It was difficult to know where to start writing a blog about my experience of being mixed race. I’ll admit I felt over-whelmed. I decided to the easiest thing to do would just be to start where I am which is coming to the end of training to be a counsellor and reflecting on this whole experience. I am a 34 year old woman of Black Jamaican, Nigerian and White British heritage. My father’s heritage is Black Jamaican, Nigerian and White British, my mother is White British. I currently live in Yorkshire in the north of England where I was born and grew up.
Over the last three years I have been doing a counselling diploma in order to have a career change after several years of working in the academic publishing industry (a predominantly white middle class industry which I must admit I felt out of place in at times, arguably though I have moved into a very similar working environment). As part of the counselling training it was necessary to explore all aspects of my identity in order to raise my self-awareness so I can assist my clients in doing the same. As part of examining my identity I have spent a great deal of time exploring what it means to me to be a mixed race woman. It’s been a massive journey for me and of course it never ends. As I look back at my personal history I can see how being mixed race has expanded my perspective in life and added a lot of richness. I also have had to re-visit some of the difficult aspects. I can’t deny I have had that experience of feeling I do not really belong anywhere and still do at times. The flipside is that I can probably fit in in more places and scenes than a lot of other people can and be more comfortable with diversity in general. There have been periods of confusion around my racial identity (probably made more difficult by the stereotype of the tragic and lost mulatto), periods where I have felt angered d limited by the racism and micro-aggressions of others and times when I have faced a severe lack of understanding about what it means to have a mixed race identity in society in general but even within my own family.
The counsellor training was difficult in itself and at the moment I feel I am recovering somewhat from this experience. I suppose I had been somewhat naïve about what training to be a counsellor would be like. Ethnicity, culture and racial diversity were given minimal space on the course (until I launched a long and emotionally costly protest). I spent much of the time in training feeling like I had to educate others about black identity and mixed race identity because there was pretty much nothing in the training that addressed white privilege or the issues of racial minority groups in any kind of meaningful way (except for what I or other racial minority group members were bringing with us). This is horrifying when you think most counsellors are white middle class women and the majority will not have had much reason to spend time meditating on race or the implications of cross-cultural/ racial counselling. It’s well documented (and was also my experience) that counseling trainees struggle to discuss issues around race openly and without fear. This has serious implications for the work we do with clients. I know for myself how difficult and frustrating it can be to find counsellors who can work effectively and non-defensively with the hurt of racism and issues to do with race.
During the course I became aware of the woeful statistics around the over-representation of black and mixed race people in mental health care and in prisons in the UK. I was also depressed to learn that mixed race children are the ones most likely to be put up for adoption. It’s so obvious that these communities are among those being failed by mental health care practitioners and society at large but very little is done to rectify this in the counselling world. I must admit there were times when acknowledging this and the general ignorance I’ve come across in the field so far in these areas has made me wish to leave the profession but the over-riding feeling has been that actually these facts make it more important for me and others like me to be there representing a different voice and perspective and doing our best to meet the needs of our clients.
I think I’ve noticed a pattern for myself in life in general. There are times when I identify more with being black and more with being white and then times when I feel ‘mixed’. My racial identity definitely feels fluid. It’s been a long hard battle over my life resisting the perimeters others have drawn out for me with regards to race and my identity. When I was studying on the course because I detected a lot of ignorance and some real unwillingness to have open conversations and race and culture (which I experienced as oppressive) I felt more aligned with my black identity and used that to explore what being part black felt like for me in that position. The current debates around asylum seekers in the UK seem to have stoked British racism and news filters in daily from the US around the fight for black lives there. We are not immune to being failed at the hands of the police in the UK either (my family has had personal experience of that) but this seems to get less attention here. Again such issues make me feel more in touch with my black identity and like I need to stand up for issues affecting those in racial minorities.
I was just at work the other day when a colleague said to me ‘You know when you’re family came over in the past seeking asylum…’ I stopped him there. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘My family were never seeking asylum. My grandfather was in the Royal Air Force. That’s how he ended up in Britain’. Not that I have any issues at all with asylum seekers but it worries me that anyone could adopt the idea that all brown-skinned people in the country could only be here because they have been seeking refuge. I’d love to say assumptions and ignorance of this kind are not the norm but a week without racial micro-aggressions from casual conversations or some aspect of the media or life in society would probably be a week spent at home with a blindfold over my head and ear plugs in my ears. Then people wonder why when you are in a racial minority you are overly pre-occupied with race not realising the extent to which our lives is affected by it. In general the British public seems to have little knowledge about history and race in this country particularly when it comes to the British history of the colonization and slavery, and the ramifications globally of this.
Well I said I would start where I am and I guess this is where I am at the moment when it comes to being mixed race and discussions around race in general. I’m feeling pretty angry. Especially when mixed race people are being hailed as the ‘face of the future’ and evidence that people in general are less racist and more open-minded. I’m just expressing my own experience here but my experience is that people are not more open-minded and we are pretty damn far away from this mixed race utopia that everyone is talking about. I don’t think more mixed race relationships or people in the world are necessarily reducing racism and moving things forwards. I would love to be proved wrong though and I’m waiting and watching.
Nicola Codner is 34 years old and currently training to be a person-centred counsellor in Leeds, UK. She is biracial and her heritage is White British and
Black Caribbean. She has a strong interest in difference and diversity which led her into re-training as a counsellor. Prior to training as a counsellor she worked as a publisher in academic publishing. She’s keen to continue to develop my writing experience hence part of her interest in blogging. She has a degree in English Literature and Psychology.
In her spare time, she loves reading, music, art, theatre, traveling and cinema.