German | Canadian/Jamaican

Photo credit: provided by subject

I am bisexual, polyamorous, mixed-race, atheist, feminist, vegan. All of these I have come to terms with over the past years and regard questioning these from time to time an inherent part of personal growth.

My Mother is German and my Father is Canadian Jamaican. My Mother was raised and lived in Germany for most of her young adulthood and then proceeded to travel abroad to teach as a diving instructor in countries including Egypt, Kenya, Maldives and the Philippines. She is a real force of nature when it comes to travelling and is one of many strong independent female role models I’m lucky to have in my family. She is the only person I know with such a unique talent to make a home wherever she might be. Despite her background coming from a very homogenous small town in Germany, she has taught me nothing but acceptance, and curiosity rather than racism and prejudice. 

My Father spent his early childhood in Jamaica with his Mother and Father. After my Grandparents split up, my Grandmother moved to Canada with my Father. Again, both of them are more than inspiring. My Grandmother worked as a travel journalist and met my Grandfather, a Jamaican radio presenter, in university in 1961. After getting married they moved to Jamaica together, something that was not exactly ‘common’ in the 60s. I always thought that my Father did struggle with the fact that he was underrepresented and part of a minority in the middle-class neighbourhood he grew up in in Toronto. Despite that, and never having gone to university, he is now one of the few people of colour in a leading position of a large international company and cannot help but put HR on the spot for the shocking statistics and pretentious guidelines they put in place regarding diversity in high ranking positions. 

My parents met in the Philippines, where I was born. My Mother had lived there for over five years and was working as a diving instructor on a small beach in Bohol which has now unfortunately been turned into a tourism trap rather than seeing a few curious backpackers a year as it has been when we lived there. My Father was on holiday and it seems that they quickly found romance in that period. My Mother then once visited Canada and then, more accidentally than not, I came to be. My parents were not together in my early childhood until my Mother decided to move from the Philippines to provide me education that accorded to her pedagogic ideals. We moved to Canada when I was four, first Montreal, then Toronto. Again my parents’ relationship did not last, and my Mother and I finally moved to Germany a year and a half later.

My parents and I only lived together for a short period of time. However especially my Canadian family is a patchwork of ethnic backgrounds. Winter holidays are rainbow full of Jamaican, Pilipino, Slovak, Cambodian, Italian, German and Canadian people of all ages. 

After my Father was born, my Grandmother (my Father’s Mother) adopted another Jamaican child his age, who’s later wife was Italian. My Aunt adopted two girls, one Cambodian and a Filipino. My Cambodian cousin then went on to marry a man from Slovakia who has emigrated with his family after the war. As most of the family had been raised in Canada, I think there were few striking cultural differences. However, Jamaican duck bread has always been a staple on any family occasion. In family settings no one was aware of their colour or background. It is a safe space in which our little mix was completely normal. I don’t like to assume or speak for my Father or any other family member who struggles more than I do on account of their appearance. 

My cultures have never affected whom I have chosen as a partner. My current relationship is with people who both have a different country of origin to mine and to each other (one of them Italian and one Vietnamese/English) and I find that incredibly rewarding. It just shows how much more there is to learn about culture, tradition and identity!

I wouldn’t say that I have ever hidden a part of my identity. I think most of the time I feel like I unintentionally do so just by the assumptions that people make. Very few people that I have met had clocked that I was mixed before they asked me where I was from. Often the Jamaican quarter is met with an ‘Oh I thought there was something different about your face (or hair)’. My sixth-grade teacher thought I was Filipino after my Mother told him I was born there which, to me, was completely out of place especially regarding his comment about my features being ‘different’. When I tell people about my German side, the most common reply is ‘Ahh I just couldn’t place your accent but now I can hear it!’, which is ironic because I never had a German accent speaking English and now speak a strange morphed version of Canadian interspersed with the odd British word. A consequence of having lived on the island for two years now. 

