THE EDITOR, Sir:
DESPITE ALL the recent talks of 'black diaspora' and 'black man redemption', I fail to take Jamaicans seriously on this issue. Some of my reasons are clear, at least to me. Whenever anything of our African heritage is mentioned, most persons in this nation shriek, others rebuke, like Rev. Dick writing his 'apology for obeah' as I call it, he was instantly chided for this 'heresy'.
No one seems to know anymore (if they really ever did) of the 'African retentions in Jamaica and the Caribbean'; that most, if not all, our heritage is grounded in African belief systems and culture that have been merged with European elements, nor do they want to know. Once you talk of African beliefs, people think 'demon', yet so much of our 'theology' is mixed with Greek thought. The last time I checked, ancient Greece was just as polytheistic as the Africans were.
No one seems to know either that Africa is the region that has taken to Christianity the most in the last 150 years, mainly because of the similarity of concepts of God and creation; that several of the concepts in Judeo-Christian thought like creatio ex nihilio (creation from nothing), the laws, the legends of 'Genesis' and ideas of resurrection have their roots in Egypt and Babylon, known early black civilisations (read Cambridge Bible Commentary series on 'The Making of the Old Testament' and 'Legends of Genesis' by Herman Gunkel). These all pre-date Jewish scriptures.
THE JEWS
In fact, the Jews, it is said, learned to write from the hieroglyphics and cuneiform writing methods of these two powerful nations around them. There is even another theory that the earliest Jews were black, as told in a book called From Babylon to Timbuktu, a book that uses 'evidence' from the Bible and 'secular' history to verify this belief.
But we still want to talk of a 'diaspora' when many don't even believe in one. By the way, the concept of 'diaspora' is not just of a people in exile from their homeland, but also of a people longing to go back home to their roots.
I am, etc.,
NICHOLAS ALEXANDER
nic7lex@hotmail.com
