A Response from a bystander

The 2 stories preceding this one tell a fairly unique tale, one that is by all accounts becoming more common. The story of the experiences of a mixed-race person in a not so mixed society. I feel uniquely qualified to comment here as a mixed race guy, born in the UK in the 1980's and now an American citizen after moving here in adulthood.

I was very much engaged in both stories, essentially hearing my own life story being described by characters with different perspectives. Both authors have very valid points but both seem to miss some appropriate and vital context. In response to “ A Father’s response” I would suggest a that slight assessment of the previous authors real environment is missing. The internal belief in ones self and the love of family does precious little to prepare you for a world where you do not fit in. Other people do not always share your open-mindedness and at some point the realization that you do not fit in with people of your mother or fathers complexion will arrive. The cultural identity crisis is something that will have to be experienced in all mixed race children unless they are wildly fortunate enough to grow up among other mixed race children. I completely agree with the previous author, that my American brothers and sisters can be wildly over-sensitive with issues of identity and really just sensitive in general at times. It’s a strange scene to be a part of, watching Americans divide and make up barely recognizable cultural groups to cling to in order to create a group identity. I share your sentiment that regardless of my skin colour I too was simply English. Here in America however your belief in your country or citizenship or ethnic background doesn’t do anything to change the fact that race is a critical issue that presents itself in almost all avenues of life to a clear bias. I’m sure that you are aware of the horrendous statistics that show how any indication of “blackness” can affect everything from jobs to housing, to education, to how Police respond and interact with people, to its effect on marketing. These things are not imaginary. These things effect the lives of millions of people here in the USA. It’s really not pretty.

In my experience I had to learn that I was neither black nor white. I had to learn that people would basically create my identity for me depending on their mood. Hardly ever do I, still to this day, get looks and assessments on where my two separate parents came from. Rather I get to see the bizarre calculation going on behind peoples eyes as they try to work out “ is he Mexican, Indian, Italian, Egyptian, Turkish, Pakistani…” or my personal favorite “Aborigine”! Yup. I have been suggested as all of those ethnicities and none were correct. I guess Italian may have been the closes since I’m simply an Englishman one of whose set of Grandparents was from South America. As the Author can probably imagine, growing up mixed race during the 1980's and 1990's wasn’t the easiest thing but also not the kind of hardship that the first generation of immigrants from the West Indies had to deal with in the late 50's onward. Yes I was chased by other kids, yes I was yelled at by skinheads, yes I was ignored by shop owners, yes I was spat at, yes I was embarrassed by teachers who called my grandparents slaves. I was the one asked where to find drugs. I was always expected to answer questions about what black people like, or what new rap artists were about even though I was not listening to that music at the time. Just like all the other kids in Essex, I was into Happy Hardcore and Oasis and Ocean Color Scene. On top of the embarrassment of being singled out, I was frustrated because I never considered myself as black in the first place.

During later years and through the strength of my mother raising my younger brother and I, we managed to forge our own identities. It’s kind of a tricky thing to do when you only have white friends and family around and you are the only non-white person in the room for 90% of your life. The real surprised come later when you start to interact with people of other origins and then you can see exactly what your conditioning has been. Friends who are very “cool” with you will say things that you wouldn’t have imagined. They can call names and display prejudices that you didn’t realize were in there. You thought everyone was cool, especially when they had you as their friend to help open their minds. Unfortunately this isn’t the case, your presence alone doesn’t mean that people don’t have these feelings, it means what you thought it does, that they see you as white, just like them.

I had relatively little interaction with black kids growing up and one of the first wasn’t very positive at all. I was mugged by a group of 10+ kids ranging in ages from my own age at the time (about 15) to quite a bit older(25). I was beaten up pretty bad, threatened and chased in fear of my safety. It was a scarring experience and one that had a bizarre existential consequence. I had to now deal with my own feelings towards black strangers. Family members I was fine with of course, but when something like that happens you become afraid and fear turns into anger and resentment fairly quickly. After a while I learned that since I had my own bubble without many non-white people in it, I had been subject to the same conditioning as everyone else. I knew what I thought about black people, especially those from America. The T.V and the movies had a lot to do with this, but it’s all round us. A narrative is being displayed to us all the time on what is good, what is bad, what is attractive, what is scary, who will be your friend and who will mug you. Sadly when one of these things happens it reinforces all of the other ideas.

Once I made it through School and College and University I had managed to interact with all kinds of people and those idiotic biases fell away but I know that at some point they were in there. I, a mixed-race kid had biased feelings against people the same color as my mother for no real reason. I had managed to completely ignore the years of torment from white strangers and somehow become afraid of black people based on a single bad experience. That’s how society makes us behave in a particular way and serves to make a scapegoat of people.

To the first author I have not too much to offer. I understand your confusion and hope that your internal conflict doesn’t end up too protracted. Sadly it’s not up to our white or black parents to build our worlds, culturally speaking. I can’t for 100% certainty say that my father was completely open-minded. I even heard him say some questionable things about non-English people. That was his thing and I know for a fact that he wasn’t really sympathetic to non-white folks. But all that aside he did marry a black woman and had 2 mixed-race kids, and he loved us in his own way. He didn’t understand “kids these days” at all so there should be no surprise that he had practically zero understanding of what it might be like to be a non-white person. He wasn’t the best father but he was good enough. He taught me to be smart, to work hard, he taught me what it’s like to build things with your own hands and most importantly through his mistakes he taugh me much much more. Eventually I understood him as a man with his own direction and his own expereinces and those were not similar to mine. I would love to share a whole other story about my mother, but this story is going to be long enough and the subject matter is already laid out.

With all that said as mixed race children or adults we are the best and worst of both worlds. There are massive advantages and frustrating negatives all along the way. There is a scale in life, and you inherently know where you are along it. This life is our own to make it through. You can support and coach your kids but you will never really know their lives, just as our parents will never completely know ours. They will face adversity most likely, but you can overcome a lot if you are tough and you have strong people around you. You may become a victim of someone's misplaced bigotry but you should not become a victim to self-loathing or weakness. Our parents and Grandparents made it through a lot worse than we will see. It doesn't make it “easy” but it’s also not that kind of tough.

I guess this is just my 2 cents (or 2 pence), these 2 previous articles were very interesting to me and this is the first time that I have been able to get my own experiences as a mixed race adult into a conversation. Be the best person that you can and teach the best morals that you know but also don’t forget the real world that we live in. Some people may appear to be complaining a lot, but their world could be harder than you think. Peace.