Race consciousness is not contagious, nor is it inherited. If anything, an increase in mixed-race families and mixed-race children brings those difficult conversations about race and whiteness and privilege closer to home (literally) than ever before. No longer can the injustice be quietly ignored by switching off the news or closing the front door.
Talking to Jessica, who is mixed race, is enlightening. We spoke at length about white privilege and family, and the messy, sometimes deeply painful, nature of talking about race with your nearest and dearest. Because of the sensitive nature of our conversation – and the fact that she still has to maintain these relationships – I’ve changed her name for the purposes of this book.
‘These are difficult conversations to have. It’s quite raw,’ she says. ‘I’ve grown up mainly around my white family. The black side of my family has been affected by domestic violence, which has affected how involved that side of my family has been. For the majority of my thirty years, until the age of twenty-eight, I just didn’t talk about race with my white family. My mum’s white and my dad’s black, and really both my mum and my dad have brought me up in a kind of colour-blind way.’
Unlike me, Jessica can’t choose to just stop talking to white people about race. She doesn’t have the option of desensitising herself from these discussions, because her mum, and half of her extended family, is white.
‘As I’ve grown older and I understand race a bit more as a mixed-race woman – I identify as black – I’ve not been prepared for things as a mixed-race woman out in the world,’ explains Jessica. ‘Now, I’ve started to have conversations about race with my family. It’s uncomfortable because I think they just avoided it. [When I was younger] they pretended like it wasn’t an issue. When I’ve been talking to my mum about it, she said she never thought it was an issue, because I never seemed to have any problems growing up. There were never any racist incidents. And I was like, yes, but racism is more than a one-off incident. It’s about the world you live in, and the way you experience your environment.
‘Throughout my childhood and throughout my early adult life I’ve had a feeling of being different, and a bit strange. I could never quite understand why I felt out of place. Now that I’m older and I understand things, I think it was about race. Being the only black child in my class, living in a white town, being surrounded by white family.’
I asked Jessica about some of the difficult conversations she’s been having. ‘Recently,’ she replied, ‘my uncle and my cousin have been quite . . . well, they’ve been really racist. Sharing things on Facebook, sharing Britain First stuff, sharing stuff about “ban the burqa”. I’ve been trying to have conversations with them about why that’s racist and why that’s hurtful to me as well, and [I’m] just not getting anywhere. They see me talking about race as if I’m a problem, as if I’m a troublemaker. It’s caused me to distance myself over the last couple of years from my white family. I don’t really see them any more. I couldn’t deal with them not understanding where I’m coming from.’
Later, she confides, ‘As I’ve become more conscious in terms of race and where I am in the world, they’ve become more distant. I know that they are uncomfortable with me, and my sister feels that as well. The more I’ve become myself, the less comfortable they feel around me. It’s really sad, because we used to be a very close family, but I just avoid family get-togethers now.’
Extended family can be avoided. But what about one of the closest relationships in a person’s life – what about her relationship with her mother? ‘She does get a bit defensive,’ says Jessica. ‘She’s said to me: “I feel like you’re forgetting that you’re white as well.” And I was like “Yeah, Mum, but when I walk down the street, people see a black woman.” I experience myself as a black woman. It’s hard with our relationship, because I love her, and I want her to accept me, but also she does come out with stuff that’s racist . . . That’s very painful. My mum, she’s completely blinded by her whiteness a lot of the time . . . She just thinks “I can’t believe someone can be that biased.” She can’t imagine institutional bias. So you have to start with the basics. I can’t do that with all my family, you know?’
One of Jessica’s mum’s comments was about her Jamaican dad, and it played into racial stereotypes. ‘I remember once she made a comment about black men, and the size of their penises, and how it was true, because of my dad. I was like, Mum, you don’t know how fucked up [saying] that is.’
‘I feel a lot of love for my mum,’ Jessica says with certainty. ‘We have a very close relationship, we speak to each other all the time. But she does make me angry when she doesn’t understand things. She’s making small moves, but in the past, I’ve had to protect her from my anger. I’m torn. Can I speak my truth to my mum? Even after she’s said something, I feel like I couldn’t get angry with her. But then weeks after I feel like calling her up and starting an argument about something, to get my anger out. I have to divert the rage to something else.
‘I’ve had a lot of anger. My family just didn’t consider what my needs would be as a mixed-race child. My mum and dad, when they got married, it was an issue, because interracial relationships were still controversial, I think. When they got married about thirty-five years ago, they did lose friends. So why didn’t they think: “Well, what’s this mixed-race child going to experience?” They never did anything to address my cultural needs, so things like how to do my hair, things like Jamaican food, you know, all that stuff that I think is integral to growing up and knowing where you’re from.’
Jessica tells me that she is currently in counselling, and has sought out local groups comprised of mixed-race people who have had similar experiences. ‘I’ve had these feelings about my identity and I’ve just pushed them down, deep down, and I do think they have affected my mental well-being. I have quite a few friends with white mothers who struggle as well. [White] mothers who are using the N word, and saying it’s fine because they have black children. Now, when I see an interracial couple, I feel uneasy, even though I’m in an interracial relationship. When I see a white parent with a mixed-race kid, I think “Is that child going to get what they need?” Because I didn’t get what I needed. I think, for white people who are in interracial relationships, or have mixed-race children, or who adopt transracially, the only way that it will work is if they’re actually committed to being anti-racist. To be humble, and to learn that they are racist even if they don’t think that they are.’
Of her partner, she says, ‘He knows what I’ve been through. We want children together, and he is the kind of white person who will do that unlearning and unpicking. I only have a few white people in my life like that, and I couldn’t be in a relationship with a white person who wasn’t. The conversation about race in this country is very limited, and the conversation about mixed-race people in the country is very limited. There are people thinking that you’re half and half, that you can only ever be stuck between two worlds. I used to worry about not being black enough, but I’m starting to feel that I’m part of the diversity of blackness. There’s more than one way of being black.’