"The World is Full of F**kery"
How Rastafari use self-empowerment as protest
When I was younger my dad gave me a book about Rastafari. Its cover was adorned in red, green and yellow.
I was too young to read properly, but I coveted this book. I would carry it around with me and pretend to read it. Until one day, I was practising reading using it and stumbled through the opening lines out loud. They were something along the lines of “the world is full of f**kery.” My mum promptly took the book off me, and I haven’t seen it since.
I knew that this book represented a part of my Jamaican identity, but I didn’t know why. I didn’t understand Rastafarianism. I just knew that my dad had locks and wore a green, yellow and red hat. I didn’t have a close relationship with my dad, but when I was younger I idolised him and wanted to understand.
As I grew up I never got the opportunity to connect with it. I experienced more and more white British culture and my interest in Jamaican culture was overtaken by trying not to stand out as “other.” This Black History Month I set myself the goal of understanding more about those colours that adorned my dad.
So the colours I’ve been talking about so far are specific to my Caribbean heritage, but also to the broader Pan-African movement. They represent a movement of self-love that was brewing in the Caribbean in the 1930s. This movement completely de-centred whiteness, because true liberation isn’t just about fighting against what oppresses us; it’s about returning to who we are.
When the Rastafari movement adopted the Green, Gold, and Red of Ethiopia, and the power of the Ethiopian lion, they weren’t only pushing back against white supremacy. They were turning inward, towards self-empowerment.
They chose those colours because Ethiopia was the nation that defeated Italian imperialists at the Battle of Adwa in 1896. But deeper still, those colours drew from centuries of royal African heraldry, they were on banners that represented divine kingship.
The Rastafarian colours were a spiritual crown. Like the hat my dad wore.
This symbolism is so important because it is an active reminder that our history didn’t begin with the Middle Passage, nor does our worth depend on British or Western validation.
When Caribbean families brought those green, gold, and red colours to Britain during the Windrush era, and as they infused Black British music, sound systems, and wider British culture they brought that exact same energy. In a society that routinely tried to make Black identity feel inferior, those colours held power, a reminder of inner self-worth.
Growing up I always heard the phrase “I and I”. My dad would say it and I’d hear it in reggae music. This phrase is a core pillar of Rastafari language. It expresses that there is no fundamental separation between you and me and the equality between us. It represents the human self and the divine presence within, whilst rejecting the colonial language of ‘we’ and ‘they’ which create division, hierarchy and distance between people.
This phrase embodies the duality of Pan-Africanism because it is an active return to our African roots and a community approach. Patois already carried African words and rhythms, and Rastafari took it further, building a language that reaches back towards our ancestors. But it is also a protest. By declaring that everyone is equal, and building that structurally into language, it means that everyday speech actively opposes the policy of dehumanising Black people, which was used to justify slavery, and the continued exploitation of Black people. It is both self-love and a defence all at the same time. It’s beautiful.
And that is what we so often have to do with Black History Month, we proudly celebrate what it is to be Black whilst simultaneously protesting for social justice and the end to anti-Blackness. This month, I am very much leaning into that celebration, and feeling my inner lion.
Looking back at it all now, I think about that book my mum confiscated all those years ago. Part of me wishes I could find it and finally read it cover-to-cover with adult eyes, if only to feel a little closer to the culture of my ancestors and the dad that little Sellisha idolised.
Then again, maybe I don’t need to read the whole thing to get the message. After navigating what it means to be Black and mixed in Britain, I already know the main takeaway: the book wasn’t wrong. The world is full of f**kery, but knowing your lineage, claiming your royalty, and stepping into your joy is one of the ways we rise against it.
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