Marcus Garvey

Diary Tuesday 18^th June 1996: The Reverend Ronnie Thwaites, a priest who has become an MP for the PNP and is a professional broadcaster, interviews Louis Farrakhan the leader of the Nation of Islam. Farrakhan never misplaces a syllable. The man has a reputation, and yet during the interview he keeps to general principles and I agree with nearly all of them. I too believe in self-reliance, the striving after your own dignity. I too think that the only way downtrodden people can stand up again is achieve a sense of their own diginity, by demanding it from others through their behaviour. His judgement on white supremacy is largely accurate. I do not, however think that white people are morally different to others per se. Their technology together with a more universal group psychology, ingroup/outgroup biass made their oppression of others so pervasive. White people are not the only ones to suppress and oppress. On top of that the oppressed have a lot to answer for. We are in a dynamic of lust, lust for power generally, a dynamic of desire. If you do not join the race, you have to face the consequences. That does not exonnerate the perpetrators of oppression, but because of an existential logic giving everyone complete responsibility for their own life, it demands of the oppressed that they emerge of their own power by whatever means and to whatever ends they desire.