Challenges

Although he enjoyed a successful career, Marley faced several huge challenges. These seemed to spur him on rather than discourage him, however. Marley accepted each hardship he faced as an obstacle to be overcome, The bad things that happened to him and around him were part of the oppressive 'Babylon' system, and getting through them showed that Bob had the power to fight the system.

Marley certainly endured a difficult childhood as what would now be called a ‘mixed race’ child. It introduced him not only to poverty and the viciousness of hierarchies, but to the antipathy and suspicion that can be directed from both sides of the colour line at people whose bodies carry the unsettling evidence of transgressive intimacy between black and white. This personal history is being introduced increasingly as the primary explanation of Marley’s character, drive and ambition. It is even suggested that his being a ‘half-caste’ can account for the ways he was able to pursue and articulate cultural identity and explain the power with which he encountered and projected blackness not only as a politics but also as what the Rastafari call ‘livity’ (a whole way of life). (Gilroy 5)

While most people think of the classic Jamaican as a happy-go-lucky Rasta, this is not the case. The Island population consists primarialy of non-Rastas many of whom did not approve of Bob’s religion.

…the island's population is divided into Rastafarians and nonRastas. It's hard to estimate how many there are either way, because so many fall in the cracks between belief and unbelief. But the mainstream non-Rastas clearly control most of Jamaica's economic superstructure. They have a historically antagonistic relationship to the Rastas, who keep prophesying their downfall as part of the Babylon system. At best the mainstream Jamaicans tolerate the Rastas; at worst, those who fear the Rastas' influence have waged a consistent campaign of terror against them. (Stephens 2)

In fact, violence against Rastas was so strong that on the evening of December 4, 1976 a gunman broke into Marley’s home and shot him. Luckily the assassin only wounded Bob and he was even able to play a short set of songs at a free concert he had planned for the next day (bobmarley.com). It is understandable that Rastas and capatalists did not get along. Their values and beliefs are basically the opposite of each other. Rastas did not contribute money to the reigning capatalist system and they had different ideas about right and wrong than the Jamaican government.