British | Indian
My mum was born and raised in South East London / Kent. Her mother was Irish Catholic from Dublin and her father was from London of English and Scottish descent. My dad is ethnically Indian and was born and raised in Uganda and Kenya before coming (alone) to school in the UK in 1954. Honestly, I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of my mixed identity. When I was 10 we were told to write a letter for a competition run by the Royal Mail. It had to be on the theme ‘letters of change’ and we could write to anyone. I addressed my letter to Racism. So, it was something that was already present for me at that age. I won £50 and was asked to read it out at the prize giving on my last day of primary school. I remember the parent of a girl I knew coming up to me in the chapel afterwards to talk to me about what I wrote. Shortly afterwards, she and her family moved back to Northern Ireland and soon after that, one of her children died in the Omagh bombing. I’m not sure I’ve encountered many stereotypes that are aimed at mixed-race in particular. Although you don’t belong in one ‘camp’ or the other, so there’s always the chance that you’ll be welcomed or rejected. You’re a curiosity for both groups. A lot of people make assumptions about how I identify and how I might feel about my background. That’s based on their experiences, their lenses, their stereotypes, not mine. I remember at school people used to ask, ‘if you could be born any time in history, when would you be born’. As I grew older, I realised that actually if I was coming back in the body that I have, I wouldn’t want to come back in another era. Having a White mother and a Brown father would have been utterly unacceptable in most of our history unless you happened to be born to specific individuals in history - which, of course, I am not. People of mixed-race are uniquely positioned to bring groups which - in many cases - remain segregated together. We neither belong wholly to one group or another, nor are we dismissed. We are less scary because we are familiar despite our difference. That gives us a power if we can learn to use it for good.
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