Mixed Race Women: Hello!: 2009

Monday, 14 December 2009

'coloured'

I am reclaiming the word 'coloured'. I feel that I can express myself so much more satisfactorily when using this word. Is there not something very metaphorical about the insisted use of the terms 'black and white'? A refusal to acknowledge that life and the colour of our skin is so much more varied and complex than that. Apart from this 'coloured' is so much more accurate than black or white, I dont know about you but I have never met a black or white person in my life!
By the way, I do think that the use of this word relates in anyway to the 'reclaimed' use of the word 'Nigger' which I do not use and do not consider acceptable to be used no matter what your race (unless its being discussed historically, in referance to slavery). I do not think that the return of commonplace comfortable usage of this word is empowering or indeed helpful to building a fair and forward-thinking world. There will always be people who thinks its fine to add it to their vocabulary wether they are black or white, of course suddenly then it becomes unacceptable, a racist term of the worst variety.
Besides from the obvious difference that 'nigger' is a term where as to be 'coloured' is a fact, we all are, there seems to be something deeper in the everyday use of the first word. Some unconscious insult or self-deprecating effect that in the long-run overrides the intended empowerment - unification and general middle-finger-up to racism...

In Glasgow, at a white university...

So today, back to bonnie wee Glasgow where I'm now studying at university. My friend C, an African American from Ohio has been doing a placement at my uni and is leaving to back to Cal Arts this week so I'm feeling sad. He is one of the only ten non-white pupils at uni and I'm beginning to feel the strain...
Went back home to London last weekend and was struck anew by the many shades and tones inhabiting the scarf laden faces. So nice to feel at home, to feel as though I can simply slide into the slipstream, not standing out unless I choose to. I lived in Cornwall for two years, and never noticed the lack of 'variety' there, but now seems to be different. Perhaps I am just used to having other 'people of colour' around me. Who knows. But I have great friends up here, so I'm not really complaining, but I do miss it. There is deffinitely something different about conversations with other people who arent white and live in a mostly white community.
There must be a liberal, artistic 'ethnic' group round here that I can tap into - any suggestions are welcome!
Ama

Saturday, 12 December 2009

From Kade

I am Ama's little sister. I am mixed race and proud. I believe that it shouldn't matter what you look like or where you come from, but this is in social terms. It is also important to have an identity, one that you feel that it is yours and no one else's, to know that what ever your heritage or upbringing at the end of the day you are like a single rain drop: An individual and yet part of something amazing. I feel that the path of life is not always a smooth road; it has its ups and downs, but its up to you to keep on going and let it lead you. Being mixed race makes me feel neither 'black' nor ''white' but simply me.

Our Space

This blogging space is not exclusive, but it is specific. Its about saying hello, welcome, I acknowledge that you exist. I acknowledge that you do not have to specify yourself as 'black' or 'white' I acknowledge that you are you, you are something else.

I was raised by a white, English mother, my Ghanaian father not being firmly in the picture during my early youth. I was also lucky in some ways to spend the first nine years of my life in London: a positive racial sweetshop. Every shelf jam-packed with colors, shades, textures, social grouping, political grouping, religious grouping, and rainbows galore. Both my extended and non-extended family were all white save my infant cousin, yet I never saw myself as different or separate. A blessing in many ways. My liberal upbringing, imbued a strong political attitude against racism, inequality and ostracisation and from the earliest of years I remember my mother telling me that no-one had the right to treat another person differently because of the colour of their skin. However lost as I was in all of this blissful 'hippie' homogenious, it was many years before I acknowledged the anger and injustice I felt when black children at school told me I was 'soo, or even too white'. Never accepted into their group, yet as a got older I felt less and less comfortable being identified with the white children I was nevertheless always sitting with in the lunch hall. White children who never found my colouring an issue, never considered asking me about it, referring to it, or treating it with any relevance at all. Where was the middle ground? Because it is relevant. Totally relevant. A very real factor of who I am, a major piece in the every growing jigsaw that creates the experiance of me.

Not until my mid-teens did I finally meet a woman who opened my world. An academic, artistic and empowered mixed-race woman, who takes the discoveries I am still making, feeling like a baby, learning to walk, to cry, to taste, to feel for the first time again, as given. Of course being mixed-race is totally different from anything else, she says to me, of course no-one who is not mixed-race could truly understand, much as with being a feminist. A man may be a feminist sympathiser but how can they ever truly understand what it is to be feminist, to be a woman. To be a mixed race woman. It is a different experience, not harder, or more special or commendable in any way (though I have sometimes felt it is) but different. And for me to meet someone, who then introduced me to others who acknowledged this not only as a fact, but as a talking point a factor indeed for more discussions and statements and explorations. For me, this was the most empowering thing that has ever happened to me. All of a sudden a whole new dictionary had been written with which to define my own expressions, opinions and reflections. The most poignant of these that if I had never met my good friend (Madame Mulatress as I now call her!) this world may have remained a mystery for years or even a lifetime. I suddenly say with such clarity how isolated I had always felt, and I began to wonder. There must be others, I thought others, all over the world struggling, searching, chastising themselves and being chasticed for 'not quite fitting in'...

The first racial insult I remember was around the age of seven. A young black boy playing football at the time searching for an name bad-enough to get me back, for whatever he felt I had done. "Yeah well," He finally stumbled, "Your not white or black, your just, like invisible!"
I scoffed at the time, unaware of the severity of this pronouncement, and it is only now that I can reflect on how literal this seems to be. Where are the hands waving? Where are the voices calling? Where are the people acknoledging that we exist? That we deserve just as much of understanding and respect in our plight to find self-discovery, to find where we come from, our true heritage as any other race. For I am not a combination: a grey, a lesser shade of bits a bobs shoved together to make something we haven't quite got a name for. Perhaps they are there, I think, perhaps these conversation are a given in some societies. But I think that is just not good enough. It is not enough for academics and intellectuals to have acknowledged our existence, when we ourselves still flounder in the dark, unsure and uncertain. Striving to fit into some category, whatever the name that will welcome us home.

Indeed the search for what is un-taboo has become quite extensive. Terms such as 'half-caste', 'quater-caste' or 'mulato/mulatress' have been socially connotated as derogatory, though I know some people of mixed-heritage that are perfectly happy, empowered even to name themselves under these categories. Dual heritage, bi-racial or mixed-race seem at present to be relatively 'PC' but the name itself does not concern me personally. What I am interested is how you feel about the connotations associated with these 'boxes'. Your stories and your journeys so far. The histories that have weaved like un-deterring streams to finally form rivers and seas that flow ever more persistently through the oceans of our world. I cannot bear to ignore others who have felt excluded, forgotten, different and unacknowledged. So I reach out, not as any kind of authority on the subject but as an eighteen year old young-woman living in this world and searching for others like her. Others to reach out, to connect, to embrace and to begin to acknowledge our story.

Mixed Race Women: Hello!