English | Nigerian
I would describe myself as mixed-race, straight and an atheist. My Mum was born in Lagos, Nigeria and, as the eldest of thirteen children, was sent to England to go to school when she was only four years old. She ended up attending Homerton teachers training college in Cambridge which is where she met my Dad who was studying maths. My Dad was born in South Shields and was brought up in Leeds and then Surrey. My Mum always says the first time she ever got properly drunk at a party was the night she met my Dad, she only recognised him the next day when he came to the college for tea because of the terrible colours he was wearing (my Dad is colour blind) – mustard, purple and orange. They were married in 1972 and are still together forty-seven years later.
My Mum is culturally very British. She’s been to school here since the age of four and families were paid to look after her most school holidays. She didn’t go home very often so doesn’t have a strong connection with Nigerian culture and barely knew a lot of her younger siblings. Her family later moved to London from Lagos when she was in her early teens. She was disowned by her family for marrying my Dad because he was White and English, they withheld her passport and birth certificate from her so she nearly got deported back to Nigeria, a country she hadn’t visited since she was a child. As a result, my brother and I didn’t have any connection with my Mum’s family or Nigerian culture growing up. Her parents got in touch with us when I was about 14 and we met them a few times along with some of my Mum’s brothers and sisters but it was like meeting total strangers who wanted to behave like close family. The relationships were always strained and they never apologised to my Mum for the stress and hurt they put her through. After a few years it got to the point where we broke off contact and I’ve not seen them since. For me my Dad’s parents were always Grandma and Grandad and were in our lives from the day we were born. In contrast to my Mum’s parents, my Dad’s family were very accepting, in fact both my Dad and his brother married non-White women so initially all us cousins were mixed-race. The only culture I was brought up with was British and that felt like it belonged equally to both my parents.
One of the things I like about living in Newham now is how diverse the population is and how mixed families and social groups are, interracial relationships are very common and from my viewpoint they seem very accepted. I took my six-week-old son to his first swim class and half the babies in the group were mixed race. In contrast, growing up in Surrey, I only ever saw very few non-White families and my brother and I were two of a handful of BAME students in a school of a thousand. I was aware that my family was different but I never saw it in a negative way – although it would often surprise me that kids would assume my Dad was Black (they knew my Mum was as she taught at the school). There were times on holiday in France where people would just assume my Mum, brother and I didn’t belong with my Dad. My Mum used to joke we were the only Blacks in the village. I think it’s very different now for myself and my brother, both of us are in mixed-race relationships and that doesn’t feel odd or unusual in London. I’m also very aware that it’s much more common to see mixed-race couples and families on TV and in UK culture which was not the case for my parent’s generation.
Growing up in Surrey I’m sure it influenced my choice of partner. I remember finding it strange at school that people would often assume I would only date a guy if he was Black, especially as aside from my brother there was only one other Black guy at the school. When I did engage with online dating I would generally only get approached by Black guys. In contrast I’ve generally been more attracted to White guys and it’s not surprising my partner of ten years is White and very British, that’s definitely been influenced by my upbringing.
One of the biggest positives of being mixed-race has been travelling. I have more of my Dad’s English facial features and combined with my skin colour people can’t quite place me abroad, but they usually want me to be from somewhere near them. Everyone in South America assumed I was Brazilian, as long as I didn’t say more than a few words in Portuguese. In Morocco and Egypt, they thought I was from somewhere in. North Africa and were convinced my brother was Egyptian. In India they thought someone in my family was Indian, even in South East Asia people thought I might have Cambodian ancestry. It meant I got less hassle than a lot of other travellers and it was lovely that people felt I belonged in some way. I’ve often described myself as a cultural chameleon, if I dress the right way in lots of countries I’ve been able to almost blend in with the locals.
I went to Oxford University in the late 1990s and although it’s not a diverse university I had a very positive experience there. I think a big part of that was compared to where I grew up Oxford felt like a continuation of the White dominated spaces I was used to, so I never felt isolated or different because it just felt very normal. In fact if anything there was more diversity in the student population than at home.
