The pain of being non-white in a white family that don’t care if they hurt you.
Back in 2021, comedian Kemah Bob tweeted this:
And I remember predicting the name of Lizzo’s hit single when I thought: it’s about damn time. And from the replies, I wasn’t the only one who had been searching for a space to speak about this. People spoke of how their white family disregarded their colour and thus the experiences that come from moving through this world as a person of colour. Comments like “You’re not Black, you just look like you’ve been on holiday.” Comments that exoticise them like “You just look so exotic.” People who recall listening to their family discuss foreigners and refugees and immigrants in a negative light and then remembering to exclude their non-white parent from that racist generalisation. People who were called racist slurs by older family members who refused to apologise for it because being family meant they could say what they want. People who weren’t allowed to bring up race because their family “didn’t see colour”, or who didn’t want us “causing trouble.” People spoke of the way their white family would suggest they change their hair rather than learn how to work with their hairtype, or would speak negatively about their hair.
And so much of what I read in that thread spoke to me, so I want to speak to you, in the hope that maybe by reading this, someone going through this will feel a bit less alone. Because I felt alone for 23 years, and it was soul crushing.
I am not speaking to half of my family. And the short reason for that is because 7 key incidents in a short space of time showed that they love their pride more than they love me, but we’re not here for the short answer, so let me explain.
Phase 1: Growing Up
Growing up, I knew I was different from my family. I was the darkest one there, if we went out together I would notice how every single time we did people would be surprised my mum was my mum. If there was the full group outing, I would notice when the ticket clerk would look to see where my parents were before realising I was with the big group of white people. It was made clear to me from people outside my family, I did not look like I belonged.
My dad had left when I was young, and I had a complicated relationship with him, and with how other people spoke about him. I was angry with him for leaving, and he was too young and too volatile to be a good dad at that point. But hearing the way my Nan in particular would speak about him also made me angry, and looking back a lot of the language used was weighted with racism. The insinuation that this outcome was inevitable when my mum decided to have children with a man like that. As I’ve gotten older, I have learnt that my grandparents didn’t love that my mum’s friends were mostly people of colour, asking her if she even had white friends. And they did not want her to marry a Black man. But as a child all I knew was that the way my dad was spoken about didn’t make me feel good. Even now I think back to the way my dad was spoken about in comparison to the way the white men in this family are spoken about and it gets my back up. The language around violence that is used to describe him, whilst excuses are made for the violence of the white men. My dad was emotionally unavailable - but financially dependable - and that made him a deadbeat, a no good father. But my uncle who was the same to his children was a great dad who gave his kids anything they asked for. They probably don’t even remember these things, but I do.
I remember never knowing what to do with my hair, and no one tried to learn. My hair as a child was just put into a plait or two and that was that, so as I got older and wanted more independence, I didn’t know what to do and neither did anyone around me. It was called messy, wild, hard to manage. My school started telling me it was a bad representation of their school and I should do something about it. My family starting suggesting keratin treatments and relaxers. And I began to think, maybe I should just straighten my hair, maybe that’s what you have to do to have nice hair, managable hair, acceptable hair. And it seemed I was right. Because once it was straightened everyone was full of compliments. I was told it was so much nicer this way. And I believed it. I straightened my hair for years - I had a breakdown one night because the hair straighteners weren’t working and I couldn’t go into school with half a head curly. The idea of washing it again and just going in with curly hair wasn’t even an option to me. Because I still had no idea how to style it, to me at that point curly hair was bad and messy and unacceptable, and straight hair was nice. They probably didn’t know at that point that these were attitudes shrouded in racism - I didn’t know at that point that I was feeling internalised racism. That I was being taught that this part of my Blackness was a problem and I needed to change it and be closer to whiteness. I hated my hair for a long long time. I’m still on my journey with it.
