British | Ugandan
I identify as White British / Ugandan Asian, agnostic (but with exposure to Catholicism and Islam growing up). My mum is White British (born with the surname ‘White’ which amuses us greatly) and grew up in Suffolk as one of 6 siblings in a relatively Catholic family. My dad is Ugandan Asian, he and his two brothers were born in Kampala but lived in Mumbai for a few years before moving back to Uganda. His parents grew up in India and South Africa, so in spite of being completely ethnically Indian, there’s a strong feeling of connection with Africa on Dad’s side of the family. I think I was probably about 11 (around the time of 9/11) when I properly realised that I wasn’t completely White. It was always slightly annoying when people described me as ‘the Asian girl’, because that’s just not how I thought of myself. Being mixed as a young person was tough because there was something that made me and my sisters different and when you’re growing up, you just want to be the same as everyone else. Now, I embrace being mixed, I’m proud of my complicated and sometimes confusing heritage. I love subverting people’s expectations, we’re ethnically Indian but nationality wise we’re two generations African, we’re also Muslim and Catholic. I would say that there’s a lot of ignorance; people tend to read you as the darkest part of your mix, which I found particularly hard as I identified more with the lightest side of my mix. I remember a conversation from my early twenties where a (White) friend was marrying a Trinidadian guy and she was asked by a friend if they had to be careful when they had children because two races mixing might result in ‘genetic diseases’ or ‘mutations.’ I was pretty shocked that people actually thought that about me, when scientifically, a wider gene pool tends to mean that you’re healthier on the whole. Overall, I think being mixed is a hugely positive thing. There are more of us, with increasingly interesting mixes and backgrounds, particularly in London. I think I would struggle in other less multicultural areas and I take a lot of the open dialogue about race that I am able to have for granted.
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