The future’s bright for mixed-race Britons, but some people are still stuck in the past.
If you are half-Japanese you are Haafu; if you are African Indian you are Dougla; if you are half Samoan you are Afatasi. All round the globe, a fat and happy glossary of terms for multiracial persons is emerging; but those of us of mixed race are suffocating in this fleshy, welcoming, rainbow-coloured group hug. Of course, such affection and attention is well overdue. While other countries – and even continents – are respectfully trying to describe their racial mix, Scotland is not evolving in this area: Paki is still pretty much the umbrella term.
Both black and white have a sense of their own history but there is no real trace of the mixed-race peoples of this racially polarised world. The past has not honoured us. There is no Martin Luther King Jr for mixed breeds, but there is Jimi Hendrix. What we have in terms of beginnings dovetails somewhere between slavery and immigration, but old-fashioned terms like Eurasian, Mulatto, Half-Chat and Mud blood now seem outdated. We started out as “children of the plantation”, of course, those embarrassing reminders of forced sex who were excommunicated as half-caste (meaning half-cooked, like sloppy clay in a broken oven). In the overwhelmingly white Britain of the 1960s we emerged as the triumphant result of sexual indiscretion and supposed racial deviancy.
Now mixed-race people are the fastest growing minority in America and the UK; our previous form forgiven like a bad-mannered moment at the dinner table of a wealthy patron, kindly forgotten now that we have status.
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>> Anvar Khan <<
4 Comments
I’m so glad I stumbled across this site…
Find myself nodding at my desk to just about everything that is said…
My mother is a coloured South African and my dad is white Englishman – many see me only as white, or only as coloured, even though I see myself as neither, yet both?
I must admit, it’s refreshing to be able to come somewhere everyday where I don’t need to be either, I don’t even need to be both, I can just be Leigh-Anne!
Keep up the good work!
Dear Leigh-Anne
Thank you, your comments are exactly the kind that inspire us to keep doing what we are doing. I have a dream that one day we live in a society where we only see people. I have a dream that one day the ignorance and arrogance that informs our prejudice discrimination is but a foot note in the annuls of history textbooks. I have a dream that one day we will all see each other as one. ‘I am a part of you as you are a part of me’ – Kahlil Gibran. I have a dream that one day we will live ubuntu.
I am a South African “coloured” who has mixed ancestry – Filipino, English, Malaysian, Irish and Scottish. I always had an identity crises growing up in Cape Town – I felt and still feel that the “coloured” label is so restructive as it doesn’t even encompass all the different mixes of people in this group – and we’re still on the fringes of society. It’s sad to think that because we haven’t addressed the “coloured question” in South Africa and had open debate and dialogue, the issues have remained. In a post apartheid South Africa we now see black and white representativity in the media,and occasionally you have a coloured person – its like we don’t really exist,and when we are given voices,we have to (literally)speak in a voice which the other race groups have assigned to us. It breaks my heart that many people still don’t see people for just being people. Reading this site made me realise I wasn’t alone, perhaps we should all collaborate on a filming a documentary together?
Dear Lea Moses,
Our intention with this website since inception has been to use this platform as a base leading to the production of a documentary about coloured people, by people of colour, for the people. All help and contributions are highly appreciated.
Thanks,
Ross and team