Jamaican/English | French

Photo credit: provided by subject

Walking away from a recent conference focusing on the emotional health and wellbeing of African Youth. I feel it, the sense of unease, swiftly followed by the confusion and then as if on cue come the familiar ruminations. 

• Should I have attended? 

• Can I really engage with the issues faced by African Youth? 

• Am I just too light-skinned to meaningfully participate? 

• Would my words have been more readily accepted if Calvin had spoken them? 

• Do I really look European? 

• Why can some people ‘see it’ and others can't? 

The Conference had played out as situations like these always seem to. There had been a few bemused smiles when I walked in late and found my seat. I began thinking that perhaps this was not the ‘right’ forum for me. Quickly firing off a message to my brother to articulate the unease that had begun to stir within my mixed-up soul. ‘I don’t think I belong here’ I wrote, ‘I wish this was a day I could borrow your skin colour’. His response, as has always been the case, and for which I become ever more grateful as I grow older was, ‘own it’. I often think that over the years I have used him as a sort of judge and jury for my mixed-race-ness. If he with his Brown skin thinks that I belong then it’s one, albeit biased, Brown person who accepts my need to be present in this room. 

I begin to run through the usual internal justifications that always feel necessary when I am in a situation where my racial identity feels like the elephant in the room. It is half my history too! I become silently indignant, despite the fact that not one person present has yet to make me feel that I don’t deserve a seat at the table. It is my own enduring sense of uncomfortableness within my own skin, which provides the fuel to this exhausting internal inferno that has been raging since I first heard the utterance ‘but you don’t even look mixed-race’. Back in the present, I continue to myself, I will not allow myself to feel like I do not belong here. Yes, I am very light skinned, White passing if you prefer, but that does not mean ‘blackness’, or the lack of it, has not dominated and permeated my existence to such an extent that it has created a constant yearning for knowledge, for understanding, for a place. 

Before I can completely fall down the racial rabbit hole, I am brought back into the present. Smiling faces welcome me and I am encouraged to discuss what I have missed with the speaker during the break. As I receive a swift run-through of the morning’s topic of conversation, the biracial Identity model is mentioned. This is it, I think to myself, my in. I quickly remark ‘like me’, it feels important to put it out there now, that I am mixed, that I have a reason for being here. It is accepted and moved past, and I breathe a sigh of relief. No questions, no bemused look, no retort of ‘Really?’ I didn’t need to bring out the family album as pictorial proof of my assertion. Today is a good day. It doesn’t last. At the end of what was an exceptionally informative day an older African gentleman politely informs me that as a European looking woman this is not the forum for me to speak. I continue the pretence of actively listening, all the while lost in my own battle of ‘I told you so’, stifling the desire to scream at the top of my lungs, where is my forum? Where can I speak? Where do I belong? A sense of otherness has pervaded my being for as long as I can remember. 

My complexion, culture, and creation of identity have, at times, felt like a battle within my soul. I embody both the oppressed and the oppressor. I am simultaneously one and the other. The irony of being born with the surname of Gray is not lost on me; I am both a literal and figurative representation of the word. I am the in-between, the smudged edges of both sides of a fraught history between black and White. It is at this point that context becomes important, for our identity is as much constructed outside our home as it is within it. I grew up on a small island with a relatively homogenous White population. My parent’s mixed-race relationship was an intrigue, a curiosity, and at times, a threat to the status quo. A lack of cultural diversity had resulted in fixed viewpoints around acceptability, and it became clear as I grew older that many in my hometown viewed our family as unacceptable. Our diversity was uncomfortable to comprehend, and lead to simplistic assertions that it ‘just wasn’t right’. 

What exactly wasn’t right about it was never divulged or discussed, it appeared to me to be a ‘universal truth’ of which I was not privy to, and yet had somehow fallen foul of. It should be noted that there were those who were quick to point out that all was not lost; my light-skinned complexion was identified as a sort of saving grace, an opportunity to disregard the part of my culture that made others uncomfortable. My ‘Whiteness’ was presented like a gift, a chance to disentangle myself from the complexities of a mixed-race identity and simply present myself as White. As a young child, this served to produce a tidal wave of anger and confusion. 

Why on earth would I present myself as something other than what I am, and why do people keep saying it like my complexion has resulted in me winning mixed-race monopoly and securing a get out of jail free card. What made it all the more confusing was the contrast presented by my sibling. My older brother has Brown skin; he looks more typically ‘mixed’ than I do. His complexion is expected, not celebrated, but expected from the union of my parents. I am the anomaly, the curiosity that leads to remarks at the school gates about my ‘real parents’. What started with small-minded mutterings grew into real-life racism as we got older. I remember the first time the ‘n’ word entered our lives, the way it produced a stirring within our household when my brother came home and informed our parents that he had been at the receiving end of it. I also remember the way it unconsciously divided our family that day. 

