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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.