I also remember the way people spoke about my sister. And still do. My sister is lighter than me, and she has tiny features and thinner hair. I am darker than her, with incredibly thick hair and my features were described as “strong”, I was told I looked like my dad, as well as his mother, someone that is regularly described as being stern both in disposition and appearance. She was always the beautiful one. She was always the one people would comment on and I was an afterthought. I can’t tell you the number of times I have heard “(My sister’s name) is so beautiful, why doesn’t she model. I mean they’re both pretty girls but (my sister) is just stunning.”, or the amount of times people in my family would throw compliments on her about her looks whilst I was sat right there and when it came to me it was about how I was doing at school. And the irony is, now they complain I know too much. That my knowledge is intimidating. They tell me my “passion can come across like you’re angry”, and that it can feel aggressive. And they question why I don’t like traditionally “girly” things - I don’t wear make up, I won’t wear dresses or skirts. But is it a surprise when the message I got in all my formative years was that not only was I not beautiful, I was masculine and my brain was what had value? And don’t get me wrong, I agree that our brains are important. But the truth is in this world beauty is valued more, and I don’t look like the accepted beauty standards and I was never made to feel like that was okay. And don’t get me wrong, my sister is beautiful. But my family have no idea how it felt to be the darkest one in the room and be the only one that wasn’t hearing that regularly.
I can’t tell you the amount of times I have sat and heard casual racism thrown about by my family. I very distinctly remember watching Strictly Come Dancing with my family, and for the first time since joining the show, Oti Mabuse had felt comfortable enough to wear her hair natural in a VT. Her 4c hair was out, she was just existing, and I remember my family making comments like “Oh my god look at the state of her.” “She could have made a bit of an effort couldn’t she.” When I had seen her, my heart had soared. It was one of the first times I had seen a Black person on TV with their natural hair out. Something white people do every day - chuck their hair up in a ponytail with absolutely no effort and it becomes a literal hairstyle. The loose ponytail or the messy bun. My excitement was immediately quashed by the way they mocked her, laughing. The amount of times comments have been made about immigrants, about people from “those” countries, sentences that start with “them type of people.” And I’ve sat there thinking - would you speak like that about me if I wasn’t your relative?
It all adds up to you feeling like “other.” And the impacts of that are deep. When I was 13, I got sick. My sister had had a health condition for pretty much her whole life. It meant that neither of us could work when we were doing our A-Levels, and so much more. My mum was treated so badly by her family because of this, told she was too soft and easy on us. No one bothered to learn about the conditions we had. I had - and still have - an auditory processing disorder. Everything processes too loud for me and it causes me pain, to get overwhelmed, and stress. I’m from an Irish family and they like a drink. And when they drink two things happen - they get loud and they get confrontational. I remember distinctly one night we were all together at my grandparents house, I was upstairs because it was too loud and everyone was making a big deal out of the fact I was upstairs. I was no fun, a spoilsport etc. Long story short, a massive argument happened in which I was the villain. As the years have gone on, my cousins have developed health conditions too, some of them the same as what my sister and I have struggled with, others different but impacting our lives in similar ways. The difference in the way the family responded though? Leagues apart. My sister had an eating disorder, and we were left to deal with it ourselves. My cousin had an eating disorder and the entire family rallied around, even helping to do mealtimes. Another cousin ended up with scoliosis and everyone was deeply concerned and empathetic, people researched it and wanted to help. When she couldn’t work because of it, no comments were made. And here’s where the impacts of feeling like “other” in your own family come in. I will never know for 100% if the reason my sister and I were treated so differently is because we were the children who weren’t white. Not intentionally - I do need to make that clear. I don’t for a second think my family were like “those two aren’t white, let’s be harder and less sympathetic to them.” But how can I know that the horrible systemic issues that adultify Black and brown girls weren’t at play? Ideas about us maturing quicker, needing less emotional support, feeling less pain. When other racial insensitivies like the ones I’ve described were happening, I can’t know that for 100%.
But okay, I was born at the start of 1997. This was happening in the late 90s, into the 00s and early 10s. We’re in 2022 so why am I not talking to them now?
Phase 2: The Incidents
Incident Number 1
Well, it starts with Brexit. I’m sure you remember, it was this little campaign about whether the UK should leave the EU that was driven largely by being anti immigrant - specifically brown immigrants - and a lie about money for the NHS on a big bus. It’s a campaign that a large majority of my white family voted for. Naturally, I was stunned. First of all, these are Irish people. And I don’t mean Irish in that they’ve been in the UK for 200 years but their great great great grandparents were Irish. I mean they are literally Irish immigrants, all of them born in Dublin. But second of all, it was like being kicked in the chest. My family, the people who raised me, had gone out and put a tick in the box of something that would hurt me and people like me. This is when I have my first falling out with my uncle. Because apparently it was absolutely out of order for me to suggest that voting for something that was sold by openly targetting racism and xenophobic fears, with no regard for how the outcome of that would impact on people of colour - or even specifically the ones they are related to - was in fact a racist act. In the same way that seeing someone get punched in the face, and instead of doing anything, you’re cheering the attacker on would also be an act of violence. He actually wanted to argue Brexit wasn’t driven by racism as if hate crime didn’t go up after the vote, concentrated in areas where people voted Leave.
