Irish | Mauritian
I would identity myself as British of mixed Irish and Mauritian heritage. My mother was born to Irish parents. My father was born in Saint Croix on the outskirts of Port Louis in Mauritius to a Chinese father and Mauritian mother. I’m not sure exactly where I realised I was mixed-race. I saw all of the cultural practices and behaviours of my father as idiosyncratic to him and not part of a wider culture that was distinct from the majority White British culture I was part of. It was probably not until I was 11 and we went to Mauritius for the first time that I began to understand my cultural heritage. I also identify as White because this is how the majority of people perceive me. I think nationality, ethnicity and race are often confused. In a rather blunt summarisation, they are respectively your passport, your linguistic and cultural heritage and your skin colour. I have for a lot of my life wanted to identify as mixed-race but the privilege I am afforded when I walk into an ‘old man’s’ pub or a job interview makes it impossible to do so honestly. I remember as a child walking to a friend’s house after school. The Lee family were from Hong Kong and my grandfather was from Guangdong, so you would think the Lees and the Wongs would have similar experiences. But on this short walk a woman turned around and shouted racist abuse at him and totally ignored me, telling him to go back to where he came from. This taught me that racists have no care for culture, heritage or behaviour as much as they say that is what it is about. It is only about colour and difference. If I was to be born again it wouldn’t matter what cultural background I was born into. I would, however be very interested to see how different my life would be if I looked more like my father than my mother. As mixed race is the fastest growing ethnic minority in the UK, I think there is going to have to be a fundamental shift in how the majority of people see race. Mixed-race people are an expression of global community and internationalism and we must undermine the structures of racism and xenophobia wherever we see them.
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