rastafari Letters from the Mission to Africa
In April 1961, Rastafari members of the Mission to Africa passed through London. In Notting Hill, on the day of leaving for Ethiopia, the Brethren wrote two letters, which I reproduce here: “With all thy getting get understanding” Vox Populi Vox Dei, I.N.R.I. “The Just shall live by his faith” The Rastafari Brethren of Jamaica…
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Pacific Redemption Songs
A few years ago I was reasoning with members of Ras Messengers, a reggae-jazz band who had in 1979 toured Aotearoa New Zealand. The Rastafari musicians recollected their experiences with various Māori communities. Occasionally female Māori elders (kuia), in introducing themselves to the band, would connect their genealogies back to Africa. The kuia did this…
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Back when Britain loved Rastafari
On 21st April 1966, His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I touched down in Palisadoes airport, Kingston, Jamaica. Thousands thronged the airport, rushing over barriers and through police lines towards the plane as it came to a stop. Ethiopian banners, ites gold and green colours flew everywhere. Chanting of His Majesty’s name filled the air. Never…
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The impact of the 1935 Italian/Ethiopian War in Guyana
Common knowledge has it that it was in Jamaica where the Rastafari faith was first and foremost proclaimed. This is true; however, this truth belies the wider impact of the Italian/Ethiopian war of 1935/6 on the Caribbean region, and especially on its peoples of African heritage. African peoples in Jamaica were not the only ones…
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UNESCO’s statements on race: unfinished business
Antigua was settled by human rubbish from Europe, who used enslaved but noble and exalted human beings from Africa (all masters of every stripe are rubbish, and all slaves of every stripe are noble and exalted; there can be no question about this) to satisfy their desire for wealth and power, to feel better about…