Mixed-race people are sick of being asked to choose one or the other

If I had a pound for every time someone had made offensive or ignorant comments about my mixed-race identity, I’d probably have enough money to go on an all expenses paid trip to any of the places far right trolls have offered to send me ‘back’ to over the years. 

Shockingly, it is indeed possible to be mixed-race, with heritage from multiple places at the same time. And, brace yourself, sometimes none of those places are associated with whiteness. 

So, as someone who’s spoken over the years about having a Jamaican mum (herself of mixed Black and Asian heritage), and a South Asian dad, it comes as no surprise to see people with huge platforms seemingly unable to understand what mixed-race identity is. 

In this most recent case, that platform belonged to Donald Trump, the convicted felon who is running for President.

Trump falsely told an interviewer that Harris ‘happened to turn Black’, adding that ‘she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn and became a Black person.’

He then said ‘Is she Indian? Or is she Black?’

Well, for what I’m sure won’t be the last time I say this in my life, let me tell Trump, and anyone else, that it’s not an opt-in or opt-out process. You do not ‘pick a side’.

Kamala Harris did not ‘become’ Black, and it is wrong to imply her identity is a decision on a par with me going to my floordrobe and choosing what to put on today.

How can I choose something that is fundamentally rooted in who I am?

Donald Trump’s latest racist comments are not sadly unfamiliar. 

It’s no surprise that he would assume that Kamala Harris is choosing an identity when, so often, mixed-race people are accused of ‘playing the race card’.

It doesn’t seem to me like the Vice President has ever had any sense of discomfort over her heritage. 

Her photos look like they’re straight out of any other album, displaying her clearly at home in Jamaica and with her Indian relatives. 

Family photos, that, incidentally, reminded me of similar pictures that I’ve got somewhere at my parents house.  

But no matter what relationship Harris has with her identity, why is this something Trump feels the need to address?

Why would we even care if she’s Black today or Indian tomorrow? 

In politics, it only seems like candidates who are ethnic minorities have their identity compared with their suitability for the role. 

To be mixed-race of course comes with well-documented challenges for some but it can also be, as it is for me, and as it seems for Kamala Harris, something to celebrate, to own publicly and speak about with pride. 

Our identities are complex and of course, my racial and ethnic background is just one facet of what makes me, but it isn’t something I control.  

But so much of my experience of the world is influenced by how I am perceived, and how I am treated by others.  

When I used to have my hair in cane-row there were times when I was consistently perceived and assumed by others as Black. 

That changing perception means I’ve often dealt with the lengthy discussion that comes with having to explain the entire history of your DNA results, and having to break down my own identity. 

When you’ve got both the childhood experiences of both eating Pilau Rice at Eid and picking Mango from the tree at Grandma’s backyard in rural Jamaica – you don’t pick a side, all of that informs you and who you are.  

People’s understanding of race in general, let alone attitudes to mixed-race identity are a long way from what we would need to be living in a fair and just world. 

Unfortunately for me, and the Kamalas of this world, while your identity as a mixed-race person isn’t something you choose, it is something the world will choose for you. 

It means that your political rival can decide how to box you and treat you based on long-held stereotypes of what it is to be Black, or Asian or wherever else you hail from.  

If we’re ever going to move forward, all of us, whether in high profile political campaigns or just chatting to friends, need to do away with talking about mixed-race identity as one or the other and further our conversations about it as its own unique identity.

I’m neither one nor the other. 

I’m both. 

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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