BIRACIAL BRITAIN: A DIFFERENT WAY OF LOOKING AT RACE | BOOK REVIEW
Remi Adekoya (Constable)
Biracial people are the fastest growing minority group in Britain, with one in three of the population projected to sit within this category by the end of the century. Here, meanwhile, is an important treatise about the experience as it has existed to date: not written as a self-help guide, yet there is wisdom to be garnered from the accounts contained within Biracial Britain: A Different Way Of Looking At Race.
Polish-Nigerian Adekoya teaches politics at York University and has written for The Times, Guardian and Spectator. Interviewing people from different generations and communities for Biracial Britain, and adding his own thoughts and experiences, the book has three parts – ‘Between Black And White’, ‘Mixed In BritAsia’ and ‘Mixed Other’ – each with subchapters. This allows for focus on racism which is not exclusively a white-black problem, where patriarchal, hierarchal and tribal problems also come into play.
Rita, interviewed by Adekoya, was born in 1946, the daughter of an African-American GI and an English mother. Her story of surviving both racial and physical abuse is deeply saddening and shocking, her words though defiant: “What matters is that I survived it all. But if I could go back and do it all over again, I’d definitely tell myself, ‘Rita, don’t let them get you thinking you’re not good enough. Don’t let them rule your life.’”
After spending time in Toxteth, Eugene – his father again African-American; his mother of German-Scottish ancestry – moved to Tiger Bay in Cardiff for a placement. “Tiger Bay was home to the only other mixed-race community anywhere near as large as the one back in Toxteth. I felt quite at home there and in Cardiff generally. The city was more integrated than Liverpool at the time. Black people in Cardiff seemed happy to be Welsh,” says Eugene, now in his mid-60s; growing up, he observes, “we used to think that all of us with similar skin colour needed to be living together, hanging out with each other. I now know that is nonsense. What you need to be with is like-minded intelligent people. People you can learn from and grow with. Hopefully that group will be mixed enough so there’s all kinds of people from different backgrounds.”
Then there is actress and teacher Sophia, born in 1982 to a Zimbabwean father and English-German mother. As a child, the only biracial woman she saw on TV and could identify with was Neneh Cherry. “There is a confidence that comes with being yourself,” she tells Adekoya. “Your tribe are those that like you for who you are. Those that don’t like you as you are, those are not your people. It really is as simple as that.”
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words DAVID NOBAKHT