THE EDITOR, Sir:
HAVING JUST read your Gleaner column of the July 20 on 'Bob Marley as liberation theologian' hopefully, to help you further 'discover' Rastafari and Bob Marley and the function of music in the context of the Bible and African tradition, I offer you my book Christopher Columbus & Rastafari: Ironies of History.
Your 'discovery' and patronage remind I of limiting mind pockets bred of western academia and certifications a malady symptom-ised in surprise at possibility of truth or worth significant in 'packages' regarded unattractive or unwise or unapproved.
For Jamaica: a pretension of assigning learning and intelligence which fail to recognise and face the implications for our society that the likes of Oxford-educated National Hero Norman Manley and apologists like Professor Rex Nettleford are as creolised children compared to the magnitude of the mind of a Marcus Garvey or Bob Marley.
ULTIMATE CONSEQUENCE
We have had enough of being patronised for facilitating politic dancing to continue leading 'black people' where?! to a subsequent sequence bearing fruits of: varied accepted corruption (vulgar, sophisticated, and devoted opportunistic manipulation); violence denying shared African identity for cutting-edge focus of purpose, and the ultimate consequence of seemingly endemic lack of progress.
For progress: Let truth and relevance be recognised liberated from the subtle slimy morass and devouring quagmire of class and colour attitudes for maintaining status in Jamaica. Of the same class and colour instincts which for some may make this letter seem offensive for so-called daring to question 'conventional logic' or 'given truths'. Towards redeeming 'discovery' - One Love, Rastafari!
I am, etc.,
TEKLA MEKFET
tlwfh_fitz9@yahoo.com
St Ann's Bay P.O.