Only one of my parents was best placed to explain the situation and the emotions that spewed from it. While my mother provided comfort and soothing despite her own heartbreak at the injustice served upon her children, my father at once sat both of us down and explained all the reasons why that word, that one word, had the ability to invoke a plethora of emotions in a person. The strange way in which despite neither of us knowing what it meant prior to this moment, upon hearing it, unconsciously knowing that it was somehow venomous and spat out with such force that its impact was intended to be both physically and emotionally wounding. A history lesson ensued that day, one that I am forever grateful to my father for providing, on that day, and every day since. An understanding of who and what we are was imparted, an understanding that while others would likely seek to make us feel ashamed of our mixed-race culture and heritage (insert history), we should always feel immensely proud of who and what we are. That one moment proved pivotal to my cultural identity, and the confusion that surrounded it. For I had to acknowledge that the word was not aimed at me. I was not the intended recipient of its barbarism and ability to wound, and yet I was wounded. 

My pain was multifaceted, first and foremost was the pain I felt for my brother, my sibling, a part of me. That he had experienced the worst of humanity at such a young age, forced to endure an onslaught of racial slurs whilst struggling to understand their history, connotations and relevance to his being. Pain that a word could carry so much power over another human being, could at once cut their legs from under them and make them feel like their once unassuming existence was now fraught with complexity, confusion and anger. And finally, pain that it wasn’t me. Why had I not been included? In a perverse way I wanted to be targeted too, so we could stand together in this defining moment of racial identity. And yet, I had somehow been relegated to the position of bystander. My appearance did not warrant a verbal attack, I was not Brown enough to be considered a threat to the antiquated views of those who perceived Brown to mean wrong. This would not be the only time racism would permeate our family home. Its presence in our lives was like an impending thunderstorm, stirring up everything around it, making the world seem darker and more imposing and having the ability to shake the foundations of our home to their very core. I spoke earlier about the unconscious divide that ensued from the experience of racism towards our family; my mother often wasn’t the person we turned to in our moments of racial confusion because whilst we were in no doubt about her fierce love for us, and her desire to protect us from the cruelties of the world at all costs, it was acknowledged that sympathy was not the same as empathy. 

As a White parent in a mixed-race family, it is extremely difficult to tell your child that you understand their emotions in relation to their racial-identity. The reality is, you don’t. My mother fell in love with a man and had children with him, she confesses to being naïve about the impact this would have on her life, and on her children’s lives. To be thrust into a racial battle you have never been prepared for can be an affront to everything you thought you knew about the world. My mother talks of moments during her pregnancies when she was informed that we would ‘not be right’ that there was something fundamentally wrong in ‘mixing blood’. As a woman of immense personal strength, she is a testament to our inherited strong-willed nature in that, for the most part, she refused to allow such utterances to detract from the joy of having and raising children. However, my mother’s colour-blindness is now recognisable White privilege, something she was completely unaware of until her choices resulted in the loss of such privilege from some quarters within her community. To suddenly be the target of bemused looks at best, and personal attacks at worst, simply for loving a man who is perceived as different makes you realise that race matters. 

The day that our neighbour verbally attacked my brother for tying his shoelace on her corridor is a particularly poignant part of our shared family history. Launching into what had now become a somewhat painfully familiar racial diatribe, which seemed to spill out of people’s mouths with such ease that it gave the impression they had been silently waiting their turn to verbalise their contempt at our very presence, my brother retreated into the flat. Upon hearing what had happened, my mother at once flew out the front door and down the stairs, determined that we would not be made to feel unsafe in our own community. The end result of knocking on this woman’s door to confront her despicable behaviour towards a child, ended with my mother returning back upstairs with a broken nose. It was yet another attack on my family where I was not the target, and yet the pain and suffering resulting from it served only to make me more sensitive to my cultural identity. 

How could it be the source of such hatred, and yet be unseen when I stepped away from my father and brother. How was it that upon walking away from them I could almost instantly be racialised as White and experience a wholly positive reception from the same people who wouldn’t hesitate to discriminate against my father. And yet whether accepted or not, I was still estranged from them. For I carried an understanding of my culture and my heritage, my ancestral line stirred within my soul providing an invisible hand, softly placed on my shoulder, guiding the formation of my racial identity. It is difficult to acknowledge that you are often viewed and accepted as part of a group, which you know, has some members that would instantly revoke the invitation where your skin colour matches your internal identity. As I grew older, I attempted to fuse both elements of my identity together into a meaningful whole. I spoke often of my mixed-race heritage, it felt fundamentally important for it to be acknowledged by those around me. Whether it appeared visible to them or not, it was mine and I would not allow myself to drift into the grey, to feel racially invisible like there was a thick fog covering my identity. For the most part my assertion was met with bemused looks and a strange curiosity.

With age comes deeper introspection and self-reflection of my mixed-race identity, necessary for my emotional wellbeing and the creation of a positive self-identity that is owned by me and me alone. I no longer feel the need to announce my identity in all social situations as I once did, out of concern that if I didn’t ‘out myself’ I would be incorrectly racialised. Continually fighting to be seen in the context of my black heritage had left me in a constant state of show and tell that was becoming exhausting, and perhaps worse was provoking feelings of dissatisfaction with my complexion, and sense of self. 

I have become far more accepting of my whole self, and the uniqueness of my appearance and my experience. I have learnt how to use the white passing privilege I possess to become the strongest, and very often most outspoken ally I can be for the black community. I speak with a ferocious passion and commitment to diversity, inclusion and intersectionality. I look people square in the eye when I challenge their illogical beliefs, systems and processes that result in racial discrimination, stereotyping and the withholding of opportunity for racial and ethnic minorities. Because I am speaking for my family and my community, whether it is seen in the eye of the beholder or not.