Exploring Racial Biases: The Mixed-Race Experience
I want to share about my experience of being a mixed race individual.
I am a mixed-race person of Indian and French ancestry and I'm also a bi-national person as I have Mauritian and French nationalities. I have two identity cards, one passport, I can live in two different countries without having any issues regarding the law, and therefore can get services from two different governments. My experience of being mixed-race caused me a lot of personal struggles in life, many questioning, and also provided me some advantages and disadvantages.
The oldest memory that I have of me becoming aware that I was mixed race was when I was maybe 2 or 3 years old. I remember that I was in the garden with my mom, my sister, and a way older cousin. This cousin started to compare my sister's skin color and mine and trying to find who was more similar to who. I didn't understand what she was trying to do back then, but from my current understanding, it was just a way to create a cultural identity for surviving within a society. This kind of comparison didn't happen to me just one time but happened throughout my entire life. When we are mixed race, people have some amusement in trying to put us in a category. This caused me some existential questioning when I was a kid. I thought: "So... I'm not black, I'm not white, I'm not Indian... so what am I?". It was very confusing. Because of this, I felt sliced in half most of my life, and sometimes more than in half.
I felt socially alienated from a young age because I couldn't relate to anyone. I wasn't able to identify with any group of people. Most people have a culture that they feel pretty close to, I personally never felt that in my entire life. I never felt a huge need to identify, defend, or reject any culture, but of course, I did develop some more subtle identities... However, even if it was a struggle to fit it, being who am I also contributed to my awareness, my desire for self-actualization, and my desire to understand the world. As a kid, I quickly became aware that something was wrong with cultures. I saw people discussing and making comparisons and by being in the middle I became aware that people stay stuck on words and symbols without understanding the structural similarities. I thought that it was incredibly smart for supposed grown-up adults... Then I thought: "Well... looks like all cultures are BS. Let's not have any cultural identity, it's better to stay lucid".
As a mixed-race person, I feel at the same time a bit closer to everyone and disconnected from everyone:
I can understand a bit what it's like to be privileged because I experienced some privileges in my life, but not as many privileges as if I was completely white. My family never had that much money, it is an average family in the country where I live, but a poor family compared to first-world standards. My dad was a vendor on beaches, he would walk all day on beaches to sell stuff with tourists where my mom was a housewife. The situation with money was sometimes quite chaotic as they were periods with a lot of tourists and periods without that many tourists. My dad always had a lot of anxiety regarding money until Covid killed his career and he finally retreated. One day when I was around 3 or 4, my mom got a call from the French embassy telling her that I could go to some high-quality expensive private schools. She responded that it wasn't possible because we didn't have that much money, then the person told her that the French government would provide a scholarship for me because I had French nationality. Magically, some high-quality schools became accessible for me. From 4 to 18 years old, I had my entire education financed by the French government, and from 18 to 20, I also had other scholarships from the French government that allowed me to study in France. I'm honestly grateful for this because if I didn't have this chance I would have been beaten and humiliated by teachers in the public school system. It would have damaged me a lot and would have limited my possibility to develop complex thinking and to self-actualize. By looking at other people and other young people around me, I can see that many of them carry a lot of traumas. They aren't able to make the connexion between their difficulties in life and their traumas and don't even know what a trauma is. I'm grateful that I never had to deal with the trauma of being beaten by teachers at school, but of course, I had other childhood traumas from school.
I can understand a bit what it's like to be a white person traveling the world and dealing with people. It happened to me to have people walking to me because they thought that I was rich as fuck, and begging me, following me to get some money that I didn't have. That can be a bit annoying.
I can emphasize with what it's like to be a person of color in a white majority country because I experienced that and had white people making jokes on me because they perceived me as a person of color. They tried to label me as black, Indian, Muslim, or whatever would fit their cultural survival agenda.
I can emphasize with the fear of interacting with the police in the United States as a person of color even though I never experienced that and never had that many issues with any police.
