Italian | Mauritian
Before moving to London I was completely unaware of the significance of my mixed-race-ness. After a few years of being in London, my awareness of such began to unravel and my identity was brought to the surface in the form of questions from others and confusion from myself. As a child I didn’t really see a significance in the relationship between how I looked and how I acted. I believe that much of the recent change in outlook has been due to people expecting certain behaviours from me due to the way I look, but then me reacting in a different way due to my different values.
I'm very proud of everything that I am and often refuse to hide or pretend to be anything else. I was born and raised in the UK so I speak and dress as a typical British man, but my physical appearance suggests otherwise (i.e. skin colour and hair). When I moved to London from Essex at the age of 18 I noticed a great difference in values between myself and my White friends. Particularly when it came to social interactions and participation. This didn’t lead to me hiding who I was but perhaps questioning who I really identified with. I believe that my parents' culture has instilled many different values in me that perhaps wouldn’t be present in an English, White household so this makes me hold my tongue when it comes to discussing values and intentions.
A challenge I have faced in recent years is people saying I’m 'basically White'. As you can imagine, this is quite a damaging thing to hear as it neglects 50% of my heritage and ignores the ties I have with Mauritian culture. It reduces me to assumptions of my character brought about by the way I have acclimated to society around me. I believe I have a unique and empathetic perspective of both White and Black peoples culture. Being raised by a strong Black woman means I am highly malleable within different societies. My broad range of cultural awareness makes it easy to move between social groups.
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