On Acceptance of White People as Rastas

The exclusionary nature of Rastafari is understandable. In its origins, it was a black liberation and empowerment movement to throw off white colonial dominance, and a rejection of the white European-based world order. It was not however, a rejection of the white man’s interpretation of the Bible, as Rastafari adopts virtually all the white Orthodox Church’s Biblical canon. The Holy Piby, known as the Black Man’s Bible, is principally about the destruction of white “Babylonia” and the return of the black Israelites to Africa.

In all the Rastafarian culture before Bob Marley in the 1970s, there were no white Rastas, nor were Rastas allowed to have sex with or marry whites. Today this taboo has fallen with many Rasta men marrying white visitors to Jamaica, although one might cynically attribute this to opportunism (i.e. a visa out of Jamaica). Until Bob Marley’s music spread around the world, a white Rasta would be inconceivable, but Marley’s dominant international message was one of black justice, black direction, peace for all peoples, and love – love of self, love of the world, love for God. There is little rancor to the white race in Bob Marley’s powerful and enduring musical messages. Marley made Rasta fashionable and comprehensible to hundreds of millions of people worldwide, including a post-colonial, post civil-rights generation of young white people.