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226 Rastafari Nation on the Move Racial Identity engagement in social activities, engagement with history and cultural resources , and the meaning generated in these realms, are inseparable dimensions of their identity as Rastafari. Nigrescence theory, broadened by the infusion of ideas and questions from religious conversion, provided us with a way to situate and explain how individuals tussled with ideas about Blackness and religion and how to align, however imperfectly, their self-concept with those ideas. There is nothing neat, easy, or quick about the process of Black identity transformation . The only certainty is that it is unlikely to be neat, easy, or quick. It is not only in the hands of the individual to announce, “I am a new person , and here I am!” The convert needs other people to assist him or her in carrying out the transformation and sustaining the new self-concept. This is the inescapably social aspect of identity formation. Some people balked at the transformation: “A watch how the good boy start to mash himself up” [i.e., damage himself by becoming Rastafari ], someone said to Brother Woks, or Brother Yendis’s own father saying , “‘damn fool turn Rasta.’” While these are disapproving responses delivered by intimate acquaintances, the convert must decide whether to continue on his or her path of transformation and risk alienating family and friends, suffer restricted opportunity, or return to “normal.” My narrators kept on the path of identity transformation, and along the way severed many close relationships as a result. They also gained confidence in their identity choice, however, and over time mended many of the torn relationships. They had internalized their identity to the point that they feared no threat to their self-concept and way of life. One area in which I argued for the elaboration of nigrescence theory concerns religiosity. Theories of religious conversion allowed us to situate a wider range of personal experience and cultural practice within the context of black identity transformation. The idea of a seeker, someone curious about existential questions or the meaning of things, the role of relationships in conversion, and the influence of master frames such as evil, redemption, and the idea of exodus provide a set of symbols and tropes that inform a person’s thinking and action. Because of this elaboration of nigrescence theory, we can better situate how the paths to Rastafari differ among converts but share commonalities. Rasta Ivey and Sister Mariam, for example, had been concerned with questions about race and God before the encounters that constituted their initial paths to becoming Rastafari . Brother Yendis and Prophetess both had encounters while they were Rastafari Nation on the Move Racial Identity 227 young, and they continually revisited these encounters as they matured and moved into becoming Rastafari. The theory of nigrescence aids us in making sense of the problems that the Rastafari, Ethiopianists, and others sought to resolve before Fanon, Césaire , Du Bois, Garvey, Woodson, and others formulated their trenchant theoretical and existential critiques of race and White hegemony. Stigma served as a primary challenge. Rastafari treated stigma as a sign of status. They subverted the stigma stamped upon Blackness and valorized Black identity, history, and culture. Black identity theories are of considerable value in understanding this historical, collective resignification of Blackness . Black identity theories such as nigrescence have vast potential to extend our understanding and explanation of Blackness as identification once we solidly position them within the streams of social interaction, history, the cultural production of meaning, and biographical experience, as I have attempted to do. Complexity, Ethnogenesis, and Social Identity I drew ideas from theories of complexity and chaos to illustrate how the ethnogenesis of a people involves surprises, disruptions, unintended consequences , and the entwining of an array of cultural resources. I entwined this perspective with another angle on identity formation: collective or social identity. In chapter 2, we saw that, if left alone, the Rastafari might well have been just another new group that eventually drifted off into obscurity or extinction. Instead, we saw cells of adherents, motivated by charismatic leaders, galvanized by repression, encouraged by seeing their own beliefs and prophecies materialize, gradually developed into a recognized people. Along the way, over sociohistorical time, their stigmatized identity shifted status from pariah to exemplar of Black culture and history . These transformations did not happen because the Rastafari themselves made it happen. It involved many complicated interactions and exchanges between the Rastafari and non-Rastafari that led to changes in perception and representation...

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