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As studies reveal increasingly favourable attitudes towards marriage between ethnic groups, Andrea Thompson describes the reality of being mixed heritage in a world that often sees in black and white
Since the death of George Floyd, I’ve been asked many times by friends and colleagues to articulate my feelings around his killing and the protests that followed. Sometimes it’s hard to gauge just how honest I can be. It’s been heartening to see such solidarity in the thousands of people of all races marching together in predominantly peaceful protests across the world. It’s also been difficult to acknowledge, as this story has unfolded, just how far we still have to go in eliminating the politics of race. I’m still surprised by how many people I know who believed up until a few weeks ago that racism was a thing of the past.
As a mixed-race woman, I’m aware I represent a safe space for white people, as well as black people I know, to have frank discussions about race.
I’ve had some uncomfortable conversations with my white friends who are shocked and saddened by the death of Floyd, but also bewildered by the need for marches across the UK in the height of a pandemic and at statues being toppled when slavery happened centuries ago. They look genuinely alarmed when I point them to the statistics, which show racism is very much a thing of the present; black people are twice as likely to die in police custody; black women five times as likely to die in childbirth; black graduates twice as unlikely to be in full-time employment and black students three times more likely to be excluded from school. The list goes on.
When Lewis Hamilton spoke this weekend about his experiences with “implicit” racism and never feeling “British enough” I’m sure there were many like me nodding their heads in recognition. The thing is, it’s difficult to understand just how subtle but pervasive racism is in the UK unless you’ve experienced it for yourself. Like Hamilton, I have a white mother and black father and having observed the contrasting ways my parents were seen and treated, I have been acutely aware of racism from an early age.
My father came to the UK aged 19 on signing up to the British Army in Barbados, a former British colony. After travelling around the world with his regiment serving this country he trained to be a typewriter engineer in London and met my mother – a teacher. They set up home in north London in the Seventies and socialised with other mixed-race couples – some who had escaped apartheid in South Africa. Racism, feminism and civil rights were regular discussion topics.
I grew up witnessing the openly hostile way my father was treated in shops where he was followed around by security. He easily received job interviews because his name – David Thompson – looked “white”, but got used to being told the job had gone as he walked through the door. At work, some colleagues called him “nig nog”, and being taunted when he went out with black friends was par for the course. So much so, he casually brushed off such incidents.
When our family ventured out of London, the stark reality of racism was even clearer. On holidays in Cornwall, my brother and I watched the familiar routine as my mother would get out of the car to inquire at bed and breakfasts if they could accommodate a family of four. It was unspoken, but we knew why dad never went in.
Today, the UK has more mixed-race couples than anywhere in Europe, with a survey last week revealing that 89 per cent of Brits would be happy for their child to marry someone from another ethnic group. This is a positive sign but when my parents met, mixed marriages were rare. Their own parents were concerned about the prospect of bringing children into the world that were neither one race nor another, but my brother and I were encouraged to embrace both sides of our culture. I duly ticked the “mixed race” box on forms, but came to identify as black, because I knew it was how I would always be viewed by the world.
I’m lucky that I was raised to believe I could achieve whatever I wanted, but my father always cautioned – like many parents of black children – that I would need to work twice as hard and keep my head down to succeed. Today, my job as editor in chief of Marie Claire could be seen as an example of someone whose heritage has not been a barrier and, growing up, I fought fiercely against such limiting beliefs.
But I also know that people like me are the exceptions rather than the rule. As an adult, it became clear that there was some truth to what Dad had told me as I grew up. When I looked for role models in the media, there were few who looked like me, and headlines about black people were rarely positive.
I felt able to float between racial groups but, in doing so, I observed stark differences. When out with black friends as a teenager, I was always aware of subtle expectations that you were going to cause trouble – especially if boys were part of our group. There were refusals to clubs and bars for seemingly no reason, and the reality of being flagged down by police when out in a car. These things just didn’t happen with my white friends.
Just before lockdown my father and I were ignored at an upmarket café for 15 minutes. We calmly watched white customers come in, be greeted and seated straight away. “I can’t believe this is still happening,” my dad said wearily as we gave up and left. These subtle gestures are not unusual, but you wouldn’t notice them if you were white.
Today, I have two sons with my white partner. My eldest James, now eight, has blond hair and blue eyes and, when he was a baby, I was often confused for the nanny. His brother, Alexander, is five and has slightly darker skin, darker and curlier hair and as a second generation of mixed-race children, I wonder how their experience will differ to mine. I have worked hard to inform them about where they come from. British culture has produced great artists, writers and poets, and I am proud to call myself British, but it is also important for them, and all children, to know about slavery and the value system it left behind, which has shaped our cultural beliefs about black people today. Perhaps if my generation had been taught about this at school, there would be more understanding about why certain statues provoke such deep feelings today.
My boys have watched transfixed as the news has unfolded. “Why would a policeman kill that brown daddy?” my five-year-old said of the footage that flashed up featuring Rayshard Brooks. I was lost for words, trying to explain. These days, I may not experience the outright racist comments in my own life that I did at the start of my career (when a colleague joked “oh, we’ve never had one of you before” in my first day at a new job). Things have moved on (people wouldn’t use the N-word in the workplace, like they did in my father’s day), but that’s not to say casual racism doesn’t exist. When I entered the world of work, I noticed the lack of faces like mine outside the kitchen or cleaning staff and occasionally IT. This is still often the case in many UK companies.
The last overtly racist comment I witnessed in a professional setting was 10 months ago. As a black person, you have a way of coping with these. For the sake of your sanity, you quietly park your suspicion that the world is one where you can be seen as an outsider or “other” – even in your country of birth.
You tell yourself that most people don’t care about skin colour, that you’re not a victim, that you can achieve whatever you want if you work hard and stay positive; that you should focus on your successes rather than the times when barriers stood in your way.
But after three weeks of protests, you are made to confront these issues again.
You find yourself unpicking the events on your news feed and realising they have triggered deep emotions from your past, which make you feel anxious and tired. You see the Prime Minister promising yet another review and declaring that the culture of “victimhood and prejudice” should be abandoned in favour of “promoting black success” and feel frustrated and totally misunderstood.
Black people don’t want to be seen through the lens of victimhood. They want the barriers they have come up against to be recognised and their legacy in our society’s structures to be addressed.
The past few weeks have made me consider my racial identity and heritage in a way I haven’t for years and it’s been exhausting. I hope that when my sons are adults, the conversations will have shifted and the protests we’re seeing today will not be necessary. Though the past suggests that will not be the case.
When my son was a baby, I was often confused for the nanny
I came to identify as black, because I knew it was how I would always be viewed by the world