Composite Culture in a Multicultural Society

Chapter 4

1. Published as Life in a Haitian Village (New York: Knopf, 1937/1971).

2. Rasta, or the Rastafari movement, is a religious movement that accepts Haile Selassie I, the former emperor of Ethiopia, as God. The pre-coronation name of Haile Selassie I was Ras (meaning duke or chief) Tafari Makonnen. The movement emerged among working-class and peasant black people in the early 1930s, from an interpretation of a Biblical prophecy partly based on Selassie’s status as the only African monarch of a fully independent state.

3. Garveyism is an aspect of black nationalism which takes its source from the ideas and works of ‘back-to-Africa’ proponent and national hero Marcus Garvey. It encourages people of African ancestry to return to their original ...