English | Malay/Thai
I identify myself as a mixed-race Londoner. My mother is Malay from Johor with some Thai ancestry, my father is English and from Fulham. They met when they were working in Tesco on Edgware road. When things started to get serious my mother tried to end the relationship because being Muslim she knew she couldn’t marry him. My father then became curious about Islam and started learning more about it until he reverted. They got married 4 years after he became a Muslim. At the age of 8 I moved to Kuala Lumpur with my mother and younger brother. Adjusting to living in Malaysia was very challenging to me. At the age of 18, we decided to move back to London. I always knew I wanted to come back and pursue my degree here. I feel like I’ve had the best of both worlds. I think I realised I was from two different cultural backgrounds when I moved to Malaysia at the age of 8. I looked so different from the general public. It was so different from the multicultural diversity here in London where I didn’t take much notice of people’s races. Whenever I was out with my mother or grandmother, people would ask if I was adopted, or if my mother was my maid. I’d be called ‘White girl’, or ‘Arab’ and ‘foreigner’. Suddenly, my race became everything. I had always been a quiet and reserved child, but all this made it worse. I started to have selective mutism. I do think there is still bias attitudes towards mixed-race people especially from the more traditional cultures and older generations. Somehow it is sometimes deemed as ‘less honourable’ that my mother chose to marry outside of her race, especially a ‘White’ man. However, I do see a change in society and that it has become more and more acceptable in recent times. If I was born again I would want to return exactly the same. I wouldn’t change a thing. I think mixed-race people are the future. Eventually, nearly everyone will be mixed. I think when it comes to uprooting prejudice in society, when people see what we are capable of achieving, we will be seen in a different light. Slowly but surely, with success and doing good in the world, this prejudice will lessen. The more exposure, the better.
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