Walter Rodney, born in Guyana on 22nd of march in 1942, Pan-African, Marxist intellectual who was assassinated by the Guyanese government in 1980 at 38 years old.

Rodney attended the University College of the West Indies in 1960 and was awarded a first class honors degree in History in 1963. He later earned a PhD in African History in 1966 at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, England, at the age of 24.

Rodney traveled extensively and became well-known as an activist, scholar, and formidable orator. He taught at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania from 1966-67 and 1969-1974, and in 1968 at his alma mater University of the West Indies.

On October 15th, 1968, the government of Jamaica declared Rodney a “persona non grata” and banned him from the country. Following his dismissal by the University of the West Indies, students and poor people in West Kingston protested, leading to the “Rodney Riots”, which caused six deaths and millions of dollars in damages.

In 1972, Rodney published “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”. Historian Melissa Turner describes the work this way: “A brutal critique of long-standing and persistent exploitation of Africa by Western powers, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa remains a powerful, popular, and controversial work in which Rodney argued that the early period of African contact with Europe, including the slave trade, sowed the seeds for continued African economic underdevelopment and had dramatically negative social and political consequences as well. He argued that, while the roots of Africa’s ailments rested with intentional underdevelopment and exploitation under European capitalist and colonial systems, the only way for true liberation to take place was for Africans to become cognizant of their own complicity in this exploitation and to take back the power they gave up to the exploiters.”

On June 13th, 1980, Rodney was killed in Georgetown, Guyana via a bomb given to him by Gregory Smith, a sergeant in the Guyana Defence Force, one month after returning Zimbabwe. In 2015, a “Commission of Inquiry” in Guyana that the country’s then president, Linden Forbes Burnham, was complicit in his murder.

“If there is to be any proving of our humanity it must be through revolutionary means.”

Walter Rodney

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Decolonial Marxism Essays From The Pan African Revolution

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    • TerminalEncounter [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      You can complain about this and tell your friends you appreciate a speedier reply. The social curtesy of quick or slow replies is way different from people my age, younger than 30 seems to want a response very soon. I’m used to >24 hours if friends are busy. Keep in mind, that’s me and the social milieu I grew up in - you might very reasonably expect quicker replies.

      You are allowed to call them on the weekend and to make plans and invite, you do not have to wait for them to call you. You’re already texting first which is great!

      mental health stuff, dont click if you don't want to hear it

      I would characterize this kind of intense pain youre in from not receiving texts and calls and not knowing when plans are firm as something like anxiety. I might look up something like “favorite person bpd” and see if you vibe with any of that.

      Wanting people to make a priority to contact you is valid. But the intense pain youre descriving indicates something besides more than is usual. The pain is intense enough it has led you to self-harm - that is an important thing you wrote and is part of why I think you’d benefit from checking out those resources. If you can afford it, I’d also suggest a therapist you might vibe with (especially looking for DBT, its a type of therapy).

      • peppersky [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        I last wrote her Saturday evening at 7:30 pm. I’d expect a message either that same evening, Sunday morning or Sunday evening. Just doesn’t seem like that much work to answer me just on what day we’ll meet next week, especially since she knows this means a lot to me and I wanted to talk with her about my mental health and stuff. I genuinely couldn’t imagine what she could write that I wouldn’t want to answer basically immediately. For me it’s not work to answer my friends messages. To think that she would even consider that work is breaking my heart.

        The symptoms for BPD do feel like they describe me currently pretty well, but I’ve only felt this this intensely for like a few weeks. I moved into another place with roommates after living in an absolutely shitty place for three years and due to various factors, including one of those roommates having a serious drug psychosis, trashing the place and generally making live hell, the type of living together that I was looking for just hasn’t manifested itself yet. Could something like that trigger BPD. I’m already in therapy for general depression and anxiety and I’ve often felt kinda lonely, but this all encompassing loneliness has only started since I moved.

        I feel like I can intellectualize this stuff pretty well, like how friendships under capitalism become commodified and functionalized, how one compartmentalizes friends to manage risks (can’t introduce your friends to other friends that might get weird), how high rent and having to live farther from the city makes real private moments together impossible, how one just becomes another appointment in your calendar. It just feels like lately I’ve completely lost my ability to regulate this stuff, like all this (and the general malaise of late stage capitalism) just adds up to me never being able to have real close friends ever again. I don’t want to live a life like this.

        edit: to add to the last point, it feels like I’d either need to be a much more outgoing and stable and likeable and privileged person to have the kinds of friendships that I’d actually find fulfilling and I’m just the farthest away from that that I’ve ever been or I’m going to have to kill the light inside me and just somehow deluded myself into being content with living half a life (this is seemingly what my oldest friend is currently doing, by his own admission, burying whatever problems he has inside and training himself to be more okay with being alone). I really really really don’t want to do that.

