Michael Barnett Quotes

When dancing with a pit bull, it's always best to let him lead.

One is reminded of Primo Levi's observation about the Holocaust: 'Things whose existence is not morally comprehensible cannot exist.

Bureaucratic categories and organizational boxes do more than simply separate relevant from irrelevant information. They also produce the social optics that policymakers and bureaucrats use to see the world. Before policymakers can act, they first must come to create a definition and understanding of the situation, and that understanding is mediated by how the institution is organized to think. ...How organizations categorize and carve up the world has a profound impact on how policymakers see the world.

Weber also saw that a bureaucratic world contained risks. It produced increasingly powerful and autonomous bureaucrats who could be spiritless, driven only by impersonal rules and procedures, and with little regard for the people they were expected to serve. Weber famously warned that those who allow themselves to be guided by rules will soon find that those rules have defined their identities and commitments.

Africans in the Diaspora are parodying Western notions of gender relations that are based on the racist and sexist myth of man as the breadwinner (a central tenet of capitalism) and, by extension, head of the household. When this presumption fails to materialize, the authority that that positionality should have provided the man is contrived by assuming psychological and emotional control, which may result in abuse and its discontents.

I frequently detect a hint of satisfaction in the accounts that manage to excavate moral and individual responsibility from the historical debris. Perhaps it is because of the unspoken belief that changing the people will change the outcome. 'No Hitler, no Holocaust.' If only a few individuals had resolved that it was unconscionable to be a bystander, then perhaps thousands would have been saved. I suppose there is some solace in recovering a history in which altering an isolated event transforms all that follows. But personalizing the story in this way can obscure how these were not isolated individuals operating on their own but rather were people situated in an organizational and historical context that profoundly shaped how they looked upon the world, what they believed they could do, and what they wanted to do. The UN staff and diplomats in New York, in the main, were highly decent, hard-working, and honorable individuals who believed that they were acting properly when they decided not to try to put an end to genocide. It is this history that stays with me.

a continuum of beliefs and lifestyles, ranging from religious fundamentalists on one end to antireligious individualists on the other.

to `educate' us, to keep us mentally enslaved.

Catholic colonizers showed greater tolerance of African cultural arts, especially the visual arts. In Jamaica, colonized by Anglicans, African cultural practices were not tolerated to the same degree that they were in Brazil. Even though the assumption behind the policy was "divide and rule," Catholic colonial governments in Brazil fostered brotherhoods segregated according to African ethnic affiliation. These islands of African space-where the bonds of oppression were temporarily loosened-were inhabited by people with similar languages and worldviews. Thus, they became areas where African language, customs, and ideas could legally be perpetuated.

the Rastafari of Pelourinho already live spiritually in the midst of Africa and Jamaica. Thus, their goal is not to abandon where they live but to transform its Babylonian elements.

Because Afro-Bahians have refused to give up their heritage, cultural and religious pluralism has managed to prevail over acculturation to European norms.

transformed through Jah and the Holy Ghost the segments of Babylon that were inside of me.

Rastafari is the spirit of light; that I'm in the light of God.

Capitalism was taken away from my life. To maintain this hair, I cannot invest in the system. Not a cent. I live from the powers, like Daniel, like Joshua. I live like Jesus Christ. I live spirit, because I am spirit. If I live in spirit, I have to walk in spirit.

When we ascend we have to give people what they deserve: dignity. What I understand by dignity is that man is an instrument for love,

Let's start this feeling, this mental posture, fraternity, to see in each human being a brother.

the way to fight Babylon was through music.

I'm a living fire, a living stone foundation, a tool to annihilate the system of lies. I want freedom, fraternity, sharing.

money brings confusion.

Carnaval is "the festival of the devil blessed by God

Philosophy ... is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge-so I should contend-belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy.

The investigator is an interpreter (second order) of the interpretations people have already given to their lives (first order).

Belief in the Divinity of Haile Selassie Chevannes (1998a) observed that the most important belief of the Rastafari is that Haile Selassie, the late Emperor of Ethiopia, is God, thus leading to the Rastafari claim that God is Black. In the same vein, Henry observed that the foundation of Rastafari theology is the mystical knowledge of the divinity of Haile Selassie (1997, 160). However, there appears to be divergent views among Rastafari regarding the divinity of Haile Selassie. Thus, Barnett (2005) claims that the original Twelve Tribes of Israel teachings hold that Jesus Christ was manifested in his second coming in the person of Haile Selassie; the Bobo Shanti hold that Haile Selassie is the father of Jesus Christ (who is Prince Emmanuel, the founder of the house, so far as the Bobo Shanti are concerned); and the Nyahbinghi Order holds that Haile Selaisse is the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost). The Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church (a mansion that occupies a marginal status in the movement) does not accept the divinity of Haile Selassie I, although they still believe that he is of the Solomonic dynasty, thereby linking him with King David and therefore to Christ (Barnett 2005).

Must someone be in some sense a member of a human community, trained in its practices and beholden to its norms, in order to have a "self"? Responses to this issue have divided scholars into the individualist school and the collectivist school.

walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit....

honorific pronoun.

by insisting on repatriation, the Rastafarian is liable to jump from the frying pan into the fire.

repatriation should "start in the minds and hearts of our people; in our words, actions and deeds we must go back to Africa. We may never set foot on the continent in our time, but we can live and represent our heritage each day we live in the world

neocolonization.

spiritual and mental decolonization.

reeducating and "re-righting" history

he was/is God in the same way that they themselves were God, with the difference between themselves and the emperor lying in the degree of inspiration by, or in the dwelling of, the Holy Spirit.

Haile Selassie I." One said that when he used the term, he literally meant "the power of the holy trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Rastafari is the King with the Holy Spirit. I am a King with the Holy Spirit.

born Rastafari," but had "assumed the posture" in the late seventies or early eighties after being exposed to reggae music.

Rastafari teachings vigorously advocated self-sufficiency through self-awareness and provided an alternative source of meaning and identity to lives that were frequently mired in hopelessness, alienation, and despair.

A DISPOSITION TO UNDERSTAND McCune and Entwistle’s (2011) concept of a disposition to understand builds on the work of Barnett (2007; 2011). Barnett has articulated the importance of specific dispositions in order to cope with complex twenty-first-century learning contexts. These dispositions include   • a will to learn • a will to encounter strangeness • a will to engage • a preparedness to listen • a willingness to be changed as a result of one’s learning • a determination to keep going.

Scholars note that human reasoning is limited not only by imperfect information and innate intellectual capacities but also by the broader culture that subsequently shapes the very optics that individuals use to categorize the world.

Perhaps this is why an institution is unlikely to feel or admit to shame; it may be unable to countenance the possibility that at root it is not what it purports, even to itself, to be. (quoted by Michael Barnett in Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda)

When Wells-Barnett wrote in 1900, “It is now, even as it was in the days of slavery, an unpardonable sin for a Negro to resist a White man no matter how unjust or unprovoked the White man’s attack may be,” we might say that this still can be the case in certain situations and locales—especially if the White man is dressed in a blue uniform and wears a badge.

If within the pantheon of African diasporan activists there is a loudest voice it would be that of the Rastafari as a collective, Bob Marley as an individual, and reggae music as the medium.

Rastafarl should not deal with sex merely for pleasure but should incorporate it into their divine communication and cause a union which should produce children.

The culturally normalized so-called beauty practices of hair straightening and skin bleaching are indicators of this intergenerational syndrome of identity trauma

constantly loving the Black woman, always defending the ghetto youths, and giving Rastafari praise.