Irish/Italian | French/German/Mexican
My identity feels complex, even to me. My Mother’s heritage is French/German and Mexican. My Father’s heritage is Irish and Italian. I was baptised Roman Catholic but do not practice any particular religion. I am a U.S. national and an immigrant to the UK, where I have indefinite leave to remain. I am bisexual. I am female and identify with the gender I was assigned at birth.
Both my parents were born in the United States. They met through work. My parents split up when I was small, so I don’t have many memories of them trying to combine their cultures. I do think the way they expressed their cultures was similar -- through food and family. While I haven’t talked about this in detail with my Grandmother, I’ve always gotten the impression from casual remarks and family stories that my grandparents’ racial differences were a big deal. Interracial relationships are represented positively in the media today in a way that I can’t imagine they were when my Grandmother married my Grandfather. In London, at least where I live, interracial relationships are common.
The obvious way that I can see my culture affecting my choice of partner is that it is important to me that my partner is willing to accept that my identity is complex. I may not express every aspect of my identity in every aspect of my life, but I don’t want to ignore any of it.
The most positive aspect of having mixed heritage is knowing that I’m the person that defines my identity -- that my inheritance and the boundaries of my experience are not determined by who or what other people think I am.
I find it hard to pinpoint experiences based on perceptions of me as mixed-race. Occasionally people have asked what my ethnic background is. At university, I assumed this had to do with the student body having a majority of White students, many of whom had come from predominantly White communities. In the UK, I assume that people ask about where I’m from because of my accent.
Most of my memories and experiences about my parents’ cultures are to do with food and family. I have vivid memories of my Italian Great-Grandmother's house, filled to the brim with family and centered around the feast from the kitchen. My Grandmother’s tamale parties are both a way of preserving a cooperative culture and a way to share her heritage with friends as well as extended family. So much of my experience feels like learning about culture rather than expressing it. I have visited Ireland, Germany, France, and Mexico, but at the time I didn’t think about those visits as ways of connecting with cultures that were ‘mine’.
As a child I don’t think I really had any conception of being mixed-race. Growing up in the U.S., the cultural idea of a nation of immigrants contributing to a melting pot that produces an ‘American’ identity was very powerful. Thinking back on it now, I probably never had to think much about my cultural identity precisely because I am White-presenting. Growing up in San Francisco, diversity was discussed as a positive thing worth cultivating. I can’t remember if I thought that I was part of the diversity that people talked about. As I grow older, I am starting to reflect a lot more on what my heritage is and what it means. I want to know more about my family’s experience, and how they feel about their heritage. I want to know more about what my Grandmother felt about being in an interracial marriage. I want to know how my Mother feels about the language and the concept of being mixed-race, and whether or not she thinks that reflects her experience. I only remember her talking about herself as ‘half Mexican’, in the U.S. mode of expression of heritage as parts of a whole, as fractions or percentages. I’m also more aware of how my individual experience is situated in a whole range of experiences of identity. It’s important to me to talk about my heritage as a way of adding nuance to discussions about race and ethnicity -- to encourage people to move away from Whiteness as a default position.
My workplace is very vocal about the importance of diversity and inclusion, emphasises that everyone shares responsibility for making the workplace welcoming and inclusive. My immediate colleagues have always made space and time for different perspectives, and that’s a big part of why I like where I work.
If I were born again I wouldn’t want to be anything or anybody else. I would only want to notice more and learn more and ask more questions along the way.