About the Author:
Zay D. Green is currently a High School Mathematics teacher. She was also a Librarian for many years. After attending Wolmer’s High School for Girls in Kingston, Jamaica where she grew up, Ms Green pursued a Bachelor’s Degree and a Diploma in Education at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. She taught at a number of high schools in Jamaica including Dunrobin, Calabar, and Cornwall College. Ms. Green also holds the M.A. in Psychology from Long Island University, New York and the M.L.S. degree from Rutgers University, New Jersey. She did post-graduate work in psychology at City University of New York Graduate Center. Ms. Green lives in Westchester, New York with her husband, Junior Everet. They have three children.
This work, Christianity and Black Oppression: Duppy Know Who Fe Frighten asks: How is it that blacks have been Christianized for more than four hundred years, and in some cases more than five hundred years, and yet blacks are stereotyped as morally and mentally inferior? At the very first encounter between Europeans and Africans, Africans were perceived as “pagan”, “heathen”, and “devil worshippers”. The tool that would transform Africans, it was postulated, would be the Christian religion. In spite of over four centuries of Christianity, the perception of blacks as morally and mentally inferior has not changed. Blacks, it would appear, carry a stigma that is genetic and can be transmitted.
Christianity and Black Oppression: Duppy Know Who Fe Frighten also addresses the issue as to why there has not been a radical change in the perception of blacks in spite of centuries of blacks’ investment of an inordinate amount of time, energy and money in the Christian religion. Green argues that Blacks were forced to surrender their African world view and adopt a European Christian world view.