I sometimes, however, intentionally leave out one country or another. When someone asks me where I’m from I often say Germany, as this is the country that I have spent the majority of my life in and who’s culture I feel most connected to. The next step tends to be ‘oh but you speak such good English!’, or ‘I thought your accent sounded American!’, which is when I go on about the Canadian side. No one ever asks further than that. I am too White to be recognised as Jamaican. And honestly, I usually choose the country that is most convenient to me at the time because I often can’t be asked to explain over and over again. And get the same surprised reactions every time I name the most unexpected of countries; Jamaica only to feel a pang of sadness. It is a constant reminder that I pass. It makes me feel disconnected to my cultural heritage and the experiences my father goes through. It makes me feel like my idea of being part of all of the countries which are part of my ethnic background is just an illusion that I keep myself in. 

The first time I was asked the famous question ‘but where are you actually from’ was after telling someone I was German/Canadian when I moved to the UK. And even though that question torments some, I was incredibly happy to be asked. Now I try to mention at any point anyone asks me, and I still usually get interrupted before I take a second breath to name the three. 

I cannot begin to imagine what it must have been like for my Grandmother to marry and have a child with a Jamaican. The rest of my Canadian family was incredibly supportive but reactions by anyone around them were often blatantly racist, revealing fundamental prejudice and hostility that can often be seen now but was much more striking in my Grandmothers’ time. Today my family still does not speak to some of these individuals or their relatives. Then, when my Grandmother moved to Jamaica, she became the target. My Grandfather, a radio presenter, was not expected to marry a White woman who, as a result, faced racism for many years. My Father was born in April, a few days after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. 

I think we have come a long way since then. Even though I am aware that interracial relationships are still frowned upon in some communities (often due to inherent racism or outdated tradition). I am very happy to see interracial relationships in media and in day to day life. 

I think guilt is the biggest challenge I face. I feel guilty that I get away with not being a target of racism. I feel sad that I often do not feel entitled to represent my Jamaican heritage because I never struggled because of it and could not even fathom what my Father and his parents had to face. I feel ‘Blacker’ if I’m surrounded by a group of White people and the Whitest person in the world if I’m surrounded by people of colour. I don’t know what terminology to use, don’t feel like it’s my place to choose my own, am terrified to be seen as racist myself and ashamed that I don’t speak out more.

I am lucky to have visited all of my native countries. I visit Canada and Germany frequently and have been back to the Philippines three times. I visited my Jamaican family once. I absolutely loved all of these experiences and felt a sense of familiarity and belonging in all of those places. However, I was quite young when I visited Jamaica last and would love to go back to learn more about the culture and history. I recently found out that my ancestors were Ashanti (West African) who were imprisoned (most likely by the Dutch or British) and sold as slaves. I have a strong urge to learn about their culture and heritage, to go and see where and how they lived and walk the ground that they walked. I want to retrace my family history. All parts. See where my German ancestors are from, who most recently fled from east Germany in the war. And I want to learn about my Canadian family history some of whom might have been involved in slave trading. I want to know all of it and I want to learn from it.

As a child I was made aware by my family but not at all by my environment that I was mixed. I thought it was absolutely normal to be mixed but also that I was the same as all of the White children I was surrounded by. In a way I’m glad that I thought I was represented, had role models and didn’t feel different. But then again that was just the effect of the way my environment reacted to me. To them I was German, and that shielded me from the experiences that every child faces whose features are more ‘obviously’ diverse. 

Later on I became more aware of my mixed-race identity. I frequently asked people if they ‘knew’ or ‘could have told’ when they met me and I hadn’t told them. It was mostly based on my appearance because that was all I could go off otherwise having navigated the same environment and upbringing as my peers. I got varied responses and don’t really know if people really notice immediately. Again this is a matter of exposure. I’ve found that those who have grown up in more diverse environments and know more mixed people are better at spotting it. This March I shaved my hair off for cancer support and have found as a result that it somehow made me think about and connect more to my roots. I went through phases of straightening it and then basically tying it up in plaits or a bun for more than five years. I can’t help but reflect that the reason for this was most likely my exposure to predominantly White beauty standards and my being surrounded by incredibly blond, straight haired Germans. Most of my friends had never seen my hair down or in a ponytail or were aware of how curly it is. I now decided to let it grow out naturally and since I was nearly bald, I still have no way of hiding my hair even six months later. 

I hope my identity will evolve as I get older. I hope I’ll be more secure, open, confident and opinionated about it. I want to talk about it and meet others with similar and differing experiences. And I want to find my own unique mixed-race identity. 