Most of the challenges I’ve faced have been the small everyday assumptions, comments and prejudices. When I was small my ballet teachers and gym teachers kept trying to discourage my Mum, saying I didn’t have the ‘physique’ to be a good dancer or gymnast. I was quite muscular as a child and what they meant was ‘because she’s mixed-race’ but they wouldn’t just come out and say it. My ballet teacher once told me I couldn’t be the ‘girl’ during the waltz because my dance partner had pretty long blond hair and I didn’t. I got called half-caste for a while at school which I never liked as it sounds like you’re missing something although generally I don’t think I experienced any challenges linked to my race from my schoolmates.
The biggest thing that made me realise I was mixed-race was my hair. Locally hairdressers would panic if my Mum brought me in. I remember three women getting incredibly stressed trying to put my hair into a French plait after a haircut and having to take it out the minute I got home as it looked so terrible. My Mum had never had anyone to teach her how to care for her own hair and wasn’t sure what to do with my mixed texture curly frizz combo and this was way before YouTube so I struggled for years to know how to look after my hair. I was thrilled when my Mum agreed to pay for me to get it braided when I was 14. I got to school the next day and our deputy head sent me home with a letter saying I would have to remove my hairstyle or I would be suspended. He felt it was a ‘subversive’ hairstyle and I was trying to cause trouble. Notably none of the sun-in jobs or bleach jobs gone wrong from any of my school mates elicited this response. My Mum sent a very curt letter back threatening to take things to the school board of governors if he prevented me wearing a very normal hairstyle for my racial background. My Mum used to teach at the school and had a formidable reputation. After that the matter never came up again.
I’ve been very lucky to work for companies where I’ve not felt discriminated against because of my race. It was a conscious decision of my parents to give both my brother and I very English sounding names, after their own experiences they wanted to ensure that, at least on paper, people wouldn’t be able to subconsciously or consciously discriminate against us. The first company I worked for did use me a bit of a poster child for their diversity policies, I was always in the photoshoot for the management program brochures, always randomly picked for visiting heads of HR, even wheeled out to give a presentation at a London Uni’s diversity in Leadership conference. It’s not that I minded hugely but as I kept pointing out – I wasn’t a good example of how they were employing more diversity in their workforce. I’d grown up in White middle-class England, gone to the Oxbridge University they always recruited from, they were just lucky that I ‘looked’ diverse.
I’ve been lucky enough to travel a lot as an adult. I’ve had two years out backpacking so I seek out music, food and fashion from different countries and culture to connect to as well as my Britishness. I don’t feel I’ve missed out by not knowing more about the Nigerian culture and I feel it would be a little ‘false’ to claim a connection that I don’t have from my upbringing.
I’ve never been to Nigeria - mainly because my Mum’s family disowned her, and she wasn’t really brought up with that culture, so I don’t feel a connection to the country, I feel British. Having said that I would like to visit it one day out of interest. I am always a bit apprehensive though as I’ve had very negative reactions from meeting Nigerians when I say I haven’t visited the country and I don’t know the culture because of what happened to my Mum. They make me feel like I’ve betrayed my roots somehow. My upbringing was my upbringing – nobody gets to decide for me what I should or shouldn’t identify with.
I was quite blind to my mixed-race ethnicity as a child which wasn’t a bad thing. It meant I was never self-conscious about it and rarely noticed if people did treat me differently or negatively. I remember a boy in my class at my all White primary school called me a Brownie. I’m not really sure he even realised what he was doing. I thought he was referring to the fact I was in the girl guides so both of us were confused as my panic-stricken teachers tried to figure out how to address the situation.
I am much more conscious about being mixed=race it as an adult over the past few years, I’ve done a lot of reading around identity and race in the UK from authors like Afra Hirsch, Reni Eddo-Lodge and Akala, as well as reading a lot more articles on the inherent prejudice we still have in this country in the news. I am definitely a lot more aware that racism is still a very real issue in the UK and that just because I personally don’t encounter it often doesn’t mean that’s everyone’s experience. Some of the experiences I’ve brushed off or laughed wryly about from my childhood or growing up I’ve realised were micro aggressions and just because they didn’t impact me hugely doesn’t mean it was okay that they happened. Living in London I really notice when I go home just how White and lacking in diversity Surrey is. Although I had a great childhood it’s important to me that my son gets the chance to grow up in an area that has so many cultures and races as part of its fabric.
I’ve always been really happy with who I am and I wouldn’t be me if I was any different. Being mixed-race is an integral part of who I am so I’d never want to change that.