Italian | Seychellois/Kenyan
I identify as mixed Italian & African, cis, heterosexual woman. My Mum is Italian and my Dad is from the Seychelles & Kenya. Their parents immigrated from their hometowns to England. My parents never truly understood their culture because of racism. I grew up knowing very little about my culture as my parents didn’t want me to experience the same things they did. My Mother grew up with her first language of Italian, she taught herself how to speak English to help her family understand especially living within a British neighbourhood. My Father grew up understanding Swahili/Creole and was able to speak a few words but given the racism he struggled with he steered far from his culture. All in all, my parents kept their culture closed growing up. Now that I am of age, I understand why this is and am trying to encourage and educate them of their own culture to try and heal the trauma they may have gone through.
I could list an endless amount of experiences that have challenged me as a mixed-race woman. I always felt an outsider as people would never accept I’m Italian or African purely because I’m not perceived as the ‘dream mixed-race woman’; curly hair, light eyes etc. Instead I get endless comments of ‘you look Latina!’, or ‘you look Armenian?’, and so much more. All these are amazing compliments, but that’s not who I am!
When you start hiding parts of your identity/culture, you get into a routine and do it subconsciously. This mostly happened at musical theatre university back in 2014, racism was never ‘called out’ just constantly gaslighted. I thought I finally found my ‘home’ after moving away at 15 to start a new life, I felt that I was accepted for WHO I was. But unfortunately on the first day, my principal said to sing a song, paused, looked me up and down and said ‘sing it in your own language’, this made me realise that I’m the ‘token ethnic student’. From then on, I felt like I was hiding my true identity because I wanted to fit in. Just because I attend musical theatre university doesn’t mean I constantly ‘Black culture’ of music because that was what I loved. But received a lot of judgemental comments because I wasn’t a ‘TRUE musical theatre student’.
Being within the performing industry was also toxic, constantly being casted for a Spanish role, or the problematic attitude Brown girl and being told to play another culture instead of being casted for who I am! This was my rule, not to play someone else’s culture as they could have just hired someone that’s PART of the culture. This then affected my confidence as an individual, although I was always insecure because growing up the boys would always mention my skin, or the hair on my arms or just not looking ‘girly’ enough. All I could think about was wanting to be Blonde, skinny and looking like the beauty standard.
Professionally, it’s always a challenge. From ‘wow, you’re so articulate, did you grow up here?’, or constantly mispronouncing or misspelling my name as it’s ‘different’, it’s not that hard. Or just ask me…
All in all, these factors and so much more have been a challenge growing up. But the biggest step is I can now understand my culture because I’ve made it my own by educating myself and encouraging others to speak up as well as heal. All people of colour go through their own experiences and find it difficult to heal or even speak about, but the aim from now until my life is to speak up and help my community as much as possible.
I constantly experimented with my look, enjoying colour, baggy clothes and then casted as the ‘problematic Latina’ in shows, or the ones with attitude because I looked different to the White, Blonde and Blue eyed girls. A whole lot of self hatred and code switching, but I just wanted to be accepted.
I have plenty of role models for different reasons, but I look up to Zendaya. We are of a similar complexion, which weirdly enough helped me growing up. Zendaya educated us all on not only self love, feminism etc but also speaks upon colourism and playing characters she is truly casted for. This is all extremely important when a celebrity speaks on world issues and addresses them, I can’t thank her enough.
I could share a whole shopping list of what needs to change. But the biggest one is the beauty standard, I wish I learnt a long time ago that all of it is truly poisoning. I remember speaking with a wonderful woman and I asked ‘what ethnicity are you? You have stunning features’. she listed off all her features and said ‘girl, it’s all filler/enhancement!’, she was darker than me and it was fake tan. Although she was honest as not a lot of people are, this was also damaging as she looked exactly like me but people praised her because of colourism. I understand I have privilege due to colourism but it’s worrying how much these celebrities have changed their looks in order to look more ‘ethnic’, it’s truly mind blowing. Be who you are and embrace your features, from small lips to big lips, to slim waist to thick waist we are all unique!
I was able to visit my family in Italy and I felt so much closer to my culture. I am hoping to visit Seychelles and Kenya one day!
Now that we are starting to discuss racism and create movements, I am able to find safe spaces on social media to understand the importance of our community and how it affects us. I am so glad to find this, but wish I had the support growing up.
People assume being mixed is just one Black parent and one White parent, but that’s not always the case. I feel that we need to have more representation within the media. Although I never grew up with family traditions, I started to learn about my culture and create my own traditions or at least learn about my cultures rituals!
Once the pandemic arrived I was on lockdown for a while. More than I hoped, although it was beneficial for me I also had a guilt of others that were in more difficult financial positions. To which I wanted to help within my own time to give back to those that are struggling. While learning more about myself whilst lockdown I realised I never truly understood my identity, especially as a mixed woman. Growing up I never realised I was considered mixed as people would always ask ‘but what are you?’. But having grown up with parents who wanted to steer away from their own culture, I never knew the answer. As each day passed, I educated myself on racism and how much it affected me to the point where I struggled with PTSD from racism and it was the click moment that happened where I figured out a lot about myself and how to speak up about this issue.
Although the pandemic affected me a lot, being alone all the time and not having a ‘purpose’,I made the biggest step and it was to heal from the past racist trauma I struggled with. I was then able to share my story on the Instagram page ‘The Black Project’ and got an overwhelming response to listen to others share their story as well as heal from mine.
I normally cry about a lot of things, from puppies to my partner getting me flowers, but the most recent moment I cried about was realising how far I’ve come. I grew up constantly wanting to achieve everything I could but never taking in what I truly achieved. We all deserve to take a moment for our achievements and be grateful of how far we’ve come.