All or Nothing: On Being Black and Sometimes Being White
Being a person of dual-heritage and so-called ‘mixed-race’ is a complex position to inhabit. My mother is English and my father is Nigerian — I tell people in this order because I sense that what they really want to know is why I’m brown and my hair is kinky — so I keep them waiting for the answer. If I decide to give one at all.
At different moments in my life, I have experienced being seen and treated as white — particularly when travelling on the African continent. While in the UK or on trips to Europe or the US I am in various ways treated as a black person by white people. (I should also add an aside which is that I scarcely see myself as either, but rather both and neither. along with a myriad of other social identifiers that don’t define who I am really). I also have the privilege of looking like I could feasibly be from most parts of the world. It is a phenomenon I rarely discuss openly, beyond knowing exchanges with my sister. Together we laugh at the giant mess we sometimes find ourselves in.
In 2014 I started taking note of some of this dissonance.
The South Asian man at the canteen till shifting ever so slightly, eyes darting for a millisecond to the right as he asks me if I want my coffee black, or white.
On sharing a bus ride with a Senegalese man, and a man from South Africa. The Senegalese suggests that he fixes the prices of my taxi as drivers sometimes triple the price at the sight of white people. My South African friend looks confused, “but she is black” he says, and asks “one of your parents is white?”
On being told by a taxi driver in Lagos that, even though Aunty was fuming that an oyinbo* stole her ride (I was there first by the bye), “it’s okay — thanks to Obama white and black are all the same”. Obama, just think about that one for a second.
*(Yoruba/Pidgin term used to describe a white person)
Confusion. In one week being told by a colleague in the kindest, most bemused way, “I had no idea, I just thought you were one of us”. (my panic at the possibility of being mistaken for a white-rasta, crust/trust-afarian, choose your prefix). And days later, visiting the Venice Biennial and suddenly becoming aware that whilst I looked at the artwork — tracing…
