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Encounters 159 dealing with the past, especially slavery, in a way that appealed to her. Ethiopianism made much more sense. I don’t business with them. It was not something sensible . . . So I just put them together, and it is not right. See the right thing here. Rastafari in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is the right land. Not Jamaica. I understand from I was born that I was a slave. I know slave was here [in Jamaica] . . . Some did not come as slaves, but when they came here, they became slaves. Some came to see their families because if you have family you want to see them wherever they are. (Rasta Ivey) Even when put all “together,” the other religions did not make sense to Rasta Ivey. She concluded that Ethiopia and Rastafari were the “right thing.” Rasta Ivey joined her analysis of the messages of the early Rastafari to her understanding of and concern with slaves and slavery and— seeing herself in these terms—to stories transmitted to her by her elders , such as those told to her by her grandmother (who Rasta Ivey says lived to the age of 116 years). Given some of the memories that Rasta Ivey related to me, it is possible that her grandmother was one of the indentured African laborers who came to Jamaica during the mid-eighteenth century. Statements such as how some people did not come as slaves but became slaves (she did not know what indentured servitude was but classified my description of it as slavery), or came to see their families, resonate with Schuler’s account of African indentured laborers in Jamaica (1980). Brother Barody traced his interest in Rastafari to a very tense moment in the evolution of the Rastafari, right around the time of the Prince Edward Rastafari convention in Kingston in 1958. Brother Barody recognizes , in retrospect, how he had been concerned with existential questions about race and God since early in his life. He tells a story of how at the age of seven or eight, while attending a Catholic school, he asked an abbot if God were Black or White. The abbot refused to answer his question, but did suggest that God has “no color.” Brother Barody was born into a family in which Blackness was a salient identification (his parents and grandparents were Garveyites), and he wanted an answer from the abbot because he was supposed to be knowledgeable about religious matters and because the Garveyites were arguing that Black people should view God through the “spectacles of Ethiopia.” He, however, refused to talk about race and God. 160 Encounters Years later, through study, dialogue, analysis, and reflection, Brother Barody concluded that Haile Selassie I was God embodied and, hence, Black. Crucial to Brother Barody’s identity transformation were the questions and sentiment that arose from his scrutiny of the mistreatment and scorn he saw directed toward the Rastafari. He saw injustice in how people that he interpreted as peace-loving were needlessly abused, and he was confused by the mistreatment of the Rastafari for beliefs he found to be reasonable. Brother Barody sought to comprehend what made the Rastafari outcasts. He was searching for answers to questions about race and God, and neither the churches nor educational institutions provided him with satisfactory answers. Brother Barody slowly came to identify with the Rastafari’s “sufferation” (tribulation, poverty) and belief in a Black God and King who had returned to redeem Black people. Even though Brother Barody was already race-conscious before these encounters, he vicariously personalized the indignities he recognized the Rastafari as enduring. Ras Burrell described how as a youth he was driven to seek knowledge about “truth and rights.” He felt he could not articulate the questions but felt them “deep within me.” He paid close attention to different ideological competitors: the revivalists, the Pentecostals, Garveyites, and Rastafari . Like Rasta Ivey, he determined that it was the Rastafari who were representative of truth and righteousness. To experience an encounter is not enough, as I have emphasized. In terms of identity transformation, the person must also interiorize the experience, and pursue and absorb cultural resources and information requisite to becoming competent from the standpoint of the new identity. Witnessing the Personage of Rastafari Experiential witnessing, a memorable and emotional experience of meeting or observing the Rastafari, can function as an encounter leading to identity transformation. The actual observation of or contact with the Rastafari is one way in which identity seeds are planted. Rastafari...

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