Rahym Augustin-Joseph
The primary goal of the colonial, particularly in the post-emancipation era was to create a society whereby black people, being freed from the shackles of chattel slavery could continue to be subjected and oppressed through the legal, political, social and economic architecture of the society. The view which continued to permeate the minds of the colonials, was that their task to civilize black people was not complete, and they needed to ensure that they continued to teach black people how to be free and like a new born child, to mould them into the direction they believed they needed to go.
The response of any anti-colonial would therefore be focused on showing that black people, through the self-liberation ethos and their pre-colonial status were acutely aware of freedom and were quite capable of charting their own political, social, economic and cultural destiny without the self-founded hegemonic assertion and assistance of the colonials. While the colonials were driven by maintaining and improving the colonial project, the anti-colonials were driven by usurping and repudiating the colonial project.
It is with understanding the motivations of these two schools of thought, that we can situate Marcus Garvey’s thought within the anti-colonial vanguard. However, when an anti-colonial like Garvey, sought to respond to the colonial question, they needed to be aware that their responses and prescriptions were not couched in the colonial’s hegemonic assumptions and discourse, and fighting for prominence through polemic debate which has the tendency to cause the responses to be frozen as a permanent child of Europe. This means that anti-colonials occupy their academic and activist life quarreling with Europe about the value of black people as opposed to be charting truly new and creative constructs.
This is not to suggest that there is not great merit in the thought of Garvey, as his championing of love for black self continues to invigorate blacks to commit to political action aimed at reclaiming their status in the world. Moreover, there were strands of Garveyism which sought to reclaim the dignity of black people in pre-colonial periods which is deeply important for the process of understanding one’s self, and seeing one beyond the colonial construct. However, if we are to ascribe to Garveyism and apply its prescriptions in the third decade of the twenty-first century, it is important for us to interrogate the political thought, and assess its shortcomings, strengths and possibilities.
The major contribution of Garvey to the Anti-colonial school of thought, was his conception of a black world, or Africa for Africans as a response to his assessment of the conditions of black people across the world. Garvey believed that everywhere around the Western world he assessed, he saw the deliberate lack of inclusion of black peoples and their continued disenchantment and disempowerment. There was a view that the aspirations, dreams and visions of these countries did not include the aspirations of black people, and they continued to suffer from the legacies of enslavement through underdevelopment, poverty, marginalisation, lack of educational and basic health access, prejudice, victimisation among other realities.
As a response, Garvey believed that “the cry all over the world today of Canada for the Canadians, of America for the Americans, of England for the English, of France for the French, of Germany for the Germans” needed to include a cry for Africa for the Africans, and questioned whether it was unreasonable, that we the blacks of the world should cry for Africa for the Africans? In order to build their empire, Garvey was of the view, popularised by his Rastafari followers, that blacks across the world needed to repatriate to Africa, their first home far removed from the European world. He was of the view that they needed to establish a home in Africa to remove themselves from the citadels of colonialism. Garvey’s steamship line company, Black Star Line was therefore the praxis of this philosophical view as it offered Negroes in the Western world who was desirous of ‘going back’ to Africa the opportunity as missionaries and as settlers to help develop ‘their’ country. Albeit, the program suffered significant corruption issues which can be the focus of other discourses on Garvey, it sought to provide praxis to Garvey’s thought. He asked “should the African people be kicked all over the world without home, without a vine and a fig tree of their own?”
Moreover, Garvey was comforted and encouraged by the views and actions of Western politicians who continued to advocate for territory to be carved out in Africa for blacks to occupy and that this territory according to Garvey should be used for the establishment of an independent nation for Negroes. As a matter of fact, statesmen across the world believed that Great Britain and France should remove their colonial control in Africa, and build a separate nation for Africans within Africa. His praxis also ensured that there was a commitment from the Liberian President, to designate land for the occupation of Africans.
Garvey was cognisant however of dispelling the notion that “blacks from the Western world would go to Africa to exercise over-lordship over the natives, but instead would imbue the necessary brotherly co-operation which will make the interests of the African native, American and West Indian Negro, the same, which is to ensure the unification of Africa for the building of our race. It would be useless, for bombastic Negroes to leave America and the West Indies to go to Africa thinking that they will have privileged positions to inflict upon the race that bastard aristocracy that they have tried to maintain in this Western world at the expenses of the masses. Africa shall develop an aristocracy of its own, but it shall be based upon service and loyalty to race. Let all Negroes work toward that end.” Garvey was quite certain to note that, he was not ambivalent to the unequally yoked and other races fighting to build Africa, but they needed to commit ‘race suicide’ if they were to assist in the self-determination struggle.
Albeit, this thought has become the cornerstone of black nationalism, it seems trapped in the European construct which befalls many anti-colonial thinkers, as his quest for unity may have ignored the inner differences and divergencies of the black community, and his concept of unity sought to replace it with unanimity. In an interesting paradoxical way, the requirements of Pan-Africanism are that irrespective of your varying circumstances and backgrounds, blacks are supposed to unite themselves on the basis of race, because we all came from the same ship.
