INTRODUCTION
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!By Dr. Ayanna Amoke Balogun
The Racial Liberation Ascension Model (RLAM) began as an idea—a personal construct, a personal model, a framework I built for myself to make sense of the world I was navigating. At the time, it was not intended for publication, replication, or institutional adoption. It was simply a way for me to understand why liberation “work” felt so heavy, so uneven, and so costly to the spirit.
But as I began speaking with folx (educators, parents, organizers, students, community folx) about the barriers we repeatedly encounter in liberation work, I noticed something. I kept returning to the same language. The same patterns. The same phases of awareness, resistance, exhaustion, clarity, and courage. Again and again, I found myself referring back to the model.
So let us be clear about what I mean by “the work”.
Liberation work is the active disruption and dismantling of systems that uphold oppression and its effects. It is not symbolic. It is not performative. It is not simply knowing better. Liberation is both an ideological commitment and a practical option for humanity. It is the belief, and the practice, that our people, as a collective, can be fully interdependent with one another for survivorship and thriving, both within and beyond a capitalistic system.
Quite simply, liberation is existing and thriving on our own terms, by choice.
Liberation is boundless thinking about freedom! Freedom from colonizing practices, freedom from racialized oppression, freedom to live fully in one’s body, culture, intellect, and spirit. It is a God-given right to exist in your skin without limitations on your joy, your brilliance, or your becoming. It is spirit-free living: purpose without apology, growth without permission, community without hierarchy. But either way, the heartbeat is the same: freedom dreaming, boundless thinking, and the insistence that we are meant to live without being managed, handled, minimized, or metabolized by someone else’s worldview or values.
This work lives both inside oppressive ecosystems and outside them. Liberation does not always require physical departure. Sometimes it requires internal refusal. Sometimes it requires strategic separation. Always, it requires clarity.
The Continuum: From Assimilation to Liberation
The Racial Liberation Ascension Model is situated along a continuum of consciousness. On one end is Assimilation. On the other is Liberation.
Assimilation is not freedom. It is the belief that one is free because one has learned how to survive and thrive within systems of whiteness. I believe the antithesis of a free person is a person who believes they are free because they have been fully absorbed within the system of whiteness. When I speak of whiteness, I am not referring to individuals, but to the constellation of policies, practices, and norms across housing, wealth, education, employment, health, and governance that were designed to benefit a few while extracting from many.
Assimilationists, on the opposite end of the conceptual spectrum, often become experts at navigating these systems. They bootstrap. They code-switch. They master proximity. They may even rise. They are content with “tokenism.” But too often, that ascent comes at the cost of identity, integrity, and collective responsibility. This worldview rewards individual success while quietly perpetuating the very systems that harm our people. Some folx, in America and across the diaspora, know too well the intricacies of the oppressors tactics, so as to emulate them which again, inadvertently benefits the oppressive system and perpetuates harm.
I spend very little—and I mean LITTLE—time chasing, debating with, or trying to convince Candace, Clarence, Uncle Ruckus, or Uncle Tom that something is wrong. I have liberation work to do. I do not have the energy to argue with them. This Black Paper is not for them.
In opposition, a liberationist seeks to dismantle colonization, racism, and oppression—not only intellectually, but structurally and communally. It is being a critical thinker around freedom of a people, freedom of oppressive systems, freedom from colonizing practices and tied to the basic knowing that freedom is both a physical, mental, physiological, emotional commitment to the interdependence within a community. Liberationists move from a Western fixation on individualism to an African-centered ethic of Ubuntu: I am because we are. They use their talents, knowledge, and resources to advance the collective. They understand that liberation is never solo work. It is communal labor, sustained by love, accountability, and resistance.
Liberation for a community is an unsaid, yet deeply held, set of principles and values that govern and encourage all within the “village” to depend on one another for basic needs. The ability to fully function without outside help or influence. Many of you will recognize family members at different points along this continuum. Some at the beginning. Some in the middle. And as you journey through this framework, you will not be able to unsee what you see.
Yes, other groups, allies, and co-conspirators can join us on this journey. That has always been the case with liberation because by definition a liberation mindset is universal. But let us be clear: if action does not align publicly, these individuals remain, perhaps trapped, in the earlier phases of the liberation journey. As scripture reminds us, faith without works is dead. The Underground Railroad was not symbolic. Everyone risked something. You were either an abolitionist or you were not. This remains the case centuries later because we have not yet achieved the aspiration for human liberation.
