I didn’t grow up with any female friends of colour; I honestly don’t know if it was a conscious choice or not, but my best friends are pretty much all white. The shade of their skin of course, shouldn’t matter at all - the women I’m proud to call my closest crew are the kindest, most loving, un-bitchiest, most supportive women I know who have been there for me through thick and thin from age 11 onwards. But as I start to uncover what being a mixed race woman in a white community means to me today, I’ve realised that being around other women of colour is helping with the formation of my identity - my new one that is.
To understand what I mean, you first have to understand by background. I’m very much in the process of re-establishing who I am, after growing up as a brown-skinned girl in an all-white world and uncovering exactly why that is, after 25 years. As I said, I do love my white friends - they’re my oldest and closest. And I love my parents too; they raised me within a stable family unit of love and routine for which I’ll always be grateful. But my English Dad and Irish Mum never faced up to the issues that I was confronted with each and every time I looked in the mirror; where my African features came from in a Caucasian community untouched by the beauty of brown, beige or black. In my family, there was an absence of discussion around my race, because to address that, would have meant ripping our four-person family unit from its root (I have a younger blue-eyed brother, too). Race-related issues didn’t affect ‘us’, because ‘we’ were white. And when I questioned my parents, I was told I was my blackness had simply ‘skipped’ a few generations and that I didn’t need to worry about blending in or standing out; it was irrelevant. In Ireland, I was ‘tanned’ but never black and to my friends I was just Georgina.
And so, with direction from my parents, I became an expert at maintaining the mask of silence at school and university; me and my friends didn’t talk about any issues related to race, or blackness because I didn’t view myself as black. And so my cultural identity was formed like that of those around me: white.
Of course, that’s not to say questions and issues of racism haven’t clouded my mind for years - they totally have but I’ve had no outlet for addressing them. As a child, I learnt to suppress the whole thing, to push my worries and anxieties to the very pit of my stomach when someone told me to ‘go back home’, or told me I was adopted. Questions about my unruly head of frizz and tendency to turn a dark shade of brown in the summer sun were weekly occurrences as a child growing up in Surrey, and being asked where I ‘really came from’ in nightclubs, when I viewed myself as Irish as my best friends beside me, were weekly pinpricks of pain that I had to ignore. Speaking to all my white school-friends today, they tell me that they also believed that I was related to my family, because that’s the version we all grew up with. And being as close as we are, they also got used to defending me to anyone who pushed a little too hard for answers. ‘Her parents are white and that’s just how it is’, they’d say adamantly.
The construction of my white identity was therefore both a conscious and unconscious process which was led by my parents and relatives, and mimicked by me and my friends outside of our community. But that identity was destroyed after my Dad got very sick and died from cancer two years ago. Dad’s love was so big and so engulfing, that I’d never truly wanted to get a DNA test to check if we were related; it was as if simply being around him was enough to stem my doubts. But after his death I was so raw that I felt as if there was nothing left to lose. I decided to search for answers and discovered through a DNA test and series of voice-straining rows with my Mum, that I had been conceived with a black man she has no further information on.
I remember calling my two best friends when the DNA test results came through by email at work. Hyperventilating on the phone, I told them my heart felt like it was going to stop beating, that my Mum had lied to me for my whole life, that I didn’t know who I was anymore. Everything I thought I knew was splintered into fragments so small, I couldn’t possibly rebuild them. But my white best friends were - and are - solid pillars in my foundation that have stopped me completely falling apart these past few years.
So how do you formulate a new racial identity after almost a quarter of a century? I’ll tell you when I work it out. All I know now, is that I have a lot of catching up to do, and part of that education is coming from other women of colour. I didn’t set out consciously make more black female friends, but since l have discovered more about who I am, the number of brown skinned women I can truly call friends, has increased by around five (!).
The first were American; I left the UK to go and live in some black spaces after the DNA test results and thought Brooklyn, NYC would be the black education I’d need. I moved in with a girl called Alexis who I’d met through Airbnb who was both woke and super-fun. When she learned of my story, she offered empathy, insight and a lot of humour. I learned that not knowing the full extent of your heritage is common in the US due to slavery and as a result, black culture there is more of a cohesive unit that welcomes anyone with a hint of melanin in their skin. ‘Giiiirl, I’ll help you out with whatever you want to know’ Alexis said one day over the kitchen table. ‘but let me tell you something - if you’d grown up here, aint’ no way you’d have gone this long without knowing you’re black’ she laughed. Months later, I reached out to a mixed-race girl on Twitter who’s writing I’d followed for years. I was always amazed at the courage she had in talking frankly about her experiences online - some of which were spookily similar to mine. We eventually met when I returned from my travels and hit it off, bonding over our careers and our general interests - there are so many things she just intrinsically gets. Then there’s a girl from school who I’ve built a friendship with after she heard of my experiences and reached out on Facebook, plus a friend of a friend who I’d always got on well with, but never truly taken the time to get to know until she also reached out and offered advice.
I’m so grateful to the women who have made the effort to support me these past few years and making black female friends has been enriching on so many levels. I don’t know if I deliberately isolated myself from other black girls when I was a kid, and admitting that I may have had some unconscious bias against people who look like me today, fills me with guilt and embarrassment. But I’m trying to tell myself that it’s not entirely my fault; there’s been some inadvertent psychological brainwashing that will take years of therapy to address. I want to go back to that confused 14-year old at an all girls’ Catholic school and tell her; it’s OK to be best friends with the black and brown girls too; they’re stronger and more resilient than you’ll ever know and really, they’re just like you.
My best friends from school are supportive of my new crew and of course, they’re the ones who still probably know me best, who I call in an emergency and who I know will be in my life forever. But there’s something about being around other women of colour that fills my soul with joy and puts my mind at ease when the white people in my life, who I love, don’t understand what I’m talking about at times. The innate understanding of certain topics, ideas and frustrations with the women of colour I know is, I hope, the basis for solid friendships that will last for years to come and compliment the strong ones I already have in my life. Surrounding myself with other women who understand what is means to have their identity scrutinised, ridiculed or denied to them is liberating. Talking to them about how to deal with insidious micro-aggressions that pop up in work or social settings, how to style afro hair, or how to simply be ourselves is crucial to my mental health. I only wish I’d met them all sooner.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.