It's #BlackHistoryMonth, and in 2024 I'm reflecting on the fact that although I've known about Walter Rodney and his seminal work "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" for years, it wasn't until I started reading it last year that I found out that Rodney was assassinated by his own Guyanese government in a car bombing. He was 38.
I'm obligated to point out to fellow white people, in case you missed it, the trend of white people lionizing a heroic Black person in a show of solidarity while studiously ignoring the vicious violence enacted against that person by the powers that be.
Also, Rodney was banned from Jamaica and from his teaching position at the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica. This caused protests that escalated to riots in Kingston in 1968. Part of the wave of protests that swept the world from that year to the next.
Anyway, please read Rodney.
And/or about Rodney. https://web.archive.org/web/20041105060409/http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/%7Emarto/pbs/roberts.htm
#books #history #histodons #WalterRodney #Guyana #CaribbeanHistory #PanAfrican #Marxism @histodons
