French | Nigerian
I would identify myself as mixed-race British with French and Nigerian heritage. Both my parents are religious – both Catholic – I was brought up Catholic but don’t feel as connected to religion as much anymore, but I still attend church with them whenever I am back home. My Mum is French and was born in Nantes and my Dad is Nigerian, was born in Enugu and is Igbo. They both emigrated to London after university and met in north London when they were neighbours in an apartment block. They got married soon after they met and had me in the same year. I think at the time it might have been a shock to my Mum’s parents and I’m not sure they approved of the marriage initially. We still live in north London and they have been happily married ever since! Much of my extended family live abroad, either in their own countries or elsewhere around the world but we have many relatives dotted around the UK but mostly in London.
I don't think it has been easy for my parents to combine their cultures. Both are so different! Despite potential apprehension of the marriage from my Mum’s parents’ side, they have continued to live their lives and show me and my sister both their cultures as they know it. I guess one way to combine their cultures was giving my name which is a French first name and Nigerian middle and surname. If I ever have children, I would love to give them names (or middle names) that originate from France or Nigeria as a homage to my heritage. Both my parents have done a lot more to combine their cultures and despite the challenges, I think they have done such a good job raising my sister and I in a rich cultural upbringing. My Dad cooks a lot of Nigerian dishes at home, and that has always been a thing my Mum loves about him and where he is from. My Mum would always be trying new dishes at African parties and dancing with all my Nigerian family even though she would often be the only White person there! My Dad has recently in the last few years taking intensive French classes and he’s improved massively since I was young, and he keeps joking he’ll be as good as my Mum one day. My Mum will still correct him left, right and centre but I guess those examples show that a couple in love will try things to make the other happy.
I think interracial relationships are much more common today than they ever have been which is great and shows love knows no bounds. It wasn’t long ago since the widespread segregation between Black and White people in the USA, South African and similar notions in the UK but as generations have passed, there is so much more acceptance. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it would have been to be in an interracial relationship in the past, but I feel generally content with how things have panned out today. I do think that being mixed-race or ‘light-skinned’ is fetishized somewhat in modern times. I sometimes get comments like 'your skin colour is so nice/beautiful etc' or it is always compared to. Mixed-race people are more than just their skin colour obviously but it is highlighted a lot in media and popular culture. There should be more of an insight into how broad the person's background is or how extensive and complex their family history is.
I think my culture has had an effect in the way I choose partners, maybe in a slightly positive way. I feel my background has allowed me to be more open and comfortable getting to know many more people from a range of backgrounds, rather than from one background per se. This might be a slight generalisation but if you are a typical white British person, you will probably also choose a partner who is also White, maybe British, ultimately more similar to you and your upbringing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that – that’s human nature – but I think my mixed background has widened my view of the world in this respect.
Overall, I feel so proud being mixed-race. I get a lot of comments when I meet people who say that I have such a cool or exciting background which I don’t always think about as it’s just who I am and is normal to me. It makes me step back and think that being mixed-race is a celebration of culture and I am happy to be part of that, albeit how little a choice I had in that. One thing that stands out to me about being mixed-race is that in combination with my personality, I feel I am quite personable with no issue striking up a conversation with anyone and getting to know them more. I’m always asking questions as I find different cultures so interesting and I’m desperate to know more about the world. This might be partly due to when I was young, travelling to my Mum and Dad’s respective countries and always being curious about where I was and the people that lived there as I would not tend to ‘fit in’. This isn’t a massive problem for me as I feel I can thrive anywhere and always find something to talk about with someone. I often think of it as my own mini superpower – having a broad perspective on Black and White culture and everything in between. I think many other mixed-race people share similar feelings and this kind of free-moving connection gives me hope for the future in a time of increased discrimination in many walks of life. The world is becoming more and more mixed - I remember reading an article which illustrated the predicted skin colour in thousands of years’ time which was essentially a light, Brown tan tone. We are becoming more tolerable as a society due to the advent of the Internet and the ease of connecting with like-minded people - hopefully with this, things like casual racism will become less frequent and tolerable and hopefully by that point in a thousand years when everyone is the same skin colour, everyone will be at peace with one another.
A general ongoing challenging theme for me is not fully fitting in to certain groups. It’s not a major thing and maybe it is becoming a bit of a cliché now to say but I have sometimes felt ‘too White’ to fit in properly with ‘Black’ people and vice versa. As I’ve grown older and understood my identity more, this is something I think about less and am content with who I’m surrounded by. When I visited Nigeria and travelled to the village where my dad is from, a lot of the kids called me ‘onye ocha’, which basically means ‘White boy/man’. I had to ask my Dad what they meant as he never taught me Igbo and when he did that was a little upsetting as I was quite young at the time.