Why a Black Paper
I call this work a Black Paper on purpose.
Not a white paper. Not a policy brief. Not an academic article fighting for space in a journal that was never built with us in mind. A Black Paper is research that remembers its people. It is theory with its shoes on the ground. It is analysis braided with testimony—data braided with drumbeat. It is Black scholarship that refuses to amputate spirit for respectability. It is scholarship that loves us back.
Yes, I have been trained in scholarly practice. I know the rules. I paid for those rules with money and triggers. I took what I needed from that expensive experience and developed my own theories and thoughts. I am not interested in this work being validated or peer-reviewed, because that practice is heavily laced with whiteness. Our knowing has always traveled through story, art, sermon, kitchen table, and hush harbors. Sometimes your gut feels it. Your soul resonates. That knowledge does not need permission to be true.
This does not mean I stand alone. Liberated thinkers are my choir. But I am not building my argument on borrowed bones. I use their work to Amen and Aśe my own.
Read this Black Paper to vibe with me—and to situate a framework that helps you engage folx across the continuum who say they are interested in true liberation. This Black Paper is not here to prove anyone wrong. It is here to help us see clearly. Read it to situate yourself. Read it to name what your spirit already knows. Read it as takeoff. Blackness, like space, is infinite. This journey gives you permission to take up space unapologetically—and to go where no one has told you that you belong.
This is resistance. This is healing. This is love in motion. We are the ones we have been waiting for. Let us learn together, how to rise together and love together.
The Rocket Metaphor: How RLAM Took Form
The Racial Liberation Ascension Model came to me while I was learning about Mae Jemison and rocketry. I did not fully understand the mechanics of ascent, so I did some basic research and it fascinated me. Because some rockets never make it to orbit. Something happens, or does not happen, and the journey becomes catastrophic.
Symbolically speaking, if we are not in pursuit of liberation. if we are not moving toward orbit, our journey can become catastrophic too. Not always loud. Sometimes slow. Sometimes smiling. But catastrophic all the same, because you will never fully exist in your talent and purpose if you remain constrained at a phase never meant to hold you.
I am a conceptual theorist. I need categories to make sense of the world. I recognize patterns in thoughts and actions. And what I observed—mostly among Black people living under racialized conditions—was this: liberation is not a switch you flip. It is an ascension. It has stages. It has pressure points. It requires separation. It demands acceleration. And it ultimately asks for orbit.
Blackness, like space, is infinite. Reading this Black Paper is the takeoff—the lift-off—into the depth of our multidimensional space of liberation. This journey gives you permission to go where no one told you that you belonged—and to take up space when you get there.
The Flight Path: Five Phases of Ascension
The Racial Liberation Ascension Model is not a ladder to climb, nor a finish line to cross. It is a flight path—a living arc that traces how consciousness awakens, fractures, strengthens, and ultimately stabilizes at a higher altitude of responsibility and freedom.
RLAM uses five phases of rocketry to describe racial ascension:
- Ignition & Awareness
- Launch & Enlightenment
- Separation & Isolation
- Liftoff & Acceleration
- Ascension & Orbit
Each phase represents a different relationship to truth, power, community, and self. Together, they form a coherent journey—one that mirrors not only political awakening, but spiritual maturation.
Ignition & Awareness is the spark. It is the moment something refuses to stay buried. A question disrupts a certainty. A lived experience collides with a narrative we were taught to trust. At ignition, people begin to sense that what they were told about race, equity, history, and possibility is incomplete. The fuel is curiosity. The heat is discomfort. Nothing has moved yet—but everything is primed to go.
Launch & Enlightenment is motion. Knowledge begins to accumulate. Language sharpens. Systems become visible. In this phase, people often feel exhilarated and overwhelmed at the same time. Reading expands. Conversations intensify. Injustice is no longer abstract—it is patterned, documented, undeniable. Launch is powerful, but unstable. The vehicle is still heavy with inherited beliefs, social conditioning, and the need for approval. The ascent is real, but gravity still pulls hard.
That pull inevitably leads to Separation & Isolation. This is the most misunderstood phase—and often the most painful. As consciousness deepens, alignment shifts. Relationships change. Spaces once tolerated become intolerable. Silence becomes louder than speech. This is not abandonment; it is discernment. Like shedding stages, the individual must release what can no longer travel with them. Isolation here is not loneliness—it is insulation. It is the quiet necessary to protect the emerging self from premature exposure or collapse.
