Laura Smith asks why Britain’s growing mixed race population is still ignored

If population projections based on the national census are to be believed, people who describe themselves as ‘mixed race’ could become the largest, single, ethnic minority group in the UK within the next 25 years.

If everybody is living in separate communities of black, white and Asian, how can our existence be explained?

What is startling about this statement is not so much the possibility itself – we have known for years that those of mixed race form the fastest-growing ethnic group – but that it is occurring in an almost total absence of public discussion or debate. Politicians, both black and white, speak of the problems of mono-racial ghettos and the failure of multiculturalism. Where are the 680,000 mixed race Britons in that discussion? Or the tens of thousands of people related to them? If everybody is living in separate communities of black, white and Asian, how can our existence be explained?

It was the 2001 national census that first put mixed race Britons on the map. Ten years after ethnic monitoring was first introduced, seven new categories were added, including white and black Caribbean, white and black African, white and Asian, and ‘any other mixed background’. Before that date, people like me (my mother is black Guyanese, my father white Scottish) were asked to tick ‘the group to which they considered they belonged’ – in some cases effectively denying part of their identity – or to choose ‘other ethnic group’ and squeeze complex details into the section provided.

The results showed that, in many cases, notions about people from different ethnic groups living separate lives were outdated. The number of people who ticked ‘mixed’ was 677,117 – around 300,000 higher than previous estimates. Mixed people now accounted for 1.2% of the overall population and 14.6% of the ethnic minority population – a larger group than people of Bangladeshi, black Caribbean, black African or Chinese origin.

They also showed that the mixed race group was growing fast. More than 50% of those who described themselves as mixed were under 16, with mixed race children making up 3.5% of those of school age, and just under 4% of under-fives.

In some parts of the country, mixed race children are already in the majority among non-white pupils. In Lewisham, south London, for example, 11% of school-age children are mixed race, while in Nottingham the figure is 8%.

public discourse on race, ethnicity and identity continues to work on the assumption that everyone can be divided into ‘traditional’ racial or ethnic groups

Yet public discourse on race, ethnicity and identity continues to work on the assumption that everyone can be divided into ‘traditional’ racial or ethnic groups. And the position of some is to deny that ‘mixed race’ exists at all. At a conference on community cohesion in March, Lee Jasper, policy adviser on equalities and policing to London mayor Ken Livingstone, told me in no uncertain terms that mixed race was not a term he subscribed to, because ‘we are all members of one race and that’s the human race’. No amount of disagreement from the floor could challenge his position: race was a social construct dating from the days of slavery and so mixed race could not, and did not, exist.

Seeking clarification for this article, I asked him in an interview what he meant. While he stuck to the position that, since both black and white were socially constructed, he could not accept the term ‘mixed race’, he did acknowledge that there might be issues particular to people of ‘dual cultural heritage’ or ‘dual ethnicity’.

‘Maybe this issue has been filed in the “too difficult” box, which means it has been quietly shelved’, he said. ‘Maybe it’s too difficult for black people [who see] light-skinned people [as] not being definitively black, and for white people, with all the issues it brings up. It does need much more discussion.’

Sharron Hall, founder of intermix.org.uk, a website for mixed race individuals and families, says much of the difficulty is historical. ‘There is a section of the black community that thinks mixed race people should stop messing about being mixed race and just be black’, she says.

‘I think it comes partly from a fear of watering down the race – that if you associate too much with white people, the black in you will disappear. There is also the legacy of slavery, when mixed race people got to live in the house and get educated because they were the children of the master. So there is a historical envy, which says: “don’t think you are better than us.”’

Such bad feeling is not surprising, given that, under colonialism, brown and black-skinned people all over the world were divided according to the shade of their skin. The use of pseudo-scientific terms such as ‘octoroon’, ‘quadroon’ and ‘half-caste’ – which originated in India – were by no means accidental.

Mixed messages

The mainstream media, dominated as it is by white people, is also guilty of denial – albeit in a different way. Those mixed race people that do well are more often than not described as black. In this way, Ashley Cole and Stan Collymore become black football players, Oona King becomes a black MP, Lewis Hamilton the first black Formula One driver, Leona Lewis the first black winner of X Factor.

I am not saying that those individuals do not and should not describe themselves as black, but to assume that they do is to deny a whole other side to them and their experiences. As Chamion Caballero, research fellow at London South Bank University, says: ‘It’s all very well to adhere to the one-drop rule and say black is black, but when black people are calling you yellow skin and half breed, then it’s not quite the whole story’.

mixed race people are used by advertisers as a convenient shorthand for diversity

The frequency with which mixed race people are used by advertisers as a convenient shorthand for diversity is another example. It cannot have escaped everyone’s notice just how often mixed women and children appear in adverts for everything from underwear to sofas to female-friendly cars, often with white partners or parents. Rather that than risk alienating audiences with somebody ‘too black’ or ‘too different’.

Where the growth of the mixed race population is discussed, it is too often accompanied by negative assumptions. In November last year, Trevor Phillips used his last speech as head of the Commission for Racial Equality (before taking up his new post at the helm of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights) to make his first public comments about mixed race people. Towards the end of a speech in which he spoke of people from different backgrounds living in ‘separate and isolated communities’, he touched briefly on the emergence of the mixed race group, acknowledging that ‘by the end of (the 2020s) they are almost certain to overtake those of Indian origin to become the single largest minority group in the country’.

