British | Indian - Senior Research Software Engineer @ The Alan Turing Institute
My Mother moved to the UK when she was 7. She and her sisters spent much of the next few years living apart from their parents. Culturally I think she identified more with the UK than with India, my exposure to Indian culture came through my Grandparents. I was proud of my mixed-race heritage growing up and I still am. As my Indian Grandparents moved to the UK when my Mother was still a child, all of my close family have always been in the UK. Because of this, there aren’t many traditions that I or the Indian side of my family follow apart from a universal interest in cricket. I have visited India once, on a work trip, but as this only lasted a week I didn’t have a chance to see anywhere apart from Mumbai. I’d like to go back but I think it would essentially be as a tourist since I don’t think there are many family members who remember anything about my Grandparents or my Mother and aunts beyond their names.
I was one of the few non-White students at my school and so whenever I was insulted or bullied (which was rare) it was usually on the basis of skin colour. I don't think I've ever been labelled as mixed-race, people normally assume that I'm one or the other.
Being mixed-race lets you define your own identity as whatever mixture of your heritages you choose. This can be a very liberating situation. Never deliberately, but many people assume that I am White-British and I usually don't make the effort to correct them. I suppose it’s because I don’t want to make people feel awkward about having their assumptions challenged.
My organisation has quite a few mixed-race people (although I wouldn't be able to put an exact number on how many). I don't think many of my colleagues or senior staff are aware of my specific heritage in the same way that I am not aware of theirs. My workplace generally does a good job of making space for people to discuss their heritage - I heard about @mixedracefaces through them for example.
Sign up to Patreon or Subscribe to our website to read more