The British African Caribbean (BAC) Human Perspective
Central to CBACS’ perspective is that our core identity is that of the ‘Self’ (from a transpersonal perspective) distinguishable as Descendants of Enslaved Africans (DoEA). Namely, our ancestors were historically uprooted from their culture of origin and transported to the slave plantations of the Caribbean. This is the point at which our identity was changed from the ‘self’ to ‘black’, for keeping under the authority and control of ethnic groups wearing the mask of the ‘white’ racial identity.
Born into the life experience of DoEAs in 1954 in Jamaica, I entered Britain in 1959 at the age of 5 to find my ‘self’ being renamed ‘black’. It soon became evident that this was for inferior treatment resulting in my becoming an ‘elective mute’.
Fast forward 31 years to 1990 and I’m in my office shared with two ‘white’ male colleagues when a third (Head of Department) ‘white’ male colleague enters with the sole intention of subjecting me to traumatic racial abuse and victimisation… In a Plato’s Cave moment of illuminating awareness, I perceive with shocking clarity that I am not ‘black’ by nature but by British cultural design… the ‘black’ ego-identity spontaneously shattered catalysing an existential crisis of meaning… I was catapulted onto the historically inactivated ‘cultural developmental line’ of DoEAs, at a higher level of awareness. Surmised eventually is that my task was to engage consciously in the authentic reconstruction of my ego-identity in resurrecting our cultural developmental line…
Of critical significance I later learned, is that crisis had arrived in my lifeworld at the age of 36. This is as I was entering the cultural phase of the individuation process in the second half of life… I never knew that this was a thing!! This is because our individuation, as members of a collective reference group, has been shutdown with the inactivation of our cultural development line with slavery. Maintenance of the externally imposed ‘black’ racial identity under ‘white’ ethnic control keeps it deactivated. Hence our positioning on quadrants 1 and 4 of the British BCM. This facilitates our continuance as a ‘damaged community’ under government control.
Based on this longitudinal journey, 1990 to date, I am no longer an unconscious ‘black’ member of British society situated in a state of cultural unconsciousness on quadrants 1 and 4 of the British Bicultural Competence Matrix (BCM). With conscious awareness on quadrant 2, the outcome of crisis, I have been engaged in the self-re-education process, enabling me to evolve as a historical being. This is in understanding the ‘black’ British, African and Caribbean cultures that unconsciously shaped my ego-identity to 1990: hence the new status of an integrated self-authoring/transforming British African Caribbean (BAC). With knowledge-based understanding, I have consciously reclaimed my responsibility in exploring what it means for us, as DoEAs, to be authentically human in meeting the challenges life presents us as we strive toward the goal of Self-restoration. The process crystallised cultural illiteracy as a fundamental human deprivation imposed on us with slavery…
Developing cultural literacy is an individual, in the context of a collective group, journey… it is the outcome of taking on responsibility for our own lives and that of our generations…
Join CBACS/TMP, below, to become a consciously evolving member of CBACS/TMP in becoming a people of destiny… Ascendants of Enslaved Africans (AoEAs) on the collective journey to 2034.