Incident Number 2
Then along came a man named Donald Trump. It was 2019 and he was beginning to talk about the re-election campaign for 2020. I’m at my grandparents house and the news is on. My Grandad decides to comment that Donald Trump is what the UK needs. I am immediately shocked - I know he says things just to get a reaction but really? You’re going to sit here and tell your Black granddaughter with disabilities that the raging racist who mocks the disabled is what this country needs? And here dear readers is where I tell you something that becomes a theme with my Grandad. He tells me, in the most condescending of manners, “You know you’re not Black right? You’re not Black.” I hit the roof, I tell him not to speak to me again until he wants to apologise and I don’t speak to him for months. Incident 3 is when my family disregard my wish to not be in his company because of his overt racism and disrespect, thereby making me uncomfortable because that was better than them engaging in a conversation.
Incident 5 involved him saying the same thing so I won’t go through the details, let’s just address why this comment is so hurtful and also, why I think it’s made.
Race is a construct that has very real repercussions. The shade of your skin influences the way in which you are treated in this world based on how you are perceived. Every experience in my life thus far has shown that I am perceived by the world as a Black person, that is the way in which I move through this world, albeit as a lighter skinned Black person.
For context, this is me. As you can see, clearly not white. As you can see, most people will look at me and see a Black woman. The people that called me a Gorilla and made fun of my skin and my body hair did not care that my mum is white. The people who called me the n-word didn’t care that my mum is white. The people who told me they’d voted my kind out, they did not care that my mum is white. They care that I’m Black.
You don’t get to tell me that I’m not. In doing so you undermine not just all the beautiful things about it, but all the struggle I’ve gone through to be who I am because of how this world treats people like me.
Why do I think non-white people hear this so often from their white families? Pride. I think they view it as a rejection of them, and I think that hurts their ego. They are white, there’s no way around it, so for us to say we’re Black, or we’re Asian, or we’re Latina, or whatever the other parent is? It feels like we are choosing “the other half.” Because here’s the thing: I’m not white. Why on earth would I say I was? I don’t look white. I haven’t got eurocentric features. I am not perceived as if I am white, I am not treated the way white people are. I am Black. Ask me what I am and I will tell you I am mixed race Black. If my family were able to put their pride aside, and engage in conversation, they’d know there’s no rejection of them at all. For me, I am beyond proud to be Irish. I love it. If someone asks me my nationality, I tell them I’m Irish. I have the flag hanging in my room, so that anyone who visits can see how proud I am of my heritage. That is what I get from them. I have Irish blood flowing through these veins but I am not white. I don’t reject them by saying I’m Black. But they reject me by saying I’m not.
Anyway, back to Incident 4. George Floyd had just been murdered, the world was enraged. Everyone was talking about it. My Grandad mentioned that he’d been speaking to my uncle about it and my uncle had said something along the lines of “As sad as it is, the officers were just trying to do their job.” My uncle is a fireman, he’s quite high up in the fire service. Prior to this he was in the army reserves and before that, part of the Royal Air Cadets. All this to say: He’s establishment through and through, so it wasn’t unusual for him to take up for the establishment when they’re being criticised. So I text him and asked him - did this happen? And instead of answering he said “Who told you that?” “And I can’t believe you’re asking me that!” - as if it was more of an issue that I would ask him that than that he might have said it. Then he said he was “Disappointed.” The guilt tripping of the people of colour in your life when they want to clarify you haven’t said anything weighted in racial violence? It’s not the one.
I covered Incident 5 above, so moving on to Incident 6. It once again concerns the above uncle. I had been put into his company again when I did not want to be. My family have a habit of doing that. We were discussing the town in which we live, in comparison to the city from which we had moved. He was of the opinion that our town was “better” - I was of the opinion that what makes an area “better” is subjective. He was of the opinion that his perspective as a 46 year old white man, upper middle class, as a fireman meant his perspective was the right one. I was of the opinion that no, his viewpoint was only that. His viewpoint. Not objectively correct, simply his. When I tried to explain that factoring in my ethnicity, the racism and feeling of exclusion in our coastal town makes it objectively worse for me, I was told I had “issues”, made “everything about race” and that I was “weird.” I was told by the rest of the family to be quiet, to not bring these things up. My cousins, children, were the only ones to check if I was okay.
