English | Sudanese
I feel ashamed to say it now but on reflection I think my identity has always been hidden. I first experienced racism when I was 8, that was the first time I felt out of place. Everyone just stood silently and to be honest that’s been a common theme. It amped up in high school. I’d be called derogatory words on the bus to school every morning. I never stuck up for myself. That can be seen as weak but honestly it’s because no one around me acted like it was an issue and that I was maybe overreacting.
I read somewhere a comment from someone who was mixed-race who said that if you’re Black, you experience racism outside but back at home is your safe space. It’s different for mixed-race because a lot of the time you experience racism within your family. It was never overtly but my Mum would make comments such as ‘you’re not one of those’. As if being ‘one of those’ was a bad thing. It’s purely ignorance at the end of the day but I hold a lot of anger towards my Mum. If she had educated herself, like she should have when entering a relationship with someone of a different culture, she could have educated me on my mixed heritage and maybe then I’d have felt less like an outsider.
When I speak to others sometimes they say ‘did you never question it? Did you never go and seek that part of you?’. Honestly, no. I shut down completely and it was merely survival. Kept my head down until I was older, to just survive. I had a lot of other things going on so if I’m honest it was the last thing on my mind. Don’t get me wrong, I also hold a lot of anger towards my Dad. He expected me to uphold his cultural values and expressed disappointment in me for not doing so. Yet he was never around to teach me about it. It is only now that I moved to London that I finally feel it’s a safe space to do so. Never have I ever felt so much at home. But I’m still struggling. I feel like I don’t have any connection to my roots and that’s my aim now is to explore the culture, the music, the food. Just to feel a sense of belonging. I have found it really hard to find others who are like me. Perhaps it’s because I’m still early in my journey.
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