Rastafarianism

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ionally, women have played a very minor role in Rastafarianism. Until 1965, the membership was essentially lower class, but this is no longer the case. Once considered "products of the slum," the Rastas have now penetrated the middle class. At present, the overwhelming majority of members are African, but there are also Chinese, East Indians, Afro-Chinese, Afro-Jews, mulattoes, and a few whites. Rastafarians are predominantly ex-Christians. 7
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II. History of the Group
The original Rastas drew their inspiration from the philosphies of Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1940), who promoted the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in the 1920s. The organization's main goal was to unite black people with their rightful homeland, Africa. Garvey believed that all black people in the western world should return to Africa since they were all descended from Africans. He preached that the European colonizers, having fragmented the African continent, unfairly spread the African population throughout the world. As a result, blacks were not able to organize themselves politically or express themselves socially. Their intellect had been stunted by continuous European oppression. Enslavement had provided blacks with a "slave mentality" so that they had come to accept white racist definitions of themselves as inferior. For Garvey, blacks in the Americas had not only been repressed physically, but their minds had been affected by years of white subordination. Slavery had degregaded them so badly that they actually considered themselves as little more than slaves.8
As a result, programs aimed at the gradual integration of blacks into white society were worthless in Garvey's eyes. His mission was to restore the lost dignity of blacks by severing ties with the white world. As he expressed in the New York Times on August 3, 1920, "We shall organize the four hundred million Negr...