I wrote what I believed was a considered article about the experience of being
biracial for the Daily Mail’s ‘Femail’ section in November ’24. It was much edited and in the process it lost much of its original energy. The suggested titles above were my own, and I thought they were eye-catching enough to offer good reader bait (especially the first) They were suggestions and, of course, the paper is free to run the piece when and how it likes. Even so I was shocked on publication to discover that they had led the article with the following screaming and misleading headline in sky-high letters:
“The cruellest prejudice I’ve faced? Always being told I’m NOT BLACK ENOUGH”
With the last three words taken out of context, this headline gave the impression of whining victimhood which was definitely not the tone of what I'd intended to be a quietly observational piece.
One day when I was still stumbling around in my first term at uni, I was abruptly waylaid by another black student.
‘Hey, what’s your name and what department are you in?’
There were not many black students around at Hull University in the mid-70s, but in my few trips to the union bar, I’d noticed a small gathering of black brothers in one corner. I was a little older than most students and I kept pretty much to myself, but as a stray black female, I had aroused curiosity and I knew that the brothers had me in their sites. I was a wild card and they couldn’t fathom me. What was I studying? Where was I from? They needed answers.
While I recognised my inquisitor as one of the brethren, I didn’t know this guy, and I didn’t like his bullying tone. He’d fired the question at me like a policeman trying to nail a shifty suspect. It was as if he thought he had a right to know all about me. But he’d caught me off guard and in a hurry so I quickly blurted a confession.
‘You’re studying Italian?’ he repeated with a snort that registered both disbelief and the need for an explanation.
I shrugged. Guilty as charged. Then, glancing at my watch and indicating that I was late and unable to help him further with his inquires, I skidded off to my lecture
I knew that to him and others in the African-Caribbean Soc, I was doing it all wrong. I wasn’t behaving like a black girl should. I wasn’t even studying like one. I ought to be studying sociology, economics or politics, like the others. But Italian? He’d said it like a disease he was afraid he might catch. Later when the stories began to circulate that I’d lived in Italy and I had an Italian boyfriend, the damning evidence stacked against me. Now when they spotted me in the union bar, I’d catch the brotherhood exchanging knowing looks. That I was black, there was no denying, but in their estimation, I was not black enough.
A few years later I was shocked when I discovered that a Jamaican boyfriend had the same idea. It was a pity that I would never be able to meet his parents, he told me one day with a light-hearted chuckle. My mixed heritage meant I was too light-skinned, too British. They expected him to be with ‘a proper black girl’ you know, preferably from Jamaica. Now I liked this guy, we had a lot of fun together, but I didn’t want to marry him. Even so, being told so casually that I just wasn’t black enough to be taken seriously as a girlfriend, was hard to hear.
I grew up in the 50s and 60s as a biracial child in foster care in an all-white community in rural North Yorkshire. It was an environment where there wasn’t much room for being black. Isolated from a black community, there were no role models to reference when it came to exploring any part of my black heritage. Even so in this small white community the degree of my blackness was never in question. My hi-vis skin colour meant that I was black enough for kids to call me names; black enough for them to make fun of my springy, afro hair. And I was black enough to win first prize as a golliwog in the fancy dress competition with no boot polish required. Visually I was black, and while I couldn’t do anything about the way I looked, it was inevitable that in order to fit in, I should learn to behave according to the white working-class values around me.
Over the years I’ve found that my racial credentials have been challenged not just by other black people, but surprisingly, I’ve met plenty of white people who thought they could make a better job of being black than me.
We’re at our most vulnerable in personal relationships and back in Italy, that Italian boyfriend had been a big jazz fanatic at a time when I was very much an R&B gal. Still, I was in love and I was ready to be persuaded. But when it came to the strangled squeak and squeal of free jazz, it set my nerves on edge.
‘How do you not get it? This is your music’ cried my boyfriend when I was unmoved by Miles Davis tying a tune in knots on the trumpet.
How could I be a real black woman and not love all things jazz? It ought to be naturally in my blood. Was I even black? If so, evidently I was missing some crucial component. There was nothing for it. He, the white guy, was going to have to teach me, the black gal, how to become a ‘real black woman’ who appreciated the daring virtuosity of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. When we eventually split up, I often wondered if the Italian girl who succeeded me had to be ‘jazz educated’ too, or if not being black, meant she was excused classes.
Not long after failing jazz school, I found myself working in a real school in Italy as an English Language assistant. To the kids I was an enigma wrapped in a mystery: a young black woman who claimed to be British, who was teaching them English? Steering them around irregular verbs and how to ask for directions in English was my job, but I sensed there was a collective expectation of something more. ‘Can you sing, Signorina?’ piped up one brave soul. ‘I mean can you sing like Aretha?’ he explained. I shook my head. Why was I surprised? To them, I looked as if I ought to be belting out a number like a real soul sister, not picking my way around English syntax. Sure, I was black, but not in the way they wanted me to be.
But perhaps it was when I lived in America in the 80s that the authenticity of my blackness came under the most scrutiny. Visiting the family of my Black-American husband down in North Carolina, I was considered a novelty act. I looked black but I talked British. Cars full of relatives would drive by just to take a look at me and hear me talk. Sometimes they’d use my husband as an interpreter to decipher my clipped British consonants. ‘Lord, you speak so pretty!’ exclaimed one captivated aunt.
While my Black-Britishness was part of my attraction for my husband, he was always quick to remind me of what was and was not acceptable in Black-American society as he knew it. After all, being British could only excuse so much. Being fluent in Italian with a liking for opera, he warned, were sides of my character that were best played down.
Britishness aside, one thing that set me apart from most Black-Americans visually, was that I kept my hair natural. I had never tried to straighten or artificially curl it with chemical relaxers. By the 80s the Afro had been and gone; now Americans, both black and white, looked askance at my natural kinky hair. It was passé, it was unfashionable, and in the workplace, colleagues hinted, it was unprofessional. Once again I wasn’t conforming to standard behaviours for black people. Ironically being properly black in the Black-American culture of the 80s, meant trying your damnedest to look more white. For women, unkinking your natural hair was seen as an essential step towards social and professional acceptability. Bowing to pressure, I spent five hours in a salon having my hair chemically relaxed. I never did get used to the sight of myself with straight hair and I couldn’t wait for it to grow out.
But it's not just everyday people like me who find themselves in the firing line. International celebrities and leading statesmen are subject to the same cultural scrutiny from both black and white. When Barack Obama became President of the US in 2009 he had to convince the Black-American establishment that he was ‘black enough’. Brought up by his single, white mother in Hawaii with an absent black father, what were his black credentials? Just how black was he exactly?
‘I had no idea who my own self was?’ states Obama of his early years in his autobiography.
For those of us who are betwixt and between, unravelling our identity and our place in the world, can be a perplexing business. Black and white. Neither and both. In the book Hair Apparent I track the history of my afro hair to reflect some of the internal struggles and transformations related to race and identity that many people like me go through. We are all products of our environments and experiences and in learning to embrace all of it, is surely where we show our true colours.
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