Rosemary Campbell-Stephens is an international speaker, author, and leadership consultant who divides her time between the Caribbean and England. In her book “Educational Leadership and the Global Majority: Decolonising Narratives,” she examines the concept of people of the global majority being underrepresented in participatory processes and institutions. Rosemary argues that the route to more equitable representation requires a “decolonization” of narratives.
Missions Publiques: Rosemary, what do you mean by “global majority”? You say that this term is not supposed to be controversial, but it seems to generate some controversy nonetheless…
Rosemary: For me, the global majority is simply a collective term that acknowledges the undeniable fact that the combined population of people from non-European or non-white backgrounds constitutes the majority of the world’s population. This term recognizes that, when considering the entire planet, the largest portion of humanity consists of individuals from regions such as Asia, Africa, Latin America, and indigenous communities, generally referred to as the “global South”.
The term isn’t meant to be contentious; it’s merely a recognition of who the majority on Earth is. The problem arises when the global majority is marginalized as “ethnic minorities,” or other similar terms, even when they constitute the numerical majority in certain geographic areas. For instance, in England, people from these backgrounds are often collectively labelled as ethnic minority communities (or other variations on that theme), despite being a significant portion of the population, especially in cities like London or Birmingham, where around 57% of the population identified as non-white British ethnic backgrounds. Despite this significant numerical presence, the term “ethnic minorities” or other minoritizing phrases are frequently used in official statistics, in policy and in the media to describe this demographic group within the city.
So, the concept of the global majority is about acknowledging this fact and questioning how it impacts systems, processes, and power structures that govern our lives, and are seen through the lens of a powerful but numerically minority group. When these communities are seen as part of the majority, it becomes imperative to ensure their equitable representation in government bodies, policy-making, and participatory processes. Beyond including the global majority in what already is, an opportunity is also presented to create a different space, through a different lens, that is better for everyone. My take on inclusion is not just to diversify who is sitting at the table, but what is done and how, while sitting there.
Missions Publiques: This equitable representation in participatory processes, according to you, involves a change of narrative and even a decolonization process. How?
Rosemary: Decolonizing narratives is intrinsically linked to the idea that in order to have better participation, there needs to be different people sitting at the table aligned with different ways of doing things. The concept of the global majority addresses the historical processes of colonization that have impacted those communities colonised as well as those communities who have been and are colonising. When you marginalize people through colonization, their perspectives, ways of thinking, and cultural knowledge are not only minimized but lost, and then systematically replaced and maintained by the colonisers’ mindset and values.
Both the global majority and those from colonizing cultures have to engage in a process of remembering, repairing, reimagining and resetting. It’s not an endeavour for just one group of people, it is a collective activity. It is urgently needed as we need new and different ideas to address universal global challenges. The old ways are not working.
The importance of language cannot be overstated. Acronyms like ‘BAME,’ which stands for Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic, are not only irrelevant but inaccurate and have met with widespread disapproval by those it seeks to classify. There remains a lot of ambivalence around its terminology, as it still remains a contentious issue. While the government in the UK have largely stopped using BAME, suggested replacements do not address the minoritisation and marginalization of these group.
In addition, this preoccupation with labelling, perpetuates a delegitimisation of the right for minoritised communities to self-identify or to simply exist on their own terms. It raises questions about the attitudes of those who employ marginalizing terminology towards us, as well as our own complicity in their continued use. Persisting in the use of marginalising acronyms and terms constrains our ability to engage in candid, authentic, and non-coded conversations about global issues.
Black, Asian and other global majority professionals, some of whom already have anglicized names, encounter ambivalence, hesitation, and misinterpretation when introducing themselves in culturally diverse professional settings due to the utilization of confusing terminology that was neither created by them nor for them. Consequently, the development and utilization of empowering language that challenges marginalization and subverts the implied subordination to white power structures emerge as an imperative.(1)
Decolonization involves de-centering European narratives as the default norm and understanding that colonization has wrongly positioned indigenous knowledge as inferior and lacking application in a modern technological world. Working, educating, and teaching within such a framework perpetuates a sense of superiority among former colonisers. Decolonising narratives is about recognising that the stories we have grown up with are often colonial in how they position us in the world. We need to create new and necessarily disruptive narratives around which we can all cohere and in which we see and hear our authentic selves.