Because my family comes from different parts of the world, I sometimes struggle to keep in good contact with them all – I find it hard to visit many of them all especially when I am studying at a university which is quite far away and when I'm trying to live my own life. When I do find myself struggling to keep in contact, I’ve definitely wished my family came from one place only but then I catch myself and think that is an absolutely ridiculous idea and I that I am / should always be proud of my heritage and where my family live, regardless of how difficult it is. This is something I think will get easier as I get older and after I finish my university studies I will put a lot more effort into reconnecting with distant relatives. Other minor things which I am too non-confrontational and sometimes naïve to address at the time include having my afro hair touched many times when I had grown it out. It’s much shorter nowadays but at the time I didn’t mind but the more I thought about it and read other people’s experiences, I realised that it is a strange thing for other people to do. I would never touch someone else's hair but there's this weird fascination with Black/mixed hair that some people have.
During some part time work I have done, I have had a few comments from White customers looking at me and saying things like ‘you are very well spoken’. Whilst I’m sure they mean well, it does make me reflect on my background and think ‘wait, can I not be well spoken because I am mixed-race?’. This only happened a couple times, laughing it off but my mindset hasn't changed - I always aim to challenge other people's sometimes narrow-minded stereotypes and show examples that I am and people like me can be just as ‘well-spoken’ as themselves. I think it is really important to challenge stereotypes and those who disagree with your views otherwise no one will ever learn. I’ve sometimes had comments on how I say certain words in a funny or different way to my friends. I’ll often say things the way my Mum says the word – hence ‘mother tongue’ – and it's always a laugh when I’m trying to prove that my way is the only way when I’m always outnumbered. This isn't a challenge per se, but definitely something I put in the mixed-race experience for me.
My home has always had a varying mix of music from France and Nigeria playing on our speakers at home. I’ve loved all kinds of music (apart from heavy metal and country, sorry) and I think the sounds I heard as a child have influenced my personal favourite music tastes such as disco, soul, afrobeat and classical. African music is the best - there’s something about it that will always get people moving and I love dancing to it at parties whenever I get the chance. Whenever I am home or talk to my Mum or other relatives on the phone, I speak French to keep up my skills as I find it difficult to find the time to practice or join a group when at university. I am not fluent in French but my goal is to be when I am older. I sometimes struggle to communicate with French family members. I don’t speak Igbo, my Dad’s language, but this is less of a problem as many of my Dad’s family either speak English as they have moved here or speak broken English. The French are a bit more stubborn with learning English I've found.
I used to visit France every year, sometimes twice a year from when I was born to my mid-teens. I didn’t visit Nigeria for the first time until I was in secondary school and even then, I have only been twice. I don’t think me visiting France more when I was younger and Nigeria more when I was older was intentional - it just happened to be. I do feel more connected to my French side and feel slightly more European than African as a result which I think is a slight shame as I only put it down to being influenced by our geography. This won’t stop me from returning to Nigeria to see my family though in the future.
I can’t really pin down the time I realised I wax mixed-race. I guess that’s maybe partly due to growing up in London where you are surrounded by so many different people from a multitude of different backgrounds you don't notice. I don’t think I ever fully acknowledged my background until around secondary school and going to university in Newcastle which is much less culturally diverse than London. I think as I read more about where I am from and have interesting discussions and attend talks at university and beyond, I will appreciate more the struggles that interracial couples like my parents went through as well as the 'Black struggle' more. Although I don't identify as Black and don't feel I can comment on the 'Black experience' as my own, I do feel a lot of empathy with the stories I hear, especially through my Dad. I don’t think my outlook on my mixed-race identity will change much more as I get older.
If I was to be born again, I would come again as myself without a doubt. I am content with my identity today than I ever have been and I feel blessed to have the family and experiences that I have had a mixed-race person. I also feel at peace knowing there are more people who have similar stories to myself and I'm glad the mixed-race experience is getting more exposure. Sharing stories feels like such a fundamental essence of us a social species and I think it helps so many people who feel in limbo with their identity. I draw similar comparisons to those who share stories about mental health and how that can be such a positive for those who feel alone in their struggle. As the world naturally becomes more mixed as the world is getting smaller, I have hope that people will become less prejudiced and more understanding of others.
The only thing I would change is that I would want to be more keen to discover more about both my parents cultures more, especially my Dad's Nigerian side and be more assertive to learn Igbo which I now can't pass on to children if I have any. I felt that this project is really important for those of mixed-race heritage who struggle to find their identity. There are so few of us and as Afua Hirsh says 'there is no land of mixed-race people' - this project emulates this idea so well.