Becoming Rasta: Origins of Rastafari Identity in Jamaica
Charles Price
Language: English
Pages: 288
ISBN: 0814767478
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
So much has been written about the Rastafari, yet we know so little about why and how people join the Rastafari movement. Although popular understandings evoke images of dreadlocks, reggae, and marijuana, Rastafarians were persecuted in their country, becoming a people seeking social justice. Yet new adherents continued to convert to Rastafari despite facing adverse reactions from their fellow citizens and from their British rulers.
Charles Price draws on in-depth interviews to reveal the personal experiences of those who adopted the religion in the 1950s to 1970s, one generation past the movement's emergence . By talking with these Rastafari elders, he seeks to understand why and how Jamaicans became Rastafari in spite of rampant discrimination, and what sustains them in their faith and identity.
Utilizing new conceptual frameworks, Price explores the identity development of Rastafari, demonstrating how shifts in the movement’s identity—from social pariah to exemplar of Blackness—have led some of the elder Rastafari to adopt, embrace, and internalize Rastafari and blackness as central to their concept of self.
The Anthropology of Western Religions: Ideas, Organizations, and Constituencies
One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion
Living Waters: The Mei HaShiloach
racial landscape, both White and Brown were understood as superior to, and the antithesis of, Black (Alleyne, 2002). Not all Black Jamaicans accepted this hierarchy that debased them. By the time of the Morant Bay rebellion there were competing views of Blackness—a valued 26 Race Formation and Black Identities and a devalued identity—and over time the esteem given to Blackness has increased to where today its positive valences are so widely acknowledged that it seems Jamaicans have always
Jamaican Garveyites, and they forced it to move from Kingston (Scott, 1999:142). The Holy Piby turned up in St. Thomas, where key founding Rastafari evangelist Leonard Howell would later preach his vision of Rastafari (Scott, 1999:142). Hill believes that Howell found The Holy Piby in Port Morant (142,143). Reverend Fitz Pettersburgh’s The Royal Parchment Scroll (ca. 1926) refers repeatedly to King Alpha and Queen Omega, and emphasizes the “resurrection” of Ethiopia. It is likely that Reverend
33-year-old Herben Walters described his encounter and identity transformation: “‘I was living in Kingston Pen, near the Queens Theatre, and I saw how they [the Rastafari] lived loving together. And one day I suddenly changed in body and spirit and knew the truth. So I became a Rastafari and will die a Ras Tafari’” (Wright, 1960:n.p., emphasis added). Although Walters’s conversion was probably preceded by much reflection and questioning rather than occurring instantly as he implied, people like
between the early 1950s and early 1970s: to separate themselves from what they viewed as a corrupt, “Babylonian” system. I quote him at length: 140 Encounters When me was a youth, me used to see White governor . . . White police officer, White, you know. . . . And . . . anywhere Black policeman see him [White] officer . . . he have to salute him, and me see them things wiped away. . . . Me don’t even see no White people ‘bout here. Black man a run the regiment, Black man a run the police
familiar with the norms, practices, and beliefs associated with that new identity. When people immerse themselves in Black history and culture, combativeness and outright anger toward Whites, anti-Black Blacks, and the status quo may define their general attitude (Cross Jr., 1995, 2001). As emerging Rastafari become increasingly competent in and confident with their identity, aggressiveness and anger shift from regular to situational behavior. Ras Brenton, for example, moved beyond his