There is a question that is often asked of me, something that I have essentially developed various scripts for based on who’s asking. It’s a question that, frankly, in the split second of blinking once it’s asked, I roll my eyes at like the forced-out smile on my face. It’s a question that, in a vacuum, is a harmless, even bonding conversation starter to gain insight, build trust and even learn something on their end. However, in reality, it is a question that can have a double meaning, an additional layer which I have to calculate to make sure it’s even worth getting into the specifics of it all. It is a question that I know many ethnic minorities and mixed people know far, far too well.
“Where are you from?”
Classic.
Now, as I said, it’s a question that isn’t bad in a vacuum, and depending on who’s asking, I can laugh and converse about it with not a single lingering worry within me, no exhaustion or sigh, and several friends of mine have asked that question to me before. I do not wish to shame those who ask with sound minds that are respectful and logical, but when a stranger asks, I err on the side of caution because more times than it should, I am faced with some uncomfortable folk. To provide you with context and to answer your question, I am a mixed-race man—Irish-Caribbean—yet sometimes, the answer is not to everyone’s palate.
When I answer the flat-faced, foreboding bloke at the pub or am put on the spot at work by a customer who clearly and desperately needs to get her question off her chest while I’m serving someone else, my answer appears to be somehow incorrect.
Incorrect because racial ambiguity for some is a sign of the unknown to be labelled into various clichés, but also to prove your nationhood. In the last several years and even decades, for a significant chunk of the population, your value is placed on how “British” you can appear to be through action, opinion, accent and virtue. I consider myself as British as I have grown to be, but when identity is called into question, ethnic minorities in the UK feel as if they are in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenario.
For people of mixed backgrounds, there is an additional layer in the fray of our conscience in which one must balance and keep negotiating with one’s boundaries between the identities we inherit, the identities we claim and the vague identities that are assigned to us. It is not a case of being able to exist as both, but to perform as what is expected, which, in the end, can be contradictory. It is as if each side of our culture does not belong to us, and in the end, it is easier to ignore it. It wasn’t until 2001 that the UK census included “Mixed” as an option to identify with, but the fact that it’s still a recent addition shows how long we had to pick a side.
It is a defence mechanism to simply “pick a side”, but it is also an unconscious decision—the same way we don’t consciously remember we are breathing air, we just do. As with all cultures, the communities you grow up in are the default for you, not an immediate case of picking your attributes every time you wake up. This makes it all the more confusing when trying to commune with our different sides. There is a label attached to ethnic minorities no matter what, so with people of mixed descent, there isn’t simply one way to act, but no matter how you act, it will always feel forced, as if you are playing pretend. I believe many mixed people reading this can relate to the awkward feeling of hearing about how you’re acting too much like your other side: “Oh, you’re acting too black”, “You’re acting so white”, “You’re acting so so-and-so”, but in the end, you act as yourself. There is a term for it, a specific form of discrimination where there is a target placed on those who do not fall into a typical category of race: monoracism, where mixed people are at a constant internal battle to define identity into a standard, easy-to-digest label.
It’s not just a case of consistently being asked where you are from, but it’s also being asked, “Do you know where you are from? Do you know who and what you are exactly?” I write this fully aware that this is not entirely a race-specific issue; in fact, it is something that is found within all subcultures, nationalities, creeds and sexualities, to be questioned on whether you fit the gold standard for your people, which is riddled with intricate and complex social debates. Still, for those of mixed descent, the question is twofold, where it isn’t a debate of which group we should belong to, but whether it is enough or right to claim either of our sides at all. Countless memories of mine answering where I am from are laced with the conclusion that I don’t have the right or the real experience to claim those identities. Culture is, of course, an experience you must live through, but identity and ancestry are a pathway to it, surely?
The mixed experience is unfortunately riddled with a forced decision made against us on how society wants us to identify. Speaking from a white and black mixed perspective, there appears to be a learned and habituated mindset among mixed white and black people to lean towards identifying as black. In a research study by Miri Song and Peter Aspinall, they interviewed a mixed woman who said: “It annoys me, because I can’t control it. Black people want me to say I’m Black and if I don’t, I’m supposedly ashamed to be Black. Some White people will just say I’m Black… I think it’s easier to say Black than it is to say White. I couldn’t say I am White, but it’s perfectly ok to say that I’m Black, which is a bit strange. I’m not so comfortable with that.” Few, if anyone, validated her preferred mixed identity. In the same study, when asking white and Asian subjects, they found it is almost a constant to be labelled within their community as white due to physically passing as such, with hostile scepticism thrown in their direction when claiming the other side.
