I have nothing but love for Dr. Clarke and Dr. Williams and all the Pan-Afrikanist scholars who dedicated their lives to improve the condition of our consciousness as Afrikan people.
However, I feel that Dr. Ben's "Ethiopian Jewish" identity does more harm to the credibility of the Afrikan centered scholarship than what good his books have done.
Let's face it, Dr. Ben is not a Falasha. In 1915, at the height of colonial oppression and segregation, no Puerto Rican (black?) woman was able to travel to the remote highlands of Ethiopia to get pregnant with the child of a Falasha man.
Dr. Ben's features are authentically West Afrikan, with no hints of Afro-Semitic traces (all of us who know the diversity of the Afrikan people know what typical Ethiopians and Falashas look like). His strong West Indian accent bears no resemblance to any person who's been raised by a Tigrigna or Geez speaking Falasha.
Dr. Clarke wasn't ashamed of having been born to a sharecropper in the South. Most of our greatest freedom fighters do not come from some mythical place and time, why did Dr. Ben feel it so urgent to create the false identity?!
Sorry for ranting... but the truth of our people is beyond amazing even without any false identities.