However, this view is also problematic, as failing to factor in the varying circumstances of blacks provides one with an incomplete understanding of the varying interests of blacks and what is the best way to unite them. Garvey’s race first theory failed to recognise, as did George Padmore, that blacks were not only being oppressed as a race, but also as a class, and therefore needed a class response which reorganised the means of production and economic moorings of the society. Padmore reminded us quite aptly when he noted that “the oppression of blacks takes two distinct forms, as a class and a nation, and the national oppression has its basis in the socio-economic relation of the Negro to capital. He also alerted us to the strident fact that, our exploitation came by virtue of our colonial status and Marx’s theory of workers of the world unite was not fully applicable because there was a stark difference between the white proletariat and the enslaved Africans who could not benefit from the assistance of trade unions and other organisations.
It is interesting however, that Garvey did not prescribe a class response beyond evoking black pride to garner emulation, when he noted that the time has come for the Black world to have their own Rockefeller, especially as Garvey was one of the pioneers in explicating the class subjugation of blacks when he notes that everywhere he went around the world, he saw black people living in poverty and other devastating conditions. An intersectionality approach by Garvey would have yielded more intellectual rigour and a proper response to the colonials.
However, even the concept of repatriation to Africa or Black Zionism as some have categorised it as is thwart with issues, and a by-product of the ignoring of class. Garvey was naïve in assuming that because all black people would repatriate to Africa, it would erase colonialism and its effects, which also has the possibility to take root because of the varying interests and backgrounds of his repatriated group. the main issue was that it also never attempted to address sufficiently the material circumstances of people in their current homeland, and instead according to Ralph Bunche, it sought to appeal to something that it is in every crowd-minded man. Now, in this current iteration of police brutality in the USA and other struggles being faced by blacks across the world, Garvey’s theory may seem appealing, but it is important to not see movements such as the BLM, as failures but continued struggles which can yield the results necessary if we continue to refashion and improve its intellectual and pragmatic application.
His theory by creating a separate homeland for Africans within Africa, created an African paradise scheme that merely afforded an emotional escape for the masses, especially due to its pragmatic shortcomings, and did not attempt to mount an intellectually class and race response within their current location. It asked black people to ignore the racist practices within the USA and other Western countries, because like a good Christian Garvey believed that this [Western] world was not his home, he was just passing through and his treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue [Africa]. In doing so, it copts out from an opportunity for transformational reorganisation of Babylon, wherein we inadvertently start to believe that we are unable to respond to colonialism in its present form and must run in order to escape. Garvey sought to articulate that the deliberate exclusion of blacks as citizens from the Constitutional fabric of the US & Canada in its first conception, was the basis of our escape strategy, as opposed to utilising this exclusion as was done in the Civil War to mount a response against colonialism within the USA. Peter Tosh’s lyrics in Get Up Stand Up, captures this reality best albeit he focuses on another element of escapism, when he noted,
“Most people think great God will come from the sky, take away ev’ything and make ev’rybody feel high. But, if you know what life is worth, you would look for yours on earth and now you see the light, you stand up for your right, yeah!”
Garvey’s theory can also be seen as one which reveres the manner in which the colonial world has created its empire, and believes that we should emulate, as opposed to focusing on creating genuinely new and creative conceptions of our world. In advocating for a black world, Garvey wanted to utilise the European world as the prototype for creation of the black world. He therefore revers the European conception of race, business, entrepreneurship, politics, science, among other realities, and believed that blacks can aspire to these.
While, the total transformation of the society was what was needed at the time where blacks would refashion their society, one cannot discount the needed evoking of black pride, love and confidence which Garvey contributed through his thought which is also important for mounting political and intellectual responses, especially in a context of 400 years of being told that one is barbaric, ugly and many other tropes. Chronixx captured the colonial reality best when he sang Black is Beautiful. He noted that, today, I’ll sing you a black song, you need to hear about black things ‘cause, most time we hear about black, we hear about black magic and black witches, black list, black book, black market, black Friday, ya spend off your black riches, I’ve never seen a doctor in black nor seen a black pill fi cure no black people, but I’ve seen bush doctors like Marley resurrect like a real black Beatle, Malcolm, Marcus, Martin… they never told us that black is beautiful.”
Often times, in discounting Garvey, scholars have forgotten to recognise the importance of symbolism, as they are quintessential features of organised human life and allowing peoples to define who they are and how they shape the world around them. Understanding one’s place in the world of oppression is important to providing an intellectual and pragmatic response. Therefore, Garvey must be credited for preaching that “the black skin is not a badge of shame, but a glorious symbol of national greatness.” In, the end, Garvey provided us with the symbolism necessary to garner political action, but one must ensure that in garnering political action, they fight imperialism within their locale, and focus on new conceptions of their world by focusing inwards and not through emulation and escapism.
Chadia Mathurin