I understand what it's like to be a minority. I'm a minority and I will be a minority in any social group no matter where I go because almost nobody on the planet has a similar cultural and biological heritage. I can emphasize with what it's like to be a person of color in a white majority country, or what it's like to be a Uyghur in China or a Rohingya in Myanmar, or a Muslim in India. The intensity of my experience is sure way lower, but I can still emphasize a bit with the emotional difficulty of being seen as different and the pain of being questioned or discriminated on the basis of physical appearance.
I can understand what it's like to be exploited because I experienced a bit of that. I worked in an offshore company in the past. I saw no other purpose for this company's existence rather than profiting from poor people. I was working 35 - 40 hours per week and was paid 500$/month during the first year, then after a year got a raise to 600$/month. I only had money to pay the rent, some bills, a gym membership, and quality food (fortunately). I wasn't saving that much. In the past I also had a boss from a first-world country that I worked with without being declared, I was paid 500$/month (or less sometimes). One day I asked him if we could create a contract in order to be aligned with the law, he told me that if we do this he would have to pay some fees and therefore would have to cut it from my salary. What a joke. I only had money to survive and wasn't saving that much. While doing freelancing, I worked with a guy that gave me the excuse that because I wasn't living in a first-world country he could pay me less for my services. He didn't pay me that much and one time didn't even pay me for my work. I sometimes clearly had a feeling of white domination from these experiences and also experienced a bit of exploitation from other people as the last person was an Indian living in Australia. Anyone exploits who it can in the end.
Even if I feel that I can relate a bit to everyone, I also feel highly different from everyone because almost nobody shares the background that I have. I just cannot fit into any culture, it has always been impossible for me. When I see people arguing about cultures, I'm often like: "Ugh... What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to say? If I say something, the other person will react against my side that he/she perceives as being different from him/her. If I don't say anything, people will blame me for not participating. If I go meta... wait... nobody goes meta so it's useless to try to explain anything to people.". Most people (stage blue/orange) rarely think about that, for most of them, it's just that some people are great because they are like this and other people aren't great because they are like that. Ok... I'm stereotyping here, the reality is always more nuanced, but I still consider that they are many trues to this.
I personally very rarely got direct racists insults, but mostly projections, subtle jokes, and questions. I think that it's because I have been very solitary most of my life. I never shared a lot about myself and never had that many friends.
I had moments in life where I felt more like a person of color and moments where I felt more like a white person. Until 18, I think I felt more like a person of color, however, while living in Europe I felt more like a white person... And now... I'm not sure anymore... maybe a white person because I feel privileged. Also, my skin tone is currently rather light because I stay inside most of the time, but it can darken pretty fast when I stay under the sun.
This mixed-race condition is an existential condition to handle. I had people walking to me just to ask me for my origins, I often feel like I attract eyes. People's perception of me changes a lot: if I'm in a white majority country, I can be perceived as black, Indian, Muslim, etc. However, I did notice that some white people can also perceive me as white or as someone from the middle-east. This is strange... If I'm in a POC majority country, I'm perceived as white. It's annoying to be questioned everywhere I go — even in my country of origin —, but it's not necessarily racist. Sometimes, people are just curious and ask questions. One of the advantages though is that I have been told many times that I look extremely good. I'm always surprised by this because I have been insecure about my body for my entire life as I never had a strong, large, masculine muscular body, but a very skinny body. Many people criticized me and made fun of me for being that skinny when I was a kid... Well.. apparently now I look good... life is strange.
Even if I have been able to perceive the world from a privileged white perspective and from an under-privileged person of color perspective, I overall see the world from my own individual lens. Being how I am is at the same time a blessing and a curse. I'm grateful for it because it allowed me to open my mind and question everything, but it's also a bit difficult to deal with and I will have to deal with it my entire life because the planet will not completely turn green in the next 50 years.
