Walter Rodney, author of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, The Groundings with My Brothers and other works, actively involved in the global struggle for freedom, lived with and among black and progressive peoples on four continents and in several areas of the Caribbean. He worked in all these contexts as a historian, university teacher, popular lecturer, social critic and political theorist, and he was an unswerving advocate of the oppressed and exploited classes, especially those of the black world.
I have had a rare privilege of traveling around and living and working with black people in a lot of contexts. This has sensitized me to ways in which we need to understand the specificity of different situations. To talk about Pan-Africanism, to talk about international solidarity within the black world, whichever sector of the black world we live in, we have a series of responsibilities. One of the most important of our responsibilities is to define our own situation. A second responsibility is to present that definition to other parts of the black world, indeed to the whole progressive world. A Third responsibility, and I think this is in order of priority, is to help others in a different section of the black world to reflect upon their own specific experience.