Let me try this another way.
First of all: I am among the most sympathetic people on earth when it comes to issue of African racial injustice as I am a RastafarI. That said, I find that people espousing Black Supremacy have a very difficult time articulating it to me without is coming perilously close to making it sound like a doctrine based upon resentment, disdain and getting even. Now if I'm a sympathetic listener and it can't be clearly communicated to me, then the proponents of this are failing to communicate its meaning clearly (or it's possible it really does contain racist elements).
Second, we RastafarI are not a big or influential movement. People aren't going to bend over backwards to understand us. If we want to be heard and understood then we have to speak in terms that people (including other RastafarI) can clearly understand.
Third, like Donald Trump claiming that he's not a racist: If he's fanning the flames of racial discord and racial intolerance then he'd might as well be a racist because the result is the same. Well, that goes for everybody else too. If we're using provocative terminology that quite clearly will trigger emotional responses and racist connotations in people's minds, and/or create more racial discord and misunderstanding, then the nobility of our cause is a moot point --we're making matters worse. That means that it becomes incumbent upon us (not them) to make ourselves clear. The "well, if you don't understand it then that's YOUR problem" attitude doesn't really cut in any arena (except for maybe a hermit in the desert).
I really do like this quote from Haile Selassie because I think it is important to recognize that no matter how pure or noble we think our intentions are, we are human:
"Let us not recoil in hatred against those who, even while protecting their freedom from bias and prejudice, reveal by their actions that the poison of racial discrimination has left its lasting effects, and by this reaction reveal that we, no less than they are prey to unreasoning emotion, that we, no less than they are susceptible to that virus which is called intolerance." -Haile Selassie
|
|
