I am white-passing.
It feels strange writing that, even though it’s pretty obvious. The thing is, it’s taken me quite a long time to get to a place where I’m comfortable with it.
I’m actually mixed race. My mum is white British and my dad is a black Ugandan – he’s an immigrant. And, I’m one of a number of mixed race children that have been brought up a little bit one-sided or, in a way, without seeing colour. Except children do see colour. Even though I’m sure this happened with my absolute best interests at heart, it may have done more harm than good in the long run.
Being mixed heritage and not visually fitting into a category of black, white (almost) or even mixed was difficult. I didn’t really have a real sense of where my dad was from, or his culture, so I accepted the notion that we were “people”, and Dad didn’t have a colour.
We ticked along very happily as a close little family with lots of contact with my mum’s family, but very little with my dad’s. Then, one day at primary school we were essentially asked to identify ourselves by our heritage as part of a lesson in the playground.
Suddenly, I was completely lost.
It created so much uncertainty and a sad feeling of not belonging when it was negatively highlighted at the time in front of the whole class; it was presumed that my heritage must be white British. I remember feeling silly, like half a person, and sometimes like I wasn’t really anything at all. That really stuck.
Looking back, I can’t help wonder whether perhaps if I’d had a very deep and equal connection to both sides of my heritage, that I would have felt more confident in standing my ground and owning being mixed race, rather than letting people presume that I might be something else.