Global Majority: we need to talk about labels such as ‘BAME’

By Rosemary Campbell-Stephens                                 December 9, 2020

Perspective

I am incredibly fortunate. After thirty-five years’ service to education in England, I was able to follow through on a dream that I had aged twenty-one, that became a plan. I retired early to the Caribbean, where I now live with my husband. Perspective is important, that view below provides mine, at sundown if I choose to do the twelve-minute walk down to the water’s edge. There is something about the serenity that brings clarity and elicits honesty.

 Current polemic discussions about the use of terms like ‘BAME’ and ‘ethnic minorities’ annoy me profoundly. Part of the way in which people individually and collectively step into their power as authentic human beings is to be unambivalent about their identity, who they are and their connections to their roots. The current debates about terminology as they relate to race, can leave the uninitiated confused, disempowered, disconnected and metaphorically, on mute.

So, let me begin with what I know for certain. My name is Rosemary Campbell-Stephens. I identify as Black, of African Caribbean descent and heritage, specifically, Jamaican parentage. My nationality is British. My identity does not exist in relation to whiteness and transcends my geographic place of birth. I am part of the Global Majority.

The term Global Majority was coined as a result of my work in London on leadership preparation within the school sector between 2003-2011 as part of the London Challenge initiative. Seeking permission has never been one of my strong points so, I was determined that a black-led leadership preparation programme should be liberating and empowering in both its content and language; and that in the absence of either, I could create both.

Global Majority is a collective term that first and foremost speaks to and encourages those so-called, to think of themselves as belonging to the majority on planet earth. It refers to people who are Black, African, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous to the global south, and or, have been racialised as 'ethnic minorities'. Globally these groups currently represent approximately eighty per cent (80%) of the world's population, making them the global majority now, and with current growth rates, notwithstanding the Covid-19 pandemic, they are set to remain so for the foreseeable future. Understanding that singular truth may shift the dial, it certainly should permanently disrupt and relocate the conversation on race.

Language and Identity

As an educator focused on addressing the under-representation of Black and Asian leaders in London schools as part of the highly successful London Challenge Initiative of 2003-2011, I was acutely aware of the centrality and power of language. In 2020 with Black Lives Matter, centering and resetting the discourse on race again, the importance of language to discuss identity is further amplified in reframing essential conversations. To disrupt the deficit narratives that exist about racialised and otherwise 'othered' groups, requires that those groups be self-determining and defining. Developing and using empowering language that challenges marginalisation and undermines the implied subordination to white power structures is critical. Historically it has been white people, primarily white men, who hold the social, political and economic power to categorise people; this is no longer so. Language should inspire a possibility to live into.

‘BAME’, ‘People of Color’ and other provocations

Identity is complex and becoming increasingly so. Identity is nuanced and defined in a myriad of constantly evolving ways. Acronyms such as 'BAME', Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic, are not only clumsy and blunt, but almost universally reviled by those so described. In addition, BAME is becoming increasingly irrelevant due to its inaccuracy within a global context. The acronym BAME is contentious but is still lazily, I would say intentionally used across British government agencies and the media in the UK, there by de-legitimising the right that people so labelled have to self-identify or even 'be’, on their terms. So, what does that say about the attitude of those who use the term towards us: and what does it say about us for allowing it? 

Black leaders in America started to use the term 'people of color' in the 1960s to describe African Americans; in 2020, we see the term expanded to include Latinos and Asian Americans. While seen by many as an empowering term that brings together and mobilises different ethnic groups towards common goals, 'people of color' still situates whiteness as the norm. The challenge for me therefore both with the acronym 'BAME' in the UK and the term 'People of Color' in the USA, or ‘visible minorities’ in Canada is that they all situate whiteness as the norm within their respective local contexts, when the opposite is true globally. Put another way, when you examine the fact that the experience of whiteness is not the norm for the majority of people on this planet, this is an undeniable truth.

Homogenisation

On the subject of homogenisation, please refer back to how I define myself on page one. More often than not, for accuracy, out of respect, and to avoid homogenisation, I refer to specific ethnic backgrounds to describe individuals or groups, making every effort to describe ethnicity in the way people belonging to those groups prefer to self-identify. Including different ethnic groups within the collective term, 'Global Majority', does not, therefore, eradicate specific ethnic identities; it does, however, have the potential to connect and amplify the voices of the majority.