"Citizens and stakeholders not just to think technologically but to draw on cultural, sometimes indigenous knowledge that is often overlooked or undervalued within our educational systems.
Rosemary Campbell-Stephens
Speaker and author
Missions Publiques: How can organizations like our own, focused on citizen participation, incorporate decolonization into the processes that we design?
Rosemary: It’s a pertinent question for organizations aiming to be inclusive, like yours, that seek to empower ordinary citizens in decision-making processes.
You can incorporate different ways for citizens to engage that align with their cultural practices. For example, when addressing issues like climate change, consider tapping into indigenous knowledge held by the Global South, which has not only a deep understanding of environmental challenges, but cultures that in their pristine state see themselves as custodians of our planet, seeking to return to some kind of balance. Take the example of discussions about climate change. Given that the Global South is the group most likely to bear the brunt of climate disruption, due to their vulnerability exacerbated by colonisation, reliance on and proximity to the environment; their ways of interacting with nature, over decades, should be amplified on these issues. Often, we see this in coastal islands of the South Pacific (such as the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and Papua New Guinea) and in Southeast Asia (especially in Indonesia and Thailand), where certain communities have developed over time warning systems for early signs of tsunamis, for example. Not because they are listening to CNN, but because they have intimate knowledge of the environment around them.
By being culturally literate and competent, organizations can better understand and integrate these diverse perspectives, ways of seeing and being, by avoiding hierarchical assumptions about whose knowledge holds more value in a technological modernized world. Decolonising narratives does require some cultural humility on the part of those who are used to seeing themselves as the master narrator, the default norm.
For instance, the concept of “pardner” “susu” or “committee” in certain cultures offers a unique to the West, but long-standing and trusted form of collective saving for global majority communities. It is an approach to finance that is based on trust, is uninterested in making a profit and epitomizes self-reliance. Let me provide an example to illustrate this. I recently had a conversation, one might call it a knowledge share seminar with top executives in HSBC Bank Birmingham, England, about just one example of global majority ways of thinking about finance. A “pardner” is a collective way of saving money within a community where no interest is earned, but people collectively save for shared needs. When I was growing up, each week, a group of say, around 20 people saved a specific amount, collected and held by one individual, and each week, one person received the entire ‘draw.’ These days the pardner systems are more likely to operate monthly and electronically, rather than through cash, but the same fundamental principles apply. This system helped individuals like my father and indeed entire communities, who were unable due to racism to obtain bank loans when they first moved to England in the 1950s, to save up for large purchases. It is through this system that my mother and father were able to put down a deposit, in order to purchase a five-bedroomed, three-reception room, Victorian house with a huge garden, when he and my mother worked in factories and hospitals as auxiliaries, respectively, alongside indigenous British people who lived in rented accommodation that they did not own. Some people used systems of pardner to pay down on the ownership of small businesses. This cultural practice exists in many global majority communities across the world, and I remain part of a pardner today as well as accessing banking services in the way that you do.
The realization for HSBC executives was that there are diverse ways of managing finances that don’t always align with the traditional Western banking system. And that just because this collective way of saving sits outside of what they know and understand, it does not indicate, or should not, that persons who have this as an extension to their portfolio pose any higher than acceptable risk within their banking system.
In participation, I suggest encouraging citizens and stakeholders not just to think technologically but to draw on cultural, sometimes indigenous knowledge that is often overlooked or undervalued within our educational systems. These ways of being and doing don’t need to be in competition with one another, they can coexist without hierarchy or posing any threats to one another. They work best where knowledge, autonomy, trust, respect and efficacy are not seen as the preserve of one group. Naturally, drawing lessons from deliberative and inclusive approaches within the global majority can only be beneficial.
