British/Indian | German/ (Cuban) American
My mum is British and Indian; my Dad is German and (Cuban) American. I felt ambivalent about recognizing myself as mixed myself for a long time, for various reasons. Who or what defines it? Being mixed is in itself of course such a mixed category; it means different things in different contexts and is experienced in different ways. It’s a question that has been with me for a long time on some level, mostly because of the varied stories I’d hear as a child and the conversations we’d have. My Mother would recount her experiences of arriving in England as a teenager in the 1960s, for example, including the racism she experienced, and because she worked from on initiatives to decolonize the curriculum from the 1980s, that was a central part of her life and ours. I think how you experience being mixed depends on who you are, and I am lucky. The only negative for me has been that, when they identify me as mixed, some people seem to feel uncomfortable and either erase or otherwise over-emphasise/exoticise that aspect of me, from, ‘but you’re so White’, to ‘you’re pretty because your Mum isn’t White’; ‘you and x are both mixed-race, so you should get on’. The latter ones are probably more obviously negative. But in the former case, it’s interesting how, when people are determined to define me as not being mixed, it sometimes has the opposite effect; that they feel the need to assert this and comment seems to attest to the fact that they can’t actually read or place my identity as easily as they’d like to. If you take something for granted, or don’t see it on some level, I’m not sure you need to try to actively mark it out in this way. A positive has perhaps been that I’ve always thought of identity, especially national identity, as being formed through multiple and often mixed lives, stories and worlds. I try not to make assumptions about other people’s backgrounds, but at the same time it’s perhaps meant I’ve always been interested in hearing about those different stories that shape their identities and lives. If I had the opportunity to be reborn I think I’d like to return as I am!
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