“Where are you actually from?”
“Why do you wear your hair like that?
Is it because you want to be more on your white side?”
“I love mixed race babies!”
“What are you?”
“If you’re not white and you’re not black, what are you?”
“Is she black?
Is she white?
Is she Thai?”
I’m not a rare bird or alien.
I’ve had someone come up to me, not talk to me, talk to the people I’m with, and
be like, “Where did you get this exotic creature from?”
“Oh I love mixed race babies!”
There is definitely an obsession and I’m always like, no this is weird.
“I want to have kids with a black man so my babies look like you and have your hair!”
Yeah, yeah, yeah!
“I love your hair!”
“I love your eyes!”
We’re not trophies, like having mixed race kids…
We’re not handbags.
A mixed race baby is not just for Christmas.
What the fuck do you think this is?
There’s pages about it on Instagram.
Genuine pages about it.
And someone said to me, “Can we take some of your baby photos?”
I was like, “No!”
“Is that your real mum?”
People used to ask me when I was little if that was my babysitter.
When they meet my mum or dad they’re like, “Oh wow!”
I’m like…
Taking a step back!
Yeah, proper, like, “Oh I didn’t expect that one!”
When I’m with my dad and stuff, everyone thinks, I’m the Thai bride but he’s actually
like my dad.
Coming out to see where my mum was and then looking, and some girl went, “I don’t
think your mum’s here.”
And I went, “She’s right there!”
And then I’m just like, making sure, wherever I go, I’m like, “Dad!
Dad!
Dad!”
Like, this is my dad.
Oh, this word: [delay until she says it] “Half-caste.”
I’m not half of no-one.
I’ve been called that so many times.
Obviously it’s an offensive term because they’re basically saying you’re half of
something, you’re not full anything.
You’re a mongrel, you’re a breed…
I’ve had someone call me mulatto before which is very offensive.
I do think it’s generational because as the generations have moved on, we call ourselves
now mixed-race and for years I was like, “Not ‘half-caste’.
It’s ‘mixed race’!”
And the next generation is going to be like, “Not ‘mixed race’, it’s ‘dual heritage’.”
The whole “mixed race”, “half-caste”, “bi-racial” all of those kind of words…
I just…
I’ve always never wanted to be labelled.
I’ve always just felt like I’m me.
This is the worst.
“Stop acting white.”
Sometimes people will say to me, “Oh you’re acting white today.”
Like, they’ll pick out things.
“That’s the white side of you.”
Obviously my name’s Natasha.
It’s Russian.
And they’re like, “Oh aren’t you supposed to like, have a Thai name or something?”
I’m like, “What?”
Black girls and black boys at college always used to say to me, “Oh you sound white.
Oh you sound like you should be called ‘Becky.’”
Like, “You’re too fair.
You’re too white.
You’re not black enough.”
I had to prove my blackness, that my mum’s Nigerian and she’s a black woman.
You never get your white privilege, do you know what I mean?
The idea, you know, white privilege being this thing, being a mixed race man, people
always see you as mixed race or black.
So the idea of, “stop acting white”...
Like, you never gave me no chance to act like that anyway!
The whole lighty vs. dark skin thing gets on my tits.
Like someone will walk past and be like, “Oh lighty!”
Like what does that…
How is that meant to make me feel?
Primary school - didn’t have an issue with it.
Secondary school, that’s when like, “Oh you think you’re nice because you’re light-skinned.”
“You think you’re all it.”
“You think you’re nice because you’re mixed race.”
The idea that “lighter is beautiful” or any of that shit, is I think partly, come
through the media and what they forced to us as, “This is what we’ll accept.”
“If you had to pick a side, what would you pick?”
Ha!
Oh my God!
Yeah, I’ve had this question.
They did a blacks vs. whites football yeah.
No way!
Yeah, so I was there being like, “Oh shit.
Is anyone going to clock that...
“ You know…
So I’m just trying to go off to lunch, and some guys like, “You can be the referee
bruv.”
Neither actually.
I just like having the best of both worlds.
I’m kind of like, what war’s about to break out that I don’t know about between
these white and black people.
I can be dancing with my white friends, I can be dancing with my black friends and I
can bring you all together.
That will be a sad state of affairs for me because I’d run over to the white side and
they’d go, “We can’t trust this black guy.”
You go over to the black side, they’d go, “No, this guy’s watered down we can’t
trust him.”
“Do you ever wish you weren’t mixed race?”
No.
No, I’m proud of my race, being mixed, I actually love it.
I feel like I can be around any culture.
I think I’m more open minded to the fact that I can embrace different cultures.
No-one’s fully anything.
Yeah!
We’re that integrated.
It’s so many years since there was ever one kind of race.
We all started in bloody Africa.
Why is it a thing to be like, “Oh how do you feel about being mixed race?”
We’ve all got something else in us.
Mixed race people are created from the love of two different races.
That is fucking buff.
That is beautiful because it’s love that wins.