Garvey reasoned from pessimism about New World blacks toward African return

Evidence

Garvey was exceedingly pessimistic about the future of the heavily outnumbered black man in the western hemisphere. Beyond the boundaries of the mother continent, he could see only “ruin and disaster” for his people. Consequently, he asked that Africa’s scattered and abused children be restored to her. Garvey claimed that the ‘legitimate, moral and righteous home of all Negroes’ was Africa, but he did not favor an immediate wholesale exodus from the New World… . Not all blacks were wanted in Africa anyway. ‘Some are no good here and naturally will be no good there.’ Unwanted were the indolent and dependent. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2235

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that Garveyism’s Africa-return was a selective, reasoned programme born of pessimism, not indiscriminate repatriation — nuances the popular image of Garvey.
• XREF: connects to: Garveyism linked black US economic strength to the redemption of Africa — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 92