English/Scottish | Bajan

Photo credit: provided by subject

I identify as mixed heritage; Black Caribbean and White English and Scottish. I am heterosexual and single. I am also spiritual. My Mother is from Barbados; she is Afro-Caribbean. I wish I knew where her ancestors came from in Africa though. My postal DNA test suggests I'm a third Nigerian. It makes me equally proud and sad to think that I might have distant relatives in West Africa that I'll never know. I'm also a third Scottish. My Dad was born in the West Midlands, England, but his father was born in Glasgow and grew up in the notorious slum, the Gorbals. He migrated to Birmingham to join the Royal Airforce for which he fought in WWII as a flight engineer for the controversial Bomber Command.

My Dad's brother was married to my Mom's sister and in the early days of their courtship, my Mom started visiting her sister who was living at my Dad's family home at the time. Dad was in his twenties and his Mother had recently died in a car crash so he and his Father and brothers were all living together in the same house. My Auntie was kind of taking care of them all. They'd bought a snooker table for the living room and used to have weekend-long parties, drinking, smoking cannabis and listening to records. Mom would stay over sometimes and that's when her and Dad started to develop feelings for one another.

Within about a year, they got married in a very humble civil service on a snowy day in December. They didn't invite anyone to the wedding, but my Dad's work friend found out about it and turned up with his young family to congratulate them outside the registry office. After a couple of celebratory drinks back at the house, Dad went off to work to do his night shift, like it was a normal day. Mom and Dad have been married for 39 years. Now, my Dad has terminal lung cancer (he smokes, a lot!), diagnosed just before the pandemic, and Mom is taking care of him full time. He was told he only had weeks to live, but he's still here, one year on, fighting it. Mom's devotion to him is heroic.

My Dad's culture is whisky and music, pretty much. Those are his passions in life! And in his younger years, motorbikes. Whisky, music and the roar of the bike engine were a staple of my childhood! Sadly, Mom was estranged from her family in the UK. When she was 'sent for' as a child, she had an incredibly difficult time with them. They weren't very nice to her, it's fair to say. So, the Caribbean side of my identity is less pronounced than most mixed-race people I know with a Caribbean parent. Saying that, Mom's accent is distinctly Bajan-Brummie and she still cooks Bajan cuisine which I absolutely LOVE to eat. Dishes like souse, cou-cou, and coconut bread. Yum! This is one of the only ways Mom has been able to keep her Bajan identity alive after her troubled adolescence and separation from her Bajan family.

Lately, I've really been struggling to understand why I've only had White boyfriends and predominantly White friends throughout my life. I know I'm not racist, but I've been wondering if there's some innate racial bias in my choices. Then again, I've been single for about 10 years now and if I think back to my early relationships, I know that they very much happened randomly and were indicative of where I lived and who I was surrounded by. For example, my first boyfriend at 14 (who I was with for 3 years) was a White boy from my school, a majority White school at the time. I think I'm evolving to understand that whoever I end up with now must be someone who understands the complexities of my identity and the more I think about it, the more I believe that person will probably have to be a man with a non-White or mixed ethnicity. Then again, I'm not ruling anyone out based on ethnicity because I would like to think that I will meet exactly the right life-partner at exactly the right time, no matter what their heritage.

All of my adult life, I have felt estranged from the Black side of my identity. I have struggled to feel a sense of belonging in Black spaces even though I have, at times, so desperately wanted to feel it. So, to an extent, I think I have retreated into the safety and comfort of my perceived Whiteness. I think I have probably and unconsciously adopted the codes of behaviour that have made me more palatable to White people. It's uncomfortable to think that I have been White-passing, but I probably have to live up to the fact that I may, at different points in my life, have avoided identifying as Black and that I may have tried to compensate for this by asserting my affinity with 'Blackness' through academia and soft activism, like studying Caribbean women's writing and poetry for my MA, for example, or starting the first Afro-Ecuadorian Day at the British school that I taught at in Ecuador.

I am only really just growing into my Black identity and becoming more confident in claiming Blackness on a personal and political level, but I am carrying a lot of guilt around about this, which I'm not sure is fair on myself. The thing is, I don’t see myself as Black. I see myself and was raised as mixed-race, but this is way more challenging for other people to understand, for me to understand even. Society dictates that it's far more acceptable to be one or the other.

I think things have changed quite dramatically and people are much more in tune with what it means to have multiple identities now, but it's still difficult and as long as society is divided along racial lines and identity is thought of in terms of binaries, it will always be a challenge. I recently started reaching out to other mixed-race people (which is why I love mixedracefaces!) and have had some really in-depth conversations with a woman whose mixed-race daughter has started asking her difficult questions about her identity.

I feel very proud of my mixed-race heritage. I feel proud to be the daughter of two 'tribes' of people; the Celts and the enslaved Africans of Barbados, who beat all the odds and made it possible for me to exist.

There have been difficulties along the way, but I LOVE having a Black mother and a White father. I am humbled by the fact that they are still together, still in love. I feel like I am the product of British colonialism and whether Britain likes it or not, I exist. I've been an English teacher for over 10 years and I am fully aware of the deficits in the education system in relation to diversity, British colonial history and the issue of race. I've recently applied for a job with The Black Curriculum (fingers crossed for me!) as I feel strongly that I want to be part of the change that needs to happen in this country. I'm 38 years old and I'm still learning things today about British history (some like to say black British history but to me it's just British) that I was never taught in university, let alone school.

I have been to Barbados about 6 or 7 times. The last time was on my own and I had the most amazing time. It was a profoundly connecting experience. I have a lot of cousins there still and the island feels like it's part of me. My ancestors must have suffered greatly there and I will never forget this, but they also survived, and I am so proud of their resilience. When I was about 10, Dad took me on a road trip around Scotland. The Scottish highlands and its folk culture had always been part of my imagination through the songs Dad played at home, but this was the first time I had really experienced the place for myself. I guess dad wanted to show me how beautiful it is. I have such fond memories of that trip. The B&Bs we stayed at, the minestrone soup, the long drives through the mountain drizzle.

My identity is always evolving and I am on the journey of trying to make sense of it all. Reading about other people's experiences and perspectives on it is a first for me and it is incredibly comforting to know that I'm not alone. I've decided to try to write about it in the hope that I will help someone else out there feel less alone too.

If I had the opportunity to be reborn I would like to return more confident in myself. I don't have regrets but I know that had I been more confident in who I was, I might have already become the leader I aspire to be now.

During the pandemic I have been practising daily yoga, meditation, mindful journaling, connecting with friends and like minded communities online, watching TV, cycling and dancing. I’m taking each day at a time.