Irish | Hong Kong Chinese
In the context of the University of Oxford, we hope our names; faces and stories will emphasise that there is a place for everyone at Oxford. According to last year’s admissions data, 700 Oxford undergraduates identify as mixed. In 2016, BAME students accounted for 15.9% of the undergraduate intake. Oxford is diversifying, albeit slowly. We hope to empower mixed heritage students at Oxford and foster a community where they can safely share their own opinions, experiences and stories.
I identify as mixed-White and East Asian, Catholic and pansexual. My Mum is from Hong Kong and my Dad is from Dublin. Most of my challenges are to do with self-identity. As I said before, I still feel mostly White and I think this is to do with the environments I’ve been part of and my Cantonese, which isn’t entirely fluent at the moment. I’d say that the only thing that my environment that plays a part in how I choose a partner is that I wouldn’t want to date someone who’s racist or has ‘preferences’ that involve fetishisation. I did expect Oxford to be very posh, so I was pleasantly surprised that there is a diversity of backgrounds here, although private school students are obviously disproportionately represented (by the way, I’m one too) and very White, which is probably more true that the first. However, it is more diverse than my private secondary school and I’ve confronted my own racial biases and come to term with my mixedness here. In some spaces, Oxford is welcoming and inclusive. But the support for various fascist speakers or the fact that people were willing to defend his ‘right to speak’ for me felt off. On top of that, people have had bad experiences with tutors or porters, based on gender identity, sexuality and race which make me not think this is the case. I’ve definitely become more aware of the fact that I’m mixed-race, given a greater exposure to discussion about race and I’m definitely grateful that I’ve been exposed to that conversation. It’s so much better than the discourse I had previously been exposed to and I never really talked about how being mixed-race is with my parents or siblings. I would argue that mixed-race people aren’t really talked about too much when talking about race, even less mixed-race people who aren’t straight. Moreover, it must be even harder for mixed-race people who aren’t part White and therefore don’t have that White privilege.
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