Dear Editor,

I’m a black Jamaican, Rastafarian, and a member of the African Diaspora. I’m writing because I’m confused — and I think a lot of us are.

We see people in our movement supporting Islamists in Iran just because Iran is anti-Donald Trump and anti-America. But, at the same time, we supported Captain Ibrahim Traoré in Burkina Faso — even though Islamist militants are his biggest enemy on the ground, killing African people daily. So which is it? Do we support Islamists or fight them? Or do we just wait for the Western media to tell us who the villain is this week?

We have a saying in Jamaica, “Cockroach nuh business in a fowl fight.” The problem is we are in the fight. The fowls are fighting over our yard. The US drops drones on black and brown people. Iran backs militias that destabilise Africa. Islamist groups enslave and kill black Africans. We can’t pretend we have no stake.

Here’s the real issue: Too many of us have fallen into an “enemy of my enemy” trap. If someone fights the West, we call them a friend, even if they oppress us too. That’s not solidarity; that’s laziness.

I’m not saying we should support America. Never! America is a neo-colonial power. But we also can’t pretend that Arab and Islamic empires didn’t invade Africa first — through the slave trade, through conquest, and through forcing foreign laws on African land. That’s history. And as Rasta, we know Haile Selassie was put on the throne of Ethiopia not just to fight Italy, but to hold back the march of Islam into Christian Africa. That doesn’t make all Muslims enemies. It means we must look at power, not just religion.

So let’s be clear: We can oppose US imperialism and oppose Islamist extremism. We can stand with Traoré against France and stand with him against ISIS in the Sahel. We can criticise Iran’s Government for crushing women and minorities while still opposing US sanctions that hurt ordinary people. That’s not contradiction, that’s thinking like free people.

Selassie himself didn’t bow to the East or the West. He stood for Africa. That’s our model: black self-determination first. Anyone — Western, Arab, Asian, or African — who bows to that, we work with. Anyone who blocks it, we oppose.

The media will never give us a clear picture. They want heroes and villains, not messy truth. We have to build our own lens with history, with geography, and with our feet on the ground.

No more forgetting! No more flip-flopping! Let’s stand with Africans, not with empires.

Yannick Nesta Pessoa

yannickpessoa@yahoo.com