Dr Gloria Gordon

The new British African Caribbean (BAC) perspective, as a particular way of thinking about things, was birthed in the higher education institutional (HEI) context the result of an irrevocable shift in my level of awareness.  The outcome of this shift for me was the spontaneous shattering of the externally imposed ‘black’ race-based ego-identity created from ongoing unconscious ‘black socialisation’ in the British culture of residence.  In the midst of racial abuse and victimisation, in a light-bulb moment of illumination, I perceived that I was not ‘black’ as contained in the ‘white’ ethnic imagination being projected onto me and was undeserving of the treatment that accrues…

With this realisation the historically externally imposed imposter ‘black’ ego-identity shattered in the awareness that it did not actually have a ‘black’ life to defend.  I was left with the monumental task of trying to grasp what had happened.  This was before moving on to learn how to reconstruct my shattered ego-identity authentically for myself.  This is in a society which I came to realise does not cater for facilitating descendants of enslaved Africans (DoEAs), historically resocialised ‘black’ with slavery, undergoing such identity-based life crises.  Instead we are likely to be normatively diagnosed as undergoing schizophrenia or race psychosis to be medicated, sectioned or incarcerated.  Mindful of such outcomes I chose to research my way out of the experience…

Research revealed that crisis had catapulted me from the unconsciously ‘socialised mind’ of British culture where social reality is presented in terms of the black-white duality to the ‘self-authoring mind’ and so, ultimately, recognition of my human nature as the ‘Self’!  From the new perspective of the ‘self-authoring mind’ I now had a bird’s eye view of British society from the location of a descendant of enslaved African (DoEA), the core human identity into which the Self incarnated as me.  From this higher location I perceived clearly the implications of the scattered racial stratification of DoEAs as ‘blacks’ in the society relative to the benefits of ethnic socialisation (bicultural socialisation) enjoyed by both the ethnic majority as well as minority ethnic groups.

I had been, with crisis, catapulted onto the historically neglected cultural developmental line of DoEAs.  Our cultural developmental line is historically neglected because we continue to be kept unconsciously assimilated, socialised and stratified in British imperial culture as ‘black’ under ongoing ‘white’ (ethnic) control.

I have spent the last 28 years within the HEI context attempting to make the informed transition from the externally imposed ‘black’ racial identity which results in a black culture variously described by researchers as:

an externally imposed cultural disorder which has taken on a life of its own

a victim culture

soul murder

a dysfunctional cultural inheritance

The journey took this length of time, nearly two generations, because I have been caught between two opposing forces: the inner fuelled ‘generative desire’ seeking external expression and externally imposed social forces opposing my desire for cultural generativity in order to maintain the established status quo of race-based human inequality.  The balancing force in this polarity as always is love – love for the life which is all of our birthright as human beings and the vision I hold for an alternative future beyond externally imposed race-based inequality for future generations of DoEAs.

The BAC perspective and emergent identity, worldview, consciousness and culture being cultivated since 1990 arrived at adulthood in 2015 when at the age of 61, just as I was entering the senior eldership stage of the life-cycle, ‘white’ ethnic institutional agents decided to subject me to disciplinary control.  This is as the latest humanly disrespectful subordinating attempt to return me to the societally imposed ‘black’ racial identity, albeit shattered 25 years earlier.  Engagement with the cultural developmental line of DoEAs is seemingly not allowable in the HEI context.

Drawing on the stages of the Hero’s Journey, this act in 2015 can be understood as The Resurrection Stage of my 25-year journey to this point, described as:

…the climax in which the Hero must have her final and most dangerous encounter with death. The final battle also represents something far greater than the Hero’s own existence with its outcome having far-reaching consequences to her Ordinary World and the lives of those she left behind

This blog indicates that the newly emergent British African Caribbean (BAC) perspective withstood the above final test…