And that leads us into the final straw, the straw that made me realise 100%: this is not family, this is not love, I deserve better. Incident 7.
Good Friday 2022. The whole family are together. The men are discussing the recently announced Rwanda policy that would involve sending migrants to the UK, offshore to Rwanda, and the Homes for Ukraine scheme. My Grandad states he doesn’t understand why it’s different for one group - Those from Africa and the Middle East - than it is for another - Ukrainians. I had kept my mouth shut because I knew where it was going and I was stressing out. But I said “it’s because the Africans and Middle Easterns look like me, and the Ukrainians look like you.” Cue: both my uncles trying to prove me wrong as if it wasn’t quite literally said multiple times on numerous news sources that the response to Ukraine was what it was, because they were Europeans, with blonde hair, and blue eyes. Enter: Fireman uncle with the “can I say something now, without you getting emotional.”
No. Don’t tell me not to get emotional. Don’t use the racially charged language to silence me. That’s what I say. He shouts at me to have some respect. I tell him he doesn’t respect me, I ask my mum to explain why, to explain the angry black woman, because I am tired of being the only one having my back. She eventually does - he doesn’t like this. The other men join in attacking me, imagine 3 grown men, stood shouting abuse at the only Black person in the room whilst she sits, alone, with no one at her defence. Fireman Uncle shouts at me that I have a chip on my shoulder. I lose it, and say if it is, it’s having white family that don’t care if they hurt me. My aunt is overwhelmed, but shes shouting at me - I say I am not in the wrong here. She takes a minute and realises that actually yes, I was right and why the hell are they shouting at me? I’m explaining to her how I hate these conversations because as the only Black person in the room, I live on my nerves waiting for them to say something racist, something hurtful. Something they think they’re exempt from criticism for because of their proximity to me. But they don’t realise there’s people just like them all over the country having the same conversations, but they take that energy to the streets and make me feel unsafe on the streets of my town. And guess what happens next, now that I’ve once again called myself Black? You guessed it, my Grandad enters with the sentence he knows will hurt me: You know you’re not Black don’t you?
Clearly there were underlying tensions throughout the family that day because multiple arguments broke out. But guess who my Nan wanted removed from her home? Me. Guess who was told “Are you proud of yourself? Look at what you caused.” by their Grandad? Me.
Phase 3: Making my peace.
There they are. The 7 incidents. I am currently not speaking to my Grandparents or either of my Uncles, because they have shown me time and time again, they don’t care if they hurt me. And not only that, me vocalising that I’ve been hurt is a bigger problem than them hurting me. They have shown me that their love is conditional on me pretending I’m not Black, and allowing them to hurt me. That is not love. They have shown me that even if they do love me in their way - they don’t love me more than their pride.
And do you know what? That’s okay. For me, that’s okay. As much as my crippling anxiety surrounding death makes it difficult to not speak with my Grandparents, the act of walking away is okay. Because my family is not limited to the one I was born into. In the last few years I have found a support network of people who have shown me love that isn’t conditional. Who love the things in me that the family I was born into find “intimidating” or “too much.” I had made my peace a couple of years ago with not being around the family I was born into. A friend said to me “Why are you feeling guilty for being hurt? Are they feeling guilty for hurting you? If they are, it’s not enough to apologise.” And that changed things for me.
But here’s what I can’t make my peace with. They were my mum’s family before they were mine. And because they aren’t willing to do their best not to hurt me, she doesn’t have her family anymore. My mum would do anything for them - and has, time and time again - but they weren’t able to choose kindess for her. And that is the worst pain. Knowing that had I been white, my mum would have her family. If I was white, she wouldn’t have felt she had to choose - me or them. But I’m not, and now all she has left is her sister. (Big up my Auntie, the only one who did choose kindness.) That is, in my opinion, the realest pain of being non white in a white family who don’t care if they hurt you.
So there you have it. I hope reading that made you feel less alone if you’re struggling with this right now. I know it’s not spoken about much and that can feel isolating. Making your peace with it is hard when you don’t know that it’s okay to walk away, when you feel like you don’t have anyone who has your back. So let me have it. I got you, it’s okay. If walking away is what you need to do to find your peace, walk away.
And to everyone, regardless of ethnicity, who is trying to make peace with things from their childhood - that comes with time and with good people. I am not 100% there yet, but I’m on my way. Give it time, you will be too.