British | Ghanaian
My Mum is from Ghana (Accra) and my Dad from the UK (Hull). Nearly as long as I could remember I knew I was mixed-race. There weren’t many Black children at my school, a lot of White and Asian but it was only me & my brothers at the first primary school I went to who were ‘Black’. I remember being quite culturally aware of the differences between me and other children even though my Mum had been living in the UK for at least 10 years by the point I had gone to school. White people label me as ‘Black’, Black people label me as ‘White’. At University I became more culturally aware, I was tired of people telling me my race. At the same time I do not want to distance myself from the Black struggle. I have few Black friends and would generally say that I am about 30% Black /70% White culturally (instead of being the ‘perfect’ 50/50.) This is because I swim, I have done since I was 8 and have been to many different swimming clubs and programs which have all been about 95% White in total. I genuinely think that if I did not swim I would be more 50/50 because at school I was leaning towards a ‘Black group’ of friends before I moved to another school gaining a scholarship for swimming which had about 3 Black people in it. I definitely think there are bias attitudes towards mixed-race people, it comes from both sides of my background. I have received dirty looks from Black women who saw I was with a White man and I have received racist comments from White men. The issue with mixed-race people is they’re seen as a result of a fetish and never fully accepted into either social group, (I will always be a Black person in the wider society, but I do not feel I will ever be a Black person to Black people). I have seen things on twitter from Black people and likes about mixed-race people being an annoyance or the result of a White woman’s fetish. This reduces a huge group of people down to a tiny, disgusting stereotype. If I had the opportunity to be reborn I couldn’t imagine being a different me in a different place, I’d return as I am because I like my race and its mixes.
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