176 pages
244 x 170mm
ISBN-13: 978 1 85856 397 8
July 2007

This book draws on first-person action research to provide a cultural analysis of Black experience in Britain. The author uses her personal experience of working with the racial confusion with which she lived until she decided to engage with what it means to be black, instead of avoiding and denying it. Her research takes her back in time to a shared history of slavery and colonisation with the white British; outwards to her experiences in white British society; and inwards to explore the psychological costs of her long silence.

The outcome is a book which offers a visionary and futuristic view of how whites and blacks can begin to work with the visible and invisible legacies of their shared histories towards a better world, and guides readers towards the goal of conscious bicultural competence. It explores the experience of members of the African Diaspora in Britain and across the world today, providing important insights into many of the social problems they face in contemporary society, such as the widely espoused underachievement of black boys in the British school system.

The book is an important text for understanding black and white relationships across the world - an essential dimension of global social process. It is essential reading for teachers, educators and policy makers, teacher trainers, parents and anyone - black or white - who wants to understand how social inequality is maintained. And it is especially timely in the year marking the 200th anniversary of the legal abolition of the slave trade.
Dr Gloria Gordon is an organisational analysis specialist at London South Bank University, and a 2002 National Teaching Fellowship Scheme Award-holder and Research Fellow. She is pioneering the 'Free Within Ourselves' Academically-Based Community Service Research Project, with a strategic focus on the British African-Caribbean Community.