Today's message continues the essay “Look Up, You Mighty Race” By Marcus Garvey published in Blackman Magazine 2 (September-October 1936):3-4.
The Present
The Present of which we speak is that which has come out of the past, with all the experiments and improvements upon that which remains history (creditable to the one race of the other), including our own; but this present is complicated. Its systems are in conflict, and no one seems able to forecast the evolution of any future more pleasant than this present. In fact, everything seems gloomy, but the African must not be satisfied with this gloom. He must work himself out of the environment into one studiously created by himself. The environment must be his new civilization. With wisdom he ought to pick out all that is good, not only of the present, but of the past and add to it through the same wisdom those virtues and benefits that he thinks necessary as an addition to all that is good. This is the African's job –- that of remodeling our present civilization. Can he do it? That is the hope. If he fails he will die crumbling like the rest who are being surfeited under the present systems. The African has much in his favour in looking toward the building of a new civilization. He has been inactive for centuries if not millenniums in the political, social, economic structures. He was caught in the worldwind of alien systems and was carried so fast as to have made it impossible for him to recover himself earlier than the present time. His recovery must come through serious thoughtfulness. He has to dissociate himself from every environment of handicap. For quite a while he has been purely an imitator and “yes man” to everything around him. He has been reflecting the white man's idea of things socially, economically, industrially, religiously and philosophically.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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