On rereading my book, my son observed that my academic work has strong resonance with the content of Kendrick Lamar’s album: ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’. Wondering what the perceived commonality is, I decide to get a feel of Lamar by watching videos of him in conversation, listening to the album and carrying out some further research. Lamar shares that to ‘pimp’ a butterfly for him is to use his celebrity identity for good as well as not allowing himself to be ‘pimped’ by the industry as a celebrity. For Lamar to pimp a butterfly is primarily about manifesting INTEGRITY as a recognisable quality.
With this insight I reflected on the fact that an undiagnosed mental health breakdown in 1990 had catapulted me out of the externally imposed black racial identity compelling me to use my positioning in higher education to work through the crisis by engaging with the underlying issues theoretically. For example, crisis had spontaneously and unceremoniously returned me to my core identity as the Descendant of Enslaved Africans (DoEA) an inadmissable identity in British society. What was I to do with this outcome? Surfaced is that the shattering of the black racial ego-identity had been activated by an inner drive to authenticity and which required me to draw on human values such as COMMITMENT, PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL INTEGRITY and AUTHENTICITY. With this outcome I became immersed in the transformational change agenda which represents my academic work from the early 1990s to date (see selected work site). My metamorphosis from the ‘black’ downtrodden caterpillar to the newly emergent form of a beautiful butterfly had been spontaneously catalysed…
‘To pimp a butterfly’ for me in the higher education institutional (HEI) context took the form of my unswerving commitment to understanding how to reconstruct my life-world by applying professional knowledge in securing authentic human development in the ‘black British’ Caribbean life experience post-slavery. Undergoing bicultural socialisation into a culture of origin as a counter-balance to the culture of residence for effectiveness in life was a critical research finding. Evolving an authentic culture of origin to replace that annihilated with slavery was vital if I was not to capitulate to external forces focused on protecting and maintaining my identity as a caterpillar irrespective of the violence this would mean for my well-being as a human being. Ultimately, my realisation of the need to ‘pimp’ my emerging butterfly by standing on universally accepted human values resulted in the award of my 2002 National Teaching Fellowship (NTF). My commitment to these values as they relate to the black life experience is seen with my NTF research focus of introducing Academically-Based Community Service (ABCS) with a strategic focus on African/Caribbean learners and their communities onto the research portfolio of the University.
In short, my commitment to working through race-based crisis with the goal of authenticity and integrity compelled me to realise my responsibility, like Lamar, in using my position for longer-term good in an area which ongoing research equips me to make a contribution. It is with this awareness and evolving knowledge base that I founded the Centre for British African Caribbean Studies (CBACS) in 2007, the same year in which I authored Towards Bicultural Competence: Beyond Black and White as well as launched The Metanoia Project (TMP) 2007-2034 as a visionary social change movement. My ongoing commitment to ‘pimp’ my butterfly by standing on universal human values is the sustaining force in my personal and professional life-world… It contradicts the schizophrenic outcomes of the dysfunctional black-white race-based dyadic relationships which underpins institutionalised racism and continues to be perpetuated into the present as an ongoing legacy of slavery. I am pleased to say that this is now without my complicity, whether consciously or unconsciously, as the butterfly reflects my new status in life as a self-authored and integrated British African Caribbean!