Reasoning with Anthony B

Laura Gardner: You’re part of the Boboshanti tribe of Rastafari. Can you tell me about your beliefs?

Anthony B: It’s Rastafari, you know? It’s the same: His Majesty is the Almighty to I’n’I, seen? In the Rastafari faith you have warriors, you have prophets and you have kings. So I’n’I is under the priest. It’s like Melchizedek, the High Priest. Just like the Abuna, the Sikh who wears the turban for his priesthood. The Bobo faith is the church along this part of Rastafari, so we wear a turban.

LG: Is it a more militant side of Rastafari?

Anthony B: Yeah. It’s more the churchical side, the salvation side... Them say the priests wouldn’t go to war. While other countries were at war, the priests would pray for the country. So you find that Bobo is the priest… So it is nothing new. It’s the same ancient livity as that time... They say that Abraham gave Melchizedek one-tenth of the soil to become a priest to replenish and rebuild Israel. It’s just the Melchizedek order, him who come by it.

In Jamaica, you have to find somebody to teach about yourself, because you can’t go back to Africa not knowing where you’re from, not knowing who you are. Even going to America, you’ve got to have some idea of it before you can go there. The Boboshanti now teach about that principle, so when you wear a turban and a robe and you’re dressed like this and you go back to Africa, they see you as someone who knows the livity and the energy.

LG: So who was your guide? Who was your counselor?

Anthony B: The leader of the Bobo tribe is Prince Emmanuel. We see him as the Moses of this time. He is the man who will lead I back to Africa: true repatriation. So we see Selassie as the King who is worthy to be praised, you know? We see Marcus [Garvey] as a prophet. And we say, “Without a prophet there is no vision. Without the King there is no life. Without the priest there will be no salvation.” So we say Christ is the man who come into the dust to teach you how to live and how to teach… We see Emmanuel as the Christ in the dust now, who is teaching I of the principle of word. And we see Marcus as the man who said, “Look to the East to the coming of the black King.” It says the same thing in the Bible. John the Baptist saw this vision. He said, “I look and see the king, the elder who sat on the throne. Behold, the lion from the Tribe of Judah shall come.” So this is a prophecy we see. It’s about livity. It’s not new. It’s not like we created something. It’s there, you know?

LG: You speak a lot about African unity and repatriation. How do you see other races/ethnic groups?

Anthony B: Everyone else identifies with where they’re from. You identify that your ancestors are from Europe, so you embrace Europe as your motherland. We are not saying that you can’t go to America, you can’t go to Jamaica, you can’t go to Africa, but you identify Europe as your home. The Chinese identify China as their home, even though they are in America and everywhere in the world. So, we’re saying the black man needs to identify somewhere as home. And when he chases his genes and chases his lineage, and chases his history, his history leads him back to Africa… So we’re saying we need to embrace Africa and build it for ourselves.

The Jews say they are from Israel and they found it and they built it and it flourished… If your country is in poverty, that means that your pride and your dignity is in poverty. It’s not just you, but a nation in poverty. So, we’re saying if we recognize ourselves as black people, and African, then Africa wouldn’t be like that. You wouldn’t find so much downpression, so many people who don’t know about proper hygiene, people who don’t really know how to get ahead. It would be our responsibility to go there and share this education that we’ve developed in the Western Hemisphere. With what we earn in the Western Hemisphere, we should go there and share it. There are a lot of black men who are wealthy and have nothing to do with it but drink and smoke. If there was a national cry and a national pride and a nation upliftment, that would serve significance. Because we know that racism is in us: everyone identifies with where they’re from.

LG: Do you think that’s a good way of looking at the world?

Anthony B: Yes, because the world is free. The world was like that: Africa was for the Africans.

LG: We all come from Jah, the Creator...

Anthony B: Yeah, but we still have to live where we are. We don’t take the cow and the pig and put them in one place, you understand? …You put flowers in the garden. And you put the cane in the cane fields.

LG: But we’re all human beings. It’s not like we’re different species.

Anthony B: But man is like a tree planted by the river. That doesn’t mean that we won’t mix, we won’t mingle, but I have somewhere to go. I’m not just roaming the earth.

You can’t get around history. Truth is truth and it doesn’t matter what we think. That’s why we say, “Every river will take its course. Every sea will take back its course, so every man has to find his root. Cause nature itself will take back its course.”

Anthony B’s words were translated from patois for clarity.