What the Rastaman represents is positivity.
Peter ToshRead
I was taught that Jesus the Son of God was a white man, and hearing black people singing, 'Lord, wash me, and I will be whiter than snow,' made me sick.
Interpretation
The quote critiques racial identity in relation to religious teachings and cultural perceptions.
Peter Tosh's quote expresses his discomfort with the way racial identity has been associated with notions of purity and divinity in religious contexts. By highlighting the incongruity of viewing Jesus as a white figure while also invoking racialized imagery, Tosh calls into question the implications of such teachings on self-perception and cultural identity, especially among black individuals who may feel marginalized by these narratives.
In practice
During a discussion about race and religion in a community meeting.
What the Rastaman represents is positivity.
And I ask why am I black, they say I was born in sin, and shamed inequity. One of the main songs we used to sing in church makes me sick, 'love wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
I was the only one in my family to be musically inclined, and my mother loved that. It encouraged my grand aunt to find me a music teacher, because it was quite obvious music was in me.
I am good. I live good. I think good. I don't have to feel good to be good, I take my goodness wherever I go.
I have no mother here; I have a bearer. Jah is my mother, and Jah is my father.
In the beginning there was the word. The word was Jah. The word is in I, Jah is in I. I make what is good, better, and what is better, best. I follow this in every aspect of life.
All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny.
The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.
I've had people say to me, 'You'll never sell handbags. You don't work with leather, and leather is luxury.' To me, it's the complete opposite: leather is everywhere - it's so cheap a material; it's so mass produced. Over 50 million animals a year are killed just for fashion. For me, it doesn't have a luxury element to it.
We live in a world which in some respects is mysterious; things can be experienced which remain inexplicable; not everything which happens can be anticipated. The unexpected and the incredible belong in this world. Only then is life whole. For me the world has from the beginning been infinite and ungraspable.
So much of the language that surrounds us - from things like economics, management theory, and the algorithms built into computer systems - appears to be objective and neutral. But in fact, it is loaded with powerful, and very debatable, political assumptions about how society should work and what human beings are really like.
Give up identification with this mass of flesh as well as with what thinks it a mass. Both are intellectual imaginations. Recognise your true self as undifferentiated awareness, unaffected by time, past, present or future, and enter Peace.
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