Being in higher education makes me sad to see how inclusion efforts and access campaigning still have so little effect on changing the landscape of modern education. The money and power are there which makes me sad to think that the motivation is lacking. It’s incredibly hypocritical seeing as most universities advertise diversity but higher positions, lecturers, role models do not reflect this. However, the student landscape seems to increasingly change to the better, in my case (depending on the University and the country that is).

I don’t think I would want a choice in how I was reincarnated, no-one gets to choose and I think I rather wouldn’t even if I could.

This is part of a reflective piece I wrote after George Floyd's death I  thought I might share: “One of my favourite children’s books which I remember very clearly is about a girl called Violet – who is Violet and lives in a world of blue and red and green people. Violet is violet because her parents are red and blue. And so she faces the fact that she is different from everyone else – at least by her appearance. 

Conversations about race and colour and all that comes with it are not a given. Not even in mixed families. I was lucky enough to have had a good head start to now explore these issues independently, but being mixed does not inherently mean that racism is out of the ballpark. 

Everyone lives in a little bubble. It is a human condition. We are entangled in our own universes and might never be aware of the multiplicity of entirely different universes our friends, family, colleges and total strangers live in. And that would be too much. There is a reason for that fact that we live in these little bubbles and are often unaware of them. We need to. It is overwhelming. Like the flow of media and true and false information that we encounter and have access to every second of every day. 

My crime is that I have been living in my bubble but was aware of it. But these are just the struggles inherent in my own experience of my mixed-race identity.”

I think that the conversations that have been started over the wave of anti-racist movements following the tragic death of George Floyd has popped a lot of bubbles – forcefully. And this is key. We always get glimpses. Glimpses of bubbles of people facing anti-feminism (as most women do), anti-LGBTQ+ issues, ableism, abuse and many more issues that just won’t come to my mind (because I live in my own little bubble). Everyone is aware of their bubble at some point. The question is whether we are ready to let these bubbles burst. Because somehow the phenomenon of waves of movements and out roars are often followed by forgetfulness. We rebuild our bubbles and live our comfortable lives as normal, often carrying on little of the issues we were so passionate about only months prior. This is what we need to be aware of. 

When I imagine my future, I think of the struggles I will face being a woman. A woman in science, a woman with an opinion and a woman that wants to be heard. I see myself standing up for other minorities while thinking that I am the majority. But maybe I choose to be the majority. I never thought of myself standing up and speaking out about my experience as a mixed-race woman in science, who wants her voice heard. My self-image is White. And that image is one I chose. It’s time to let the frizzy curls out and use the privileged position I have, a position that I can potentially use to burst a lot of bubbles. 

As you read Martin Luther King Jr and Desmond Tutu quotes, try not to get desensitised. Read them as if it were the first time. Because sometimes overexposure can lead us to become selectively ignorant. What is happening now is necessary. And can hopefully lead to significant change, as long as we are ready to work for it. 

I think one of the biggest challenges today is how little people realise how racist they are. Racism isn’t a synonym for those who are anti-immigrant, hostile extreme left wing, it also encompasses every little comment, prejudice and especially ignorance of those who would never identify as racist, in the contrary, even think they are inclusive. We live in a world of fake news, personalised advertisement and lack of constructive arguments. We surround ourselves by people that have the same background, same opinions and often the same heritage. How can we not see the world through a lens not fabricated by us but by an algorithm, by the people that we work with, live with and are led by.  This undoubtedly facilitates not only extreme racism but also the, more subtle, sibling that is the hostility and prejudice often carried down through generations but watered down to what is seen as appropriate in a democratic society. 

Looking at the BLM movement, I am hopeful. Hopeful that this will sensitise people what racism actually means, how it shapes the world around them and how it damages countless people’s lives. However, I am weary that this movement (as so many have) will die down, and I hope that It can achieve significant change before it does and we wait for the next one. And this change needs to happen in nearly every aspect imaginable: education, healthcare, politics, employment to name a few. How? Representation. Acknowledgement and enforcement of the fundamental rights that every human being has. The United Nation’s defined racial discrimination as “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life”. (1965)

There again: human rights and fundamental freedoms. That is what the fight is about. And that is what everybody should have in mind.