Irish/French/Bajan | Ghanaian
My Mum is from Ireland/France/Barbados and my Dad is from Ghana. Since I’m from a load of countries I sometimes try to shortlist them which usually means not mentioning that I’m from Ghana. Mainly because my Dad left when I was very young and so I don’t feel connected to my Ghanaian side and I wouldn’t say that I’m culturally Ghanaian.
The positives are definitely the merging of culture, especially music for me. Growing up in my Grandparents’ house there was always such a breadth of music genres played throughout the day, I don’t think there’s a genre that I don’t love! My Grandma is part of the Windrush generation and came to Britain from Barbados when she was 2 years old. A lot of my poetry is centred around the Black British experience, race and social justice which is all heavily influenced by my own direct experience within these realms.
In regards to challenges, I would say the biggest for me is that I don’t look ‘typically’ mixed-race (as in my skin is not light in the way that most people imagine a mixed person) so often I’m assumed to be just Black, which I feel at times has created a pressure for me to ‘act more Black’ and hide other parts of my identity.
I haven’t had the opportunity to visit my native countries, but only due to financial reasons and I have every intention to do so at some point in the future!
When I meet someone from one of the countries I’m from I do feel like it’s a good ice breaker or creates a sense of connection/mutual ground. This is less true for me when I meet a fellow Ghanaian though, as I’m assumed to have visited, know the language etc. So it can be quite awkward to explain that I don’t know any of these things about that part of my culture and heritage.
Race and culture were not consciously in the forefront of my mind growing up, so some of my experiences that were influenced by culture just seemed like ‘normal’ life to me. It’s only as I got older that I started to consider which aspects of my life were influenced by culture and also the parts of my life that culture was missing from, particularly in terms of my African heritage. As an adult, I’m definitely more willing to engage and learn about different parts of my culture that I haven’t yet explored. I grew up occasionally hearing my Mum being referred to as ‘half caste’ or ‘quarter cast’ but it’s only now, years later, that as I don’t hear that kind of language being regularly used to describe mixed-race people that I realise how offensive those terms were/are.
As much as I am always geared and ready to fight for equality and justice, the current discourse around race and identity has rehashed the internalised war of being mixed-race and battling that sense of belonging and what identity really means.
The main thing keeping me sane during the pandemic is writing! Keeping track of my feelings and expressing them on paper to make sure I have an outlet for anything that’s affecting me emotionally.
If I had the opportunity to be reborn I would return exactly the same! All in all, I love the different aspects of my identity and I feel I’ve had a culturally rich and interesting upbringing due to my mixed heritages. However, I would like to be reborn with a bit more awareness of race/culture from a younger age.