British | Hong Kong Chinese

Photo credit: provided by Jennie Scott Photography

I say ‘mixed-race’. I don’t use ‘half-‘ or any other terms that can be interpreted as demeaning or patronising, however well-intentioned. To say ‘I’m half-something’ seems to me to deny the other half. I do like the term “dual heritage”, as that suggests the opposite.

My Dad is from Hong Kong. He went to boarding school in the UK at the age of 13, then went to med-school, where he met my Mum (White English). They lived in Hong Kong for a while before I was born, but haven’t been back since. He has a problematic relationship with some of his older family members. His brother has a family in California now, whereas my Dad is completely assimilated into British culture and speaks with a more-or-less Received Pronunciation accent. It’s fair to say that my upbringing has been entirely British.

I grew up to the west of Wolverhampton in the West Midlands. I would describe the area I grew up in as ‘very White’. There was one family that were known simply as ‘the Black family’. To this day I still don’t know whether Black is their surname (I suspect it isn’t). My primary school, however, had a good multicultural mix and the majority of my friends were Hindi or Sikh. Bullying was rare and, as far as I’m aware of, not on race-related. Although no-one else looked like me, and I had no East Asian role models, it never occurred to me that I was anything other than a normal kid.

At secondary school was the first time that I had to come to terms with being a minority. Having never previously identified as such, this was a problem to my teenage self and my godforsaken hormones. Ignoring matters of race is a form of privilege that I was no longer allowed access to, and it was confusing. I am certain that at times I tried too hard to be ‘one of the lads’, especially with the opposite sex. This lack of confidence and existential crisis never seemed to trouble my schoolmates, who seemed to already have their lives planned out. For a long time, therefore, I associated social mobility and high self-esteem with Whiteness. I wasn’t altogether incorrect.

When you’re young, there is an urge to ‘fit in’, to not be noticed. It’s only later in life that you embrace what makes you different. Then, eventually, you don’t define yourself as different at all, because you stop comparing yourself to others. I hope I reach that stage soon.

At University, I studied languages. The culture and literature of other countries and continents is endlessly fascinating to me. Speaking three languages fluently, and several more non-fluently, it is a constant source of chagrin that my Father’s tongue, Cantonese, is ironically not one of them. A harsh-sounding language, whenever he tried to talk to me as a baby, I would immediately assume from the tone that I was being told off and would start to cry. He gave up. After all, when would I ever use it?

Nowadays I study both Cantonese and Mandarin in my free time, although my principal motivation was a professional one: I would get more roles if I spoke the language, they expected me to already speak as a native. Likewise, my study of martial arts: at first a professional decision, and secondly a thoroughly rewarding, educational and exciting endeavor. My kung fu teacher does still defer to me on matters of pronunciation of the specific Cantonese terms though.

I do think that the global rise of the political far-right has had adverse, legitimising effects on ‘everyday racism’, ranging from the tribalism of football stadia to the institutionalised normalisation of anti-immigration rhetoric.

It’s usually when I go back to the West Midlands when I am all too aware of not being white. Usually, this isn’t much more than a “nihao” (pronounced wrong, obviously), but all the same there are very sinister undertones: you don’t belong here. This message is all the more daunting when I am, in fact, from there. I live in East London these days, where I see fewer instances of racism, casual or otherwise. Of course, there are still enough to constitute a problem.

Despite the prevalence of such incidents and worse, I do genuinely believe we are progressing as a society, but there is a long way to go. Maybe I’m a naïve, glass-half-White optimist. Inclusivity and BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) initiatives are now common and correct practices for most UK companies. Of course, this is in itself problematic, alluding as it does to tokenism and to the idea of being black as the ‘standard’ non-White race. But it’s a start.

In my profession as an actor and writer, too, there has been some progress. Movements such as Act for Change have hammered home to employers the manifold advantages of representation, rather than merely being an imposition. The added existence of Equity’s Minority Ethnic Members Committee (of which I am happily a part) also demonstrates the willingness of the industry to continue the conversation. But it is by no means a level-playing field already.

The mixed-race politician Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi wrote that ‘The man of the future will be of mixed-race. Today's races and classes will gradually disappear owing to the vanishing of space, time, and prejudice’. It’s not a simple thing to say what I would like to return as, were I to be born again. But I do hope it’s a part of a diverse and tolerant society, where no-one is valued above another on superficial grounds.