But rather than use this as a positive example of how some people at least were moving away from ‘separate and isolated communities’, he went on to point to the perceived problems mixed people face, from lone parenthood to family breakdown to high rates of drug treatment. He finished by saying: ‘We don’t yet know why this should be so, though many people talk now of identity stripping – children who grow up marooned between communities’.

Many mixed race people were angered by his comments, which rehashed old stereotypes and received widespread coverage in the national press. Although the current chair of the CRE, Kay Hampton, wrote to the Times shortly afterwards,

saying the organisation would work to challenge ‘old assumptions that this group is one beset by confusion and crisis’, many felt the damage had been done.

Caballero, who has been researching mixed race issues for a number of years and is currently investigating the parenting of mixed race and faith children, says part of the problem is that the academic research on which politicians and policy-makers rely has been too narrowly focused. ‘It is very early days when it comes to research on this group’, she says. ‘In the past, studies have tended to perpetuate the tragic mulatto stereotype, by focusing on the children of prostitutes, kids in care and other groups within the social services system. It’s extremely unhelpful and misleading to generalise about mixed race people based on so-called clinical studies like these.’

Awareness about people who have one white and one Asian parent is even lower. One friend of mine was told she couldn’t be mixed race ‘because you’ve got straight hair’. And as for people with white and Middle Eastern or white and Japanese parentage, there is still no census category for them to tick – though the Office for National Statistics is investigating this.

Back in September last year, I wrote an article about my own experiences as a mixed race woman for the Guardian. I was fearful of a backlash. I expected letters from black people feeling betrayed by the implication that I had renounced my blackness, and racist rants from white people who thought the races just shouldn’t mix. What I got was email after email from people, all over the country and abroad, who were either mixed race themselves or part of mixed race families. Many said it was the first time they had read anything about identity that chimed with their own experiences. Others wanted to find out more about what research and support was available, or simply to relate what had happened to them.

What the response showed me is that there are thousands of people in the UK who are directly and personally affected by the growing mixed race population. They are desperate to begin to discuss what this means for them and how public services might respond, not to have the issues swept under the carpet. These are hard things to talk about, for all kinds of reasons, but if we don’t begin to discuss them, we might never be able to move beyond the knee-jerk responses of fear, hostility and ignorance that have too often characterised discussions about mixed race people.

Laura Smith is is a freelance writer and journalist specialising in criminal justice and racial politics

For more information on Britain’s mixed race population, see www.intermix.org.uk or www.pih.org.uk

5 Comments

Kevin I'm not sure where you get 'the usual suspects' from but the whole point of having an open call for papers is to get the widest range of views we can. The rapid growth in numbers is often a good hook when raising the issue but if you look at the site you'll see there are plenty of interesting questions that we think need looking at, for example: "Have attitudes to mixed-race couples, people and families changed in Britain?" "Do mixed-race groups get overlooked when policies attampt to engage ethnic minorities?" "Does inequality take specific forms for mixed-race people, and, if so, this is the same across all mixed-race groups?" "Why do statistics indicate that mixed-race children are so likely to have a long-term limiting illness?" "Similarly, why do statistics also indicate that mixed-race people are more likely to be victims of crime?" "Do mixed-race families have to cope with different issues that families from the same racial backgrounds?" And, as you yourself ask "Can mixed race people be treated as a single group by policymakers?" I do hope you can take part in the eConference, which was designed for just this sort of debate. Hamish MacPherson 16 July 2007 Is an e-conference by the CRE and the “usual Suspects” really such good news? Mixed race is only an ethnic group by a technicality. Laura Smith is right is many respects but wrong in the conclusion of the emergence of a group with collective values and beliefs. The mixed race population is so large policy makers and the “race relations industry” cannot continue to ignore it. The great thing about being mixed race and the mixed race experience is the unwillingness to accept polarised views of race and ethnicity. It is very worrying when journalists and policy makers essentially propagate established politicised views on race. Is the increasing size of the mixed race population the only thing of interest about the population? Kevin Lloyd - Evans 13 July 2007 Marc - The 'mixed-race group' isn't actually set to become the biggest ethnic minority group soon but it is the fastest growing group by some projections. But you're right that the debate is overdue (and that the diversity of the mixed-race 'experince' is often not appreciated). The good news is that the CRE is hosting an eConference on 4-6 September to take the debate forward bringing together a range of perspectives from research and policy to practice and individual experience. Anyone can submit a paper and anyone can take part in the discussions. Register now: www.mixedness.org.uk Hamish MacPherson 13 July 2007 This excellent article raises many pertinent points, such as many of mixed race origin being mistakenly viewed simply as 'black'. I also found the intransigence of the London mayor's own equalities advisor on this issue rather alarming. This is a demographic group that cannot, and should not, be ignored, and it will be harder for officialdom to do so when it becomes the largest single ethnic minority group, as is expected. People of mixed race really do need to find their voice when it comes to political issues, lobbying and representation. Another equally important issue is the perception that mixed race people have one black and one white parent. An increasing number have one white and one Asian parent, such as my own son (my wife is Indian). I sincerely hope this article begins the long-overdue debate on this issue, as adding a couple of extra boxes to the next census form should only be the starting point. Marc Cox 01 June 2007 Further to this article, it might be noted that in January 1994, the Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland adopted a resolution in which it expressed concern 'at the increased use in Britain of the expression 'mixed race' since this implies that there are pure races. The Council believes that the expression 'mixed origin', though not ideal, would be preferable' (see Anthropology Today, 1994, 10(2):26). Michael Banton 21 May 2007

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