a politics of positionality: the black cultural experience of living in britain – implications for...
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A Politics of Positionality: The Black Cultural Experience of Living in Britain – Implications for
Higher EducationDr Gloria GordonResearch Director
Centre for British African Caribbean Studies (CBACS)London South Bank University
Government analyses of the black problem
• Wanless’ (2006) Priority Review acknowledges an illusive ‘X-factor related to ethnicity’ that is responsible for the problems ‘black’ children are experiencing
• Black young people and the criminal justice system – Denham (2007) highlights also highlights ethnicity as well as the absence of a coherent strategy leaving a significant weakness in Government’s response to meeting the needs of the black Caribbean community
Failed ‘Black’ Assimilation
• ‘… the lingering effects of the "failed assimilation" of enslaved Africans and their descendants or immigrating voluntarily but becoming absorbed into the category of "black”
• Creation of a black-white duality /psychic prison• ‘Cultural Racism’ Madood (1994)• Race paradigm – problematises i.e. race discrimination,
teacher attitudes/perceptions, black youth culture, black parenting styles, a pathological black culture, absent fathers, single mothers, underachievement, BESD, etc– From Generation to Generation: The Health and Wellbeing of
Children in Immigrant Families (Commission on Behavioural and Social Services and Education, 1998)
Why black assimilation must fail:the black-white duality
• Politics of Positionality (Tisdall, 1992)
• Acceptance of an external other’s dictates on how to live
• An externally imposed cultural disorder that has taken on a life of its own (McWhorter, 2001); Soul murder (Painter, 1995); A victim culture (Pinderhughes, 1979)
• Circles of Fear (SCMH, 2004)• Prevents achievement of the
human task: to be conscious creators of culture – natural problem solvers
British culture – a dehumanising project
• White, black and minority ethnic (ONS, 2003)– White and black = racial
identities– Minority ethnics
• Black and white cultures are sub-cultures of British culture
• Cultural shift from a degenerative to a generative operating paradigm
The Human Task: Conscious Creators of Culture
Human Costs of Slavery:the black experience
Stigmatised physiognomy
Racialised emotions
Colonised Mind
Falsified consciousnessAn externally imposed cultural disorder
which has taken on a life of its own
Socialised Helplessness• A mental state (Seligman, 1998)• The tendency to be a passive
learner that results from being systemically and historically placed in a politics of positionality with the ethnic majority within their culture– No bicultural socialisation into a
culture of origin and a culture of residence
– No conscious cultural evolution processes
– No community infrastructure– No ethnic identity development– No ‘role models’
• Results in BESD SEN diagnosis
Bicultural Socialisation• To become bicultural an
individual must engage in a dual socialisation process. One acquires values, beliefs, communication and behavioural styles from a culture of origin as well as becoming exposed to the same dynamics of a majority culture (culture of residence)– DeAnda, 1984
Cultural Metanoia: Wilberforce’s second project
• Our problems derive not from our technology, our diet, violence in the media, or any other one thing we do. They arise out of our culture – our view of the world. The reason most solutions offered to the world’s crises are impractical is because they arise from the same worldview that caused the problem … nothing but changing our way of seeing and understanding the world can produce real, meaningful and lasting change. (Hartmann, 1999)
• Culture – ‘invisible institution of the mind’• Espoused versus enacted values (Argyris & Schon)
A New Curriculum – implications for Higher Education
• Moral and ethical responsibility to work with visible and invisible historical and cultural legacies:– A new human centred paradigm and philosophy (Human
Centred Passionate Appreciation)– Teacher education for conscious bicultural and meta-cultural
competence– Supplement ‘informative learning/knowledge’ offered by HE with
‘formative learning/knowledge’: what does it mean to be a whole, fully alive, experiencing and choiceful human being?
– Support for The Metanoia Project 2007-2034 – a social movement signalling a ‘new beginning’ / a change of heart/mind
– Support ‘cultural integrity’ for DoEAs (black Caribbeans)
Visible and Invisible Historical Legacies
• “I was angry. Why should I be left with this. I didn’t want it. I had done my best for years to reject it. I wanted no part of what was in it. The benefits of my privilege, the restrictions, the injustice, the pain, the broken origins of the heart, the unknown horrors. And yet it is mine. I am my father’s daughter in the present living in a world he and my folks helped to create. (Adams, 2002)