White Minority

Collective terms describing groups of people that share characteristics are fraught with difficulties, complexities and imperfections. Power structures, including the academy, tend to work in the interests of an elite minority. The elite, however, never define themselves as the minority that they are; they do not define themselves at all, they don’t have to, they know who they are, and whom they have minoritised as outsiders. In their non-racialised space, the elite minority act with the confidence of a majority. These elites exist primarily, though not exclusively, through a corporate level whiteness, they act globally, and their power has historically resided in large part in the fact that one per cent of the world's population holds approximately forty-four per cent of the world's wealth.

The global minority certainly do not limit any notion of their identity or reach to their numbers within a particular geographical location. They are globally connected, operate collectively, in their mutually exclusive interest, wielding power accordingly, through transnational organisations, corporations, financial institutions, governments and multi-nationals. Connected systems, economic, business, political, educational, health, all work with synchronised mindsets assiduously focused on maintaining the status quo: while simultaneously sowing and fueling discord and disruption over in some localities stagnating, impotent and declining populations. 

The elite minority are aided and abetted across the globe, by those who are not white but want desperately to appropriate whiteness to the extent that it is possible, or at least share in the spoils. The third world, the occupied territory created for the global majority, is needed to maintain the concentration, flow and control of resources, wealth and power into the hands of the few in the ‘first world’. Poor whites are members of the white club, but with minimal benefits; they are there to make up numbers when required, be the deflectors, or cannon-fodder and essentially act as the buffer between the white elite and those that they have ’othered.’ The non-white allies are as intentional about joining the club, as the elites are about maintaining the status quo and keeping them firmly at arm's length. Put simply, the white elite determine the terms of reality, even in their final death throes, witness the death of democracy in the USA 2020; but only if we continue to allow them.

For the status-quo to be maintained, deficit narratives need to be consistently perpetuated and reinforced, that play into centuries old stereotypes about race. Key to this is a language that minoritises, problematises, de-legitimises and pathologises the Global Majority. At the same time, eradicating or disregarding our contributions, concerns and our very lives. 

Empowering

“the pleas for more black people to be represented in senior leadership positions and to be among the decision makers in public institutions, particularly in schools and children's services, should be accompanied by the determination to embrace their additionality, and enable them to create where needed, different more nuanced ways of leading. If form follows function, then the accompanying changes in organisational cultures and structures are another bonus of their arrival.”    Campbell-Stephens 2009

 Correctly describing the Global Majority as such, disrupts the narrative and moves the conversation away from the margins to the centre, from disadvantage to advantage, and the added value, what I call the additionality, that these groups of rich, diverse heritages potentially bring. Additionality speaks to the fact that Black leadership, at its best is unsurpassed and has been exemplary in many spectacular incidences in elevating the human condition. Imagine, other than on the sports field, embracing being Black as a distinct advantage, a badge of excellence?  

“What difference does it make to the situation of the majority of the group such Black staff are supposed to represent, if the training and professional socialisation those Black staff receive, the institutional culture of which they are a part and the systems and processes they operate are identical to that of their white counterparts?”             Professor Gus John, 2009

The intention that the call for more leaders from diverse backgrounds should be accompanied by the predisposition to create spaces, through professional development that enabled those leaders to use their difference to make a difference was one that we deliberately foregrounded in the leadership training called Investing in Diversity. 

“inclusion is not about bringing people into what already exists; it is about creating a new space, a better space for everyone." George Dei

This is a shortened version of the full article due for publication in Toronto December 2020.

Rosemary Campbell-Stephens MBE is a veteran educator who received her professional training in England, but her breadth of experience is international. Rosemary is a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Education, University College London because of her ground-breaking leadership work in developing Investing in Diversity, a leadership preparation programme to increase the numbers of Black and Asian educators in London Schools.

The programme was extended across England, in places like Leeds, Yorkshire and Humber, Liverpool and Bristol in various guises, largely through the National College for Teaching and Leadership and latterly through the Department for Education. In 2009, Investing in Diversity drew international attention, when a sister programme Leading for Equity was launched at the OISE, University of Toronto. Rosemary is co-authoring the book on Investing in Diversity’s legacy both sides of the Atlantic.

Rosemary embraces the labels anti-racist, paradigm shifter, activist and disruptor. She now describes herself as an actively retired Junior elder connoisseur of life. Some days are spent freelancing as an author, writing-up her anti-racist work in education over a forty-year period. She is also still designing leadership programmes that blend western models with global paradigms such as Ubuntu. Her great love is speaking, whether as a keynote, in podcasts or in dialogue about equity or decolonization. Rosemary provides bespoke training and coaching internationally in her areas of expertise and passion, leadership and education. 

 Rosemary Campbell-Stephens MBE provides a fuller bio.

Contact details: rosemarycampbellstephens@gmail.com