Spanish | Ghanaian - Paralegal @ The Alan Turing Institute
My Mother is from Spain and my Father is from Ghana. My Dad is Buddhist and went on a Buddhist retreat in southern Spain, where he met my Mother, who was also trying out Buddhism. We never had enough money to visit Ghana as a family, so I did not meet my Ghanaian family until I was 20 years old, when I finally had my own money to go. It was a shock, as it became clear that my Dad had adopted a much more European way of life than his Ghanaian family. Overall my Dad adapted more than my Mum in terms of culture, which led myself and my sister to grow up in a mainly Spanish/European environment without much influence from the Ghanaian side.
Growing up in Spain with an afro was extremely hard. My parents didn’t know how to look after my hair, so from a young age I started straightening my hair just to be able to manage it and to avoid drawing attention to myself. I also did not speak my mind about racist sayings, partly because I was unable to articulate why they bothered me and partly because I did not want to stand out or create confrontation.
I was in an interracial relationship, which broke down during the pandemic, because as my life goals and focus changed my perception of the relationship changed too. My partner was of South Asian origin and his family had never accepted that he was dating a non-Muslim, non-Pakistani woman. I realised that if the relationship were to succeed I would have had to hide, or suppress, many aspects of my personality in front of his family and I was unwilling to do so just to fit in and keep the peace.
I do not feel represented within corporations, either within senior positions or in the general workforce. As a mixed-race woman, sometimes I feel high pressure to out-perform everyone, to be the face of representation or to make it to a senior corporate position within a large company, even though that is not in line with my aspirations. It feels that I am betraying younger girls by denying them of a role model that looks like them and makes them feel like they could achieve the same if they wished.
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