South Indian I British
I really like being mixed-race, but growing up in rural England meant my ‘mixedness’ confused other people and, by default, myself. Until age 14, there was only 1 other non-White person in my entire school. Despite my English accent, I continue to be asked ‘where are you from?’ with the most frequent guesses being Brazil, Turkey or North Africa.
I first went to SW India to visit family aged 7. I loved it so much that I filled a jam jar with a handful of tropical red earth before we got on the plane home. I kept it in my bedroom for years! I feel a deep connection to India and visit often. When I’m there, strangers often address me in Hindi, yet in England I’m rarely seen as ethnically English. I guess this is unsurprising - after all India has 4X the genetic diversity of all the European countries put together.
In the U.K. I’ve noticed that other multi-ethnic people who grew up in the countryside, tend to have had a very different experience to those in towns and cities. It was easy to feel ‘different’ because of the total lack of diversity in rural areas during the 90s & 2000’s. I often felt an undercurrent of ‘casual racism’ but most people were curious rather than malicious. At 6ft 3 I wasn’t an easy target but I was still affected by others’ hostility. As a young kid, a couple of nastier experiences centred around playing football which is why I abruptly lost interest in it, but that’s a story for another time.
As a teen, I got incredibly bored of explaining myself. One guy inexplicably got it in his head that I was ‘from South Africa’. At the time I was fascinated with Nelson Mandella’s idea of a ‘rainbow nation’ - so, rather than correct him, I rolled with it for a bit. Looking back I can see I was insecure about where I was from.
I moved to London after uni in 2012 - an unexpected joy to be somewhere so diverse. This last year, I’ve found myself as an occasional presenter on BBC 1. I’ve come to realise that race is partly a motivation for doing this - it’s about being properly ‘seen'. Ultimately, I love being mixed and I’m now very optimistic about diversity & race in the U.K. We’ve come so far.
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