English | African [full ethnicity in story]
English/Scottish/Irish/German/Cape
Verdean/Belizean/Jamaican | African American/American/Tuscarora
I would identify myself as a Black woman who happens to be mixed. I say happens in italics because being mixed has not always been at the forefront of my identity, while being Black has been due to the context of my upbringing. All 4 of my Grandparents are mixed, as were their parents - on one side of my family, you’d have to go back about five generations to find anyone from a distinct or standalone ethnic background in my family due to generations of inter-ethnic marriages. However due to where, when and how my Grandparents grew up, they would all identify as Black despite having obvious other heritage. Subsequently, my parents, despite presenting obviously as mixed, identify as Black - therefore I have grown up to identify as Black. However, if someone were to press for details on what exactly I am, I’d say the ethnicities which I have firm ties to (i.e., I know exactly who in my family is/was this): Black (Cape Verdean, African American, Belizean, Jamaican), White (English, Scottish, Irish, German) and Bative (Tuscarora).
My mother is from Liverpool, England, and is fifth generation mixed (though she’d say Black) British. She is Cape Verdean, Belizean, Jamaican, English, Scottish, German, and Irish. The England she grew up in is very different to the England we see today. I think currently, there is very much a ‘space’ to be mixed in here; as in you can say you’re mixed and that is good enough and people will accept it. But I think in her day, especially with both of her parents being mixed, and their parents as well, the school of thought was if you’re any part Black, you’re Black. My Father grew up in New York, and is African American, White, and Tuscarora, but would identify as Black. My Grandmother is the one who is Tuscarora, which is a Native American tribe in North Carolina - one of the first places in the Americas to be settled, and one of the first nations to be destroyed. North Carolina, where both my Grandparents grew up is in the South, which during their time had a very strong racial divide between Blacks and Whites - there was no room to be ‘other’. Therefore to avoid giving natives their ‘due’ (i.e., reparations for genocide and stolen land etc.) the U.S. government had the practice of classifying natives as Black. Thus my Grandmother though ethnically and phenotypically Tuscarora would call herself a ‘Black’ native as her and her family’s experience has been that of a typical Black person as opposed to those from tribes further West who were colonized late enough that they still have relative autonomy as natives. My Grandmother was not federally ‘recognized” as native until the 1980s. My parents met at Stanford University in California, their alma mater, recruiting for their respective engineering firms at the time - they later married there and raised my siblings and I in the area.
My parents combined their cultures more along national lines rather than ethnic cultural lines. For instance, for holidays we’ll have British traditions and American traditions. We have mincemeat pies at our thanksgiving table, PG Tips in our Californian cupboard, and we’ll always watch Liverpool doing what they do best: winning! YNWA! My parents ensured my siblings and I grew up to know both sides of our family and we all have dual British-American citizenship.
Despite having been in a few myself, I’m pretty indifferent when it comes to interracial relationships in all generations. While they’re often a valuable exchange of cultural insights and just good old love, I think today there is a trend to exoticize and romanticize them, which I think is problematic, for those in them, as well as the potential products of them. I don’t think they are the salve to racism and oppression. My cultures affect the way I choose a partner in that I’m open to pretty much all cultures. But also I find myself needing to be with someone who is cultural in some sense as mine are very dear to me so I’d find it hard to relate to someone who is acculturated completely.
A huge positive of being mixed is being able to go pretty much anywhere in the world (except Asia) and look like I’m from there, traveling is easy. Additionally people feel comfortable around me and usually open up with ease because I look like I could be one of their cousins. One of the main challenges for me is due to the fact that I look like I could be a mix of almost anything I often feel like I shallowly belong everywhere but deeply belong nowhere. When I lived in New Zealand, everyone thought I was Fijian, when I was in Fiji everyone thought I was from Kanaky. When I lived on the East Coast of the U.S. people thought I was Dominican. When I lived in France I was suddenly métisse. There are larger problems in the world and much deeper issues that people face with embracing their identity, especially Black people who are darker as the world is still a colourist, texturist, anti-Black place, so this issue is one I tend to hold to myself. Another challenge is the obvious one of blood/phenotype vs. experience and identity. Most people conflate being mixed-race with being biracial and forget the fact that people can be and are mixed for multiple generations. So although I have all these White genes, and a British passport etc., I have no immediate “white” relatives, all of the white people in my lineage were in interracial marriages in the generations before my Grandparents. As a result, I don’t really feel an affinity towards European culture or identity as one would assume someone with this amount of white ancestry would. Despite whatever I look like on the outside, internally I feel Black and Indigenous.
I connect with my Black culture by just being myself—I am Black, so I live Black culture every day. I connect with my Indigenous culture by educating myself more about it. As I said before, due to colonisation and genocide, and subsequent thievery and general oppression by the US government my grandmother’s Tuscarora culture is a remnant of what it once was, as are a lot of Indigenous cultures, particularly those along the East Coast. I think being Black and native is its own struggle as I think Blackness (as with any other mix) eclipses whatever else is present (one drop rule). Aside from just taking the time to learn about my own Indigenous roots, I also work to shed light on Indigenous issues across the world in my anthropological and development work. I have worked as a researcher and policy consultant primarily on Indigenous issues in the Pacific for multiple International NGOs.
I live in London now and go back to Liverpool all the time, so I definitely have a connection with my British heritage. As for what came before Britain, I recently had the privilege of going back to Cape Verde for the first time this past February. Cape Verde is where my Nana’s Grandfather emigrated from in the late 1800s. While there, I went to the national archives to enquire about him and learned he was from Sao Nicolau (one of the 10 islands in Cabo Verde) and had also anglicised his name to Ammond from Almeida. This was an extremely special trip for me as it was my first time in Africa, and I was the first person in my family to return since he had left over 125 years ago. It was surreal being there, because even though my family hadn’t lived there in over a century, everyone there still looked like my family. I saw their faces in everyone.
My outlook on how I identify has definitely gradually changed over the years. Growing up in a super White suburb of San Francisco I thought I was very Black, as I was usually the only