        • TerminalEncounter [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          I’ll gently push back on her understanding how much it means to you. You may have emphasized it but you can’t speak to what she knows or feels with any certainty. Hopefully you can clear up that you’d prefer confirmations on when youll meet sooner. I know for my schedule, nursing, I dont always know what days or nights I’ll be working - sometimes I’m mandated in and can’t actually refuse to go. I’ll also push back on her thinking it’s work - and that it’s a bad thing for it to “be work!” If she’s genuinely busy, it would be extra work to get back at you quickly. Now over 24 hours… hey, things happen. We also don’t know if she thinks it’s work or not to answer you (see above about how you cannot know her mindset, you can only set your own boundaries and expectations and talk about how things feel to you, as in “when you take over 24 hours to text me back and confirm plans, it makes me feel anxious because I need firmer plans.”)

          Mental health is a weird thing, diagnoses only really matter for billing codes. What you vibe with or don’t vibe with is your business. I didn’t know your history when I responded but it did strike me as possibly BPD, which can be treated with a type of therapy called DBT (and outcomes are very good, it just takes a while and some people really resist going because it’s a fuck load of work). BPD isn’t typically something one develops suddenly, it’s more like something that’s ongoing and maybe made worse by some stressor and people tend to have it diagnosed at adolescence. I’m very glad you’re in therapy already and you’ve got some (hopefully) professionals on your team.

          The place you’re in now sounds like it absolutely triggered something. Did you move in and then start feeling this way or have you felt empty and lonely for a while? When I check your history, I see quite a few mentions of quite intense loneliness and emptiness. But you know yourself better - you said the additional stressor of this new chaotic home life as made your loneliness and emptiness worse. If its this stressor, I’d bring it up with your therapist and talk about different coping strategies. One of which could be - move the hell out as soon as you can lol.

          Intellectualizing is a good way to view things when they emotionally feel so hard. There’s not much you can do on your own about capitalism but there are things you can do about your emotions and finding friends who make time for you. You’ve mentioned often wanting intense personal relationships (platonically mostly), you still absolutely can have that. There’s no time limit on making friends, we just stop having it be easy mode at school or university where you’re plopped in the same cohort everyday. Meet people through board game nights, church (if that’s your thing), hiking groups, volunteering, support groups, paint nights, clubs (I joined a university fencing club even though I wasn’t a student), HEMA, soccer nights, etc.

          Everybody’s favourite topic is themsleves, you actually don’t need to be interesting at all - just an attentive listener who asks questions (e.g. family, work, vacations, where they’d like to go, aspirations, fav movies, if they could make a movie what would they make, etc etc). The other key to durable friendship is consistency, just like when you’re school. Keep showing up to events, keep chatting, keep listening. You can also speed run friendships by asking the other person to do you a favour - I dunno why it works but if they even do a small favour they apparently are more likely to be friends. You’ll find your people soon enough.

    • FumpyAer [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      I wouldn’t be 100% transparent on that unless you know the friend very well. It may be better be a bit vague. Something like: “I get anxious when we make soft plans without deciding the specifics. Could we set an actual time, date, and activity when we first decide to make plans?”

      That said, sometimes friends do have to cancel plans with you for reasons that don’t involve you. Just happened to me last weekend. My friend canceled on the day citing a “family emergency.” You do have to somehow find a way to be okay with that when it happens, within reason.

      Personally, if somebody told me that they were feeling so strongly about me, I might get anxious myself about how much they rely on me. It seems like your feelings are out of proportion to the actual problem, and something you should talk to somebody about (and thank you for taking the first step here!)

      • peppersky [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        I really really really don’t feel like self-censoring myself in the closest relationships I have. I want to rip open my heart and let everything flow out freely. I know that doing that would be a stupid idea, but I want to have friendships that work like that. I want to have social bonds that are strong and not weak, where I do not constantly have to worry whether I feel too strong about them, where I can be sure that they prioritize me when I need them to. I’d like to be there for them too. I don’t have any money when there’s no social safety net your friends are the only thing you can have.

        She knows I’m not doing well these last few weeks, that’s what our last messages were about. I always answer any message I get basically immediately because I do not find these contacts to be a bother I find that enjoyable and because I’m very rarely too busy and do not get as many messages as I’d like anyway. I sometimes get jealous when I know she’s doing shit without me and I’d really like for that not to be the case. Believe me I feel fucking terrible for feeling so fucking terrible about this. I’m already in therapy for depression and anxiety but this all encompassing feeling of loneliness has never been this strong.

        Edit: I’m really struggling with not just writing her a message saying that I feel terrible when she’s ignoring me when she knows I’m having a mental episode and that if she’s already prioritizing other people and things over me that I’d feel better if I didn’t have to wait for any messages from her ever again. But I can’t do that, she’s the only friend I have in this town and as such the only one I see and do stuff with in the flesh on a regular basis. I can’t do without that.