Especially within the UK, where, although the country has become a melting pot, from what I have witnessed within social discourse in the last several years, there is even a rise in seeing mixed relationships as taboo—and, as a result, the literal existence of mixed people as taboo—and I don’t think it is specifically a white British issue either. For white Britain, so much of the discrimination and sentiment against race mixing is deeply rooted in centuries of institutionalised fear of the unknown and negative stereotypes from a colonial past which has not been removed, conditioned generationally. On the opposite end, there is a much denser reasoning for being against dating and starting families outside your ethnic community, where a lot of it is rooted in religious tradition, colonial traumas, colourism within ethnic communities, fear of losing your family’s heritage and even fear of racial fetishisation. This is something that is always on the mind of mixed people, in how we constantly analyse how we are viewed by our families, communities and others, whether consciously or subconsciously.
In her book New People, Danzy Senna details the experience of a “white-passing” mixed woman whose black mother dies, severing the last connection to her black side and leaving her to question whether it is rational to live her life as a mixed-black woman without the living proof. The validation of her identity was held in the palm of her mother; without her, the validity of her mixed label feels as if it has vanished, and with no familial connection, she feels as if no community on either side will be able to accept her. She faces only rejection, unless she falls into what she passes as: white. And even then, there is no embrace. It’s not that her mother proved her identity to others; it’s that she now has no one to identify with.
This theme is further highlighted in an article written by Rhianna Garrett, “The De/Construction of Identity: The Complexities of Loss and Separation for Mixed-Race Britain”, an excellent text which explores the complete identity struggles of mixed people in Britain. Something that stuck with me was a comment from Maria Root, where she argues “that social expectations placed on mixed-race people are psychologically damaging to the identity construction of mixed-race people, who have the right to move within racial communities simultaneously, shift according to context, live as multiracial and live as monoracial”. Here, being mixed is not only an identity to claim, but it should by no means be a cage that prevents someone from switching to whatever identity makes them feel accepted on their own terms.
There should be no qualm for a mixed person to be able to act and represent who they want to represent. If they wish to code-switch based on which family they are with, so be it; if they don’t, so be it—why must we choose and be shunned the other way? Why is there a constant microscope placed on people who wish to exist as multiple, not as one? I write this because, in the last several years, I have noticed more and more negative conversation regarding the existence of mixed relationships: that race mixing is not only a taboo but a political act, that having children outside of your race is “diluting” or “muddying up” the family tree and abandoning your culture. Within minority cultures, there are deep-rooted fears that mixing represents an erosion of a culture wanting to preserve itself. Although this is based on legitimate experiences of discrimination, with a justifiable fear of white or any other race harbouring negative feelings towards them, much of it is also rooted in pushing away individual autonomy and fears of not being able to socially and visibly conform to the expectations of that ethnic group. White Britain has clearly shown its discrimination and hidden fears towards race mixing from openly white supremacist groups at large, but on a macro scale here in the UK, there has been an oversight of mixed identity for decades. Mixed people are ignored in all social policy discussions, and where our previous label was dictated as “confused”, intersectionality has vanished.
It is not that long ago that the terms “Mulatto” and “Half-Caste” were considered acceptable phrases in the white British mind; mixed identity is still just something that people are trying to understand when it shouldn’t be mind-boggling at all. In the end, it is within our very name that mixed people share mixed perspectives and lives. How we identify is unique compared to monoracial groups, but the disregard for that status always comes from those in white Britain and beyond. How many times has “white-passing” been used as a way to disregard someone’s experience of race and culture? How many times has someone’s mixedness been used to squabble up debates of race mixing from the 20th century to, unfortunately, now? And how many times must there be an instance of colourism within communities who claim to be accepting?
In the end, you know who you are and what you are. It shouldn’t matter, but knowing and celebrating yourself for where you come from, who your family is and who you position yourself as is, at the end of the day, all you can do.
