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Britain
During my travels, I was a perpetual tourist with a chameleon streak and I often wanted to find out how easy or difficult it would be for me to blend into the various countries I visited. While living in London, I easily existed as an anonymous entity in the bustling metropolis. Throughout most of my travels, I wore my hair in a bun giving myself a nondescript look and I was sometimes mistaken as Latin American in Britain. A French friend of mine at Cambridge University spread a short-lived rumor that I was Mexican-American. On another occasion, a restaurateur automatically ushered me over to a party of Spanish-speaking women and then informed me he made the mistake because I “just looked like them.” Yet, Caribbean students at Cambridge continuously asked me what island I was from and said that I looked and sounded West Indian, my American accent rationalized as a consequence of a U.S. education.

At other times, people thought I was Indian. I looked like I could have been the child of my English landlord and Indian landlady. One day, as I was standing outside of my house in North London, two young black children making a lot of noise, said to me as I shot them an annoyed glare, “What are you looking at? Go into your house, you Sikh” before adding other incomprehensible Indian-sounding words to their list of wisecracks. As I watched them skip off down the street, I began thinking about who fits the image of being black in Britain. At times, I was seen as black and, at other times, not. Am I considered black or mixed race in Britain? Or, for that matter, Indian, Caribbean, or Latina? As I looked for people to interview, I wondered if a person considered black when one looks black, feels black or just when others perceive the person as black? Is race how you see yourself or how others see you? And more importantly, what are the implications of these designations in Britain?

The question of phenotype became even more intriguing as I began interviewing people of varying appearances. I met quite a few mixed race people who looked white. Some felt black. Some felt white. Others felt mixed. If you look white and feel white, are you white or are you “passing as white”? If you look white and feel black, are you black or are you “passing as black”? Is race how you look or how you feel? Or both? Or neither? I began my interviews to find out more.

Interviews in Britain

I feel black. I feel black which may seem ridiculous to some people because I don’t look black. It’s an enigma to live in a world where people are constantly trying to categorise you. It’s natural for people to do that but when they come across someone who’s mixed, it isn’t so easy to do. In the wintertime in England, my colour fades and people often ask whether I’ve just come back from a holiday in the sun because of my “tan.” I usually say, “It’s not a tan, my grand-daddy is black.” I have often passed for white but I don’t feel white and I didn’t feel white growing up in the West Indies either. I would hate to deny my black grandfather. I consider myself to be mixed because that is what I am.

People would not believe me when I said the boys were twins. They would sit there and argue with me so I just began carrying around their birth certificates and saying, “Read this.” I do interviews for newspapers and TV to make the public more aware that all twins are not peas in a pod. I do a lot with colour to show that people can live together; you cannot get much closer than twins that are different colours. If they can be all right with each other, why can’t other people be all right with different colours?

My father totally denied any sort of black background at all. He simply thought of himself as a Yorkshire man.

By categorizing yourself you are saying that race is valid and by saying that, you are saying there is validity to racism. The problem with the whole concept is that you are trying to develop something logically which isn’t logical. It goes back to the fact that genetically there isn’t all that much different between black and white anyway. The only thing is that their skin colour is different. Do you say that all people are the same and everyone should be treated equally and therefore you shouldn’t categorize people as black or white? Or, on the other hand, do you say there is a problem here because people who are black are discriminated against, and therefore we need to classify in order to determine what level of discrimination there is?

I am an introvert. I am quite a solitary person. Because of my past experiences, I prefer to be on my own. I live on my own, cook for myself, talk to myself , make myself laugh and I’m happy with my own company. I think that is the best way I can defend myself against prejudice. In many ways, I wish I had not become race conscious because I feel very disappointed now that I have become aware of race. I feel very sad that socially we are still at the stage we are now because my ideas are way ahead of monoracial and monocultural people. They are just so behind and they are desperately clinging on to a past which holds no relevance to me.

My daughter’s experience of being black is very different from my son’s experience...
My son suffered quite badly because of it, whereas my daughter has not had that experience at all.