BATTLING IDENTITY
22 year old Jim Pearson says: “People always ask me-what are you?. When I say I am British, they are not satisfied.
"But where are you really from? is the next question. Really, from Britain I say. But you look very different- is the reply I get. Well yes, my mom is half Indian and half Nigerian. And that’s where it stops."
Like Jim, there are others who face questions about their identity almost everyday. While a lot of times they are posed by the society, very often it is an inner conflict.
Born to parents of Indian, Scottish, Cuban and Jamaican descent and married to a woman of Pakistani, Vietnamese and Welsh ancestry, Sam Johnson personifies mixed identity with elegance.
Here, Sam and his wife Charlotte give an insight into their beautifully mixed up world.
“If Nick Griffin is an example of the superior race, I certainly don’t want to belong to that race. If anything, he can’t step into the shoes of a true leader like Nelson Mandela in my view”
Born to British mother and Ghanaian father, Louisa Adjoa Parker is a writer and poet living in Dorset. Here, she shares her experiences as a mixed race child and parent.
“I wanted to belong to different parts of my identity at different points in my life.”
“My mom had a very strong influence on me because I grew up in England. My father didn’t really talk much about Ghanaian culture or his roots. But I have a strong sense of belonging to that community. I don’t think I am black literally, but I do identify my self as black. It’s a bit weird, but then again it’s a journey and I am still at it, except that now I am more comfortable with who I am.”
“I grew up in the seventies, and that is sort twenty years after the post-war immigrants came in from various places. I was growing up at a time when there weren’t too many mixed race people so it was perfectly acceptable for people to call racist names. We expected people to be racist and if they weren’t, it was a bonus.”
“I have three daughters. My eldest daughter is white, blonde and blue eyed. My other two daughters are Olive skinned and have afro hair. So they are all different looking. But I feel my eldest daughter felt that she doesn’t ‘fit in’ because she looks so different than the rest of us and it became quite a huge issue when she was in her teens. But it didn’t matter to any of us, coz she was who she was.”
