Lens 4 of the Caribbean Diaspora Experience Model (CDEM) – Your Cultural Identity Will Shift
A few months ago I introduced the Caribbean Diaspora Experience Model™ (CDEM), a new way to understand how our Caribbean identity forms, evolves, and expresses itself in the diaspora. Created through real-life experiences, this model provides the language many have been missing to describe their complex cultural journeys. At the heart of CDEM are six interconnected lenses that help individuals understand their relationship with Caribbean culture.
The Six Lenses of CDEM
Here’s a brief overview:
- Where You Start Shapes the Journey: Whether you migrated as an adult or were born in the diaspora, your connection to Caribbean culture starts somewhere. That starting point matters.
- Where You Live + What You Seek = How You Connect: Living in Brooklyn versus Milwaukee isn’t just geography, it’s a different experience of Caribbean culture. Where you live + your intention shapes your connection.
- Cultural Anchors Keep Us Rooted: Food, music, language, celebrations, spirituality, and family. These are the touch points that carry memory and transmit knowledge.
- Your Identity Will Shift, That’s the Point: As we age, our relationship with culture evolves. It’s not loss, it’s recalibration.
- Cultural Identity Influences How We Show Up at Work: Our work ethic, ambition, and how we navigate professional spaces are all shaped by cultural values.
- You’re Not Either/Or, You’re Both/And: Being fully Caribbean and fully American/Canadian/British at the same time is not a contradiction, it’s our strength.
Lens 4: Your Cultural Identity Will Shift – That’s the Point
In this episode I dive deeper into Lens 4 of the Caribbean Diaspora Experience Model (CDEM): Your Cultural Identity Will Shift – That’s the Point as well as the Sub-Lens: How You Show Identity Changes Too.
Our cultural authenticity does not disappear when you stop knowing the latest song or the latest dance move; it reshapes itself around the life you are living now. Many of us in the Caribbean diaspora may feel that uneasy feeling of being out of the loop. We remember those years when we knew latest. Then, one day, the pace changes. That shift is culture doing what it must to survive: evolve with us as we grow.
There is also the matter of how we show identity. Some of us learned to quiet our accents for survival, code switch at work, and then switch back when with friends and family. Others lead with identity in every room. While others move depending on when or where.
Our cultural identity is meant to shift. What often feels like disconnection is actually evolution. As we grow older, our relationship to cultural anchors like music, language, food, and celebration changes in depth and expression.
Rather than measuring cultural belonging by how current we are, this episode invites listeners to consider how they are carrying culture differently now. Whether through cooking, teaching, documenting family history, or building platforms that honor heritage, evolution is not loss. It is continuity.
About Caribbean Diaspora Experience Model (CDEM)
The Caribbean Diaspora Experience Model (CDEM) isn’t an academic theory. It’s a reflection of real-life stories: mine, my family’s, my friends and stories heard through the podcast. It’s grounded in observation, personal growth, and years of conversations in our community.
I created this model not just to help me understand myself, but to help us understand each other better. My hope is that it gives you language to articulate your experience, connect across generations, and build cultural confidence wherever you are in the diaspora.
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