Throughout
her travels, Joy was able to interview about 200 individuals, such
as the children
dubbed the “Black and White Twins,” brothers
with the same mother and father who phenotypically look very different
from one another.
England
"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?"
--Quote from their mother
Joy had a chance to interview
the offspring of the first officially-recognized “white/black” marriage
in Kenya.
Kenya
My father, being a qualified barrister, took it to court and battled for two-and-a-half
years to be granted the right to bring his wife to Kenya which he did halfway
through 1952. That changed the law…My mother went to a white hospital,
and because she was holding a black baby, they made her wait. That sister of
mine died in my mother’s arms. My sister died because she was not white.
That was how bad it was in 1953.
While people with racial mixture are often
viewed as “black” in the United States, mixed race in
England and “white” in
Kenya, Joy was told by many people in Zimbabwe that they were unequivocally “coloured.”
Zimbabwe
If I were to go up on top of a roof and shout, “I’m black, I’m
black,” people would look at me and say, “What is wrong with that
coloured woman, she has gone mad.” If I said I was white they would say
the same thing. “You are coloured.”
Although people of mixed race in Zimbabwe often
saw themselves at the bottom of the social totem pole, people with the exact
same racial heritage saw themselves
at the top of the social totem pole in Jamaica. Interviews with recording
artist Damian Marley and others often referred to being privileged in Jamaica:
Jamaica
My skin colour is more of an asset than a liability.
It has never been a problem in terms of social mobility.