The Abrahamic religion of Rastafari emerged in 1930s Jamaica. It centred on an Afrocentric ideology and from its origins placed importance on racial issues.
According to Clarke, Rastafari is "concerned above all else with black consciousness, with rediscovering the identity, personal and racial, of black people".[1] The Rastafari movement began among Afro-Jamaicans who wanted to reject the British colonial culture that dominated Jamaica and replace it with a new identity based on a reclamation of their African heritage.[2] Barnett says that Rastafari aims to overcome the belief in the inferiority of black people, and the superiority of white people.[3] According to Alhassan, Rastafari does this by centring Africa and blackness in order to decentre Europe and whiteness. She also says that by asserting the divinity of Haile Selassie and Empress Menen Asfaw, Rastas "radically assert humanity for all Black people".[4] Rastafari is therefore Afrocentric,[5] equating blackness with the African continent,[6] and endorsing Pan-Africanism.[7]