English | Sri Lankan
My parents have shared so many stories about what it’s been like for them as a mixed-race couple. As a young couple in the late 80s/early 90s they used to get stopped and searched in their car on a Saturday night when they went out. When they revealed the car was in fact his, the White policemen would leer through the windows at my Mum and ask why she was in a car with my Dad, of course using racial slurs. This happened every week for a number of years.
Once my parents had me, they and I have so many memories of confusion and hostility from people. My Mum used to take me to the park and women would ask her what it was like nannying me; they’d also assume I was a lot older than I was, and would scold my Mum about my perceived underdevelopment for my age. People never understood my identity when I was with one of my parents; only when we were out as a three did we make sense to others.
I’d love to connect more with my cultural heritage but balancing this with my queer identity feels really hard. It feels like returning to Sri Lanka or connecting with extended family would mean having to come out in a very hostile environment. Queerness is still punishable by death in Sri Lanka and this knowledge makes me feel further still from being accepted by this side of my heritage. At the same time I know that homophobia was a colonial imposition and I’d love to connect with queer communities in Sri Lanka.
I did History at university but was never able to learn about the history of colonisation that has directly led to my existence. In response I got involved in decolonial and anti-racist student activism. I’ve followed that path in my career and mainly do decolonisation work in higher education today. Because of my work I am very clear about my identity and a lot of mixed people I’ve interacted with have talked to me about how rare and valuable representation is. I feel like one of the biggest struggles of being mixed is that it’s really rare to find someone who actually has the same ethnicity as you, but I have found such kinship with mixed friends and like to think we form a community of our own.
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