From that solitude comes Liftoff & Acceleration. In this phase, clarity turns into action. Voice finds courage. Boundaries become policy. People stop merely naming injustice and begin interrupting it. They organize, teach, build, and confront. The work accelerates—not chaotically, but with purpose. This is where leadership becomes visible and costly. Resistance increases because velocity increases. The atmosphere is thinner. The stakes are higher.
Finally, there is Ascension & Orbit—the least dramatic and most disciplined phase of all. Orbit is not constant struggle; it is balance. Here, individuals and institutions learn how to sustain liberation without burning out or burning others. Perspective widens. Ego quiets. The work becomes less reactive and more strategic. From orbit, patterns replace panic. Long arcs replace short wins. Liberation is no longer only personal or local—it is understood as global, interconnected, and intergenerational.
These phases are not rigid boxes. They are mirrors. They are not about superiority; they are about clarity. They do not judge where you are—they help you name it. And no—this journey is not always linear. Life can knock you back. Grief can ground you. New roles can reintroduce fear. Re-entry is not failure. It is physics. RLAM exists so that when you feel disoriented, you are not lost. You have a map. And more importantly—you understand the sky you are moving through.
The Architecture of Each Phase
Each phase follows a consistent structure so the reader is not just inspired, but equipped. The sections are designed to hold both fire and form—spirit and strategy.
1) What You Know
This describes what a person in the phase generally understands. These are not weapons. This is not a judgment model. The goal is to meet folx where they are, so we can accompany them if they are willing. What a person knows shapes how they think, what they tolerate, what they excuse, and what they challenge.
2) What You Do
Action names what the phase looks like in motion—behaviors, decisions, risks, refusals, and commitments. A person at earlier phases will have fewer actions than someone further along, but liberation always demands movement. If you are not acting to further the cause, then at minimum: do not cause harm. Don’t add barriers with your words in spaces that matter. Don’t sabotage the work from inside the room.
3) Research Journey
This section holds the discipline of learning. Liberation work shifts with policy, practice, leadership, and conditions on the ground. So we study. We investigate. We deepen. Not everybody must become an expert in everything, but everybody must be responsible for growth in their sphere of influence—especially around economics/wealth, housing, education, health, and policy.
4) Cultural Memory
Cultural Memory is where the phase reconnects the reader to lineage. This is the section that says: You did not invent this struggle, and you are not the first to survive it. Here we hold the stories, the sayings, the rituals, the songs, the ancestors, the movements, the elders, the local truths, and the global echoes that keep the work honest. Cultural Memory is how we prevent liberation from becoming sterile. It is how we keep the model Black. It reminds us that knowledge is not only in books—it is in barbershops and beauty salons, in hush harbors and freedom schools, in the kitchen and on the porch, in the drum and in the dance, in the “look” your grandmother gave you that meant don’t you dare forget who you are.
5) Coda
The Coda is the closing charge—the seal on the phase. It is where the lesson gets distilled, where the reader is invited to reflect, to practice, and to carry the phase into real life. Coda can also be a space for musical exploration and poetic expression. If Cultural Memory grounds us in what has been, the Coda positions us toward what must be done next. It often holds the simplest truth of the phase—the sentence that stays with you when the book is closed. The Coda is the bridge between reading and doing, between insight and responsibility.
Together, these sections create a rhythm:
understanding → action → deepening → remembering → recommitting.
That is the structure. That is the ascension.
How This Seven-Part Black Paper Is Being Released
This Black Paper is published exclusively in Black Voice News over the course of this historic Black History Month.
- Section One is this introduction.
- Sections Two through Six describe the five phases.
- Section Seven closes my thoughts and offers scenarios to apply the model—because the goal is not to memorize language, but to practice freedom.
This is not a peer-reviewed scholarly work, and it should not be analyzed as such. If nothing else, this working model, written by a scholar, acts as a way for me to make sense of the world: the colonized one, the racially charged impacted one, and the free one.
It is my deepest hope that RLAM brings clarity—so we can recognize, develop, and nurture all who are willing to journey toward liberation, until we become a community in orbit: thriving, promising, and healed. Because once we unwrap the complicated layers and nuances of our current reality, we are truly seeking love, love that sees beauty in complexity, love that understands we take nothing away from each other by honoring each other, love that screams, God gave us everything we need to coexist. We are the ones we have been waiting for. Let us learn together, how to rise.