Greetings DJ Ital,

you know, that was my first thought on this whole thing as well...

Lead what?
Take over what exactly?

I confess to being fairly unaware of the ways in which the established mansions of Rastafari go about selecting their elders, but I am confident that these processes are not going to produce any sort of takeover by white people,for the foreseeable future at any rate. And as many rastas are unaligned to any particular house, it is difficult to apprehend what exactly the cause for concern is here.

It is possible that the brethren Ayinde is referring to some sort of intellectual, philosophical, or spiritual takeover of what are the fundamentally african core values of the rasta movement. Here I would suggest that the very attraction of rasta to many white people, such as my good self, is the power of the way that it explains the world, and that this is not something that they are able to find in any contemporary europeanised philosophical system or worldview.

So in my view white followers of the rasta path are far more likely to act as a conduit of african ideas into white culture than they are to try and transpose european culture onto rasta. To survive for any length of time in this trod you have to either acknowledge the realities of the history of white colonial violence, or develop an asbestos skin to cope with the constant justified fyah burning you will be copping. Or leave to something more comfortable.

Of course I am generalising, and the opposite will happen from time to time...but this trod, in my experience, is well defended against encroaching ideas that run counter to its mission.

If Ayinde was referring not so much to specific people, but the impact of white western culture in general on rasta, then i share his concern. But this is a concern that i have about almost every aspect of my life. And here rasta is able to explain what is happening, with its powerful message about the nature of babylon. And as they say, forewarned is fore-armed. Rasta knows that babylon will endlessly try to seduce it, and this knowledge is the best defence against such incursions.

love and life
paul