{"id":13155,"date":"2011-04-08T03:14:23","date_gmt":"2011-04-08T03:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=13155"},"modified":"2015-02-18T18:52:22","modified_gmt":"2015-02-18T18:52:22","slug":"on-being-mixed-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=13155","title":{"rendered":"On being mixed-race"},"content":{"rendered":"

On being mixed-race<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

New Statesman
\n<\/a>2011-04-07<\/p>\n

Samira Shackle<\/strong><\/p>\n

I grew up thinking of myself as equally English and Pakistani, writes Samira Shackle. Was I wrong?<\/em><\/p>\n

When I meet people for the first time, it’s not unusual for them to ask, “Where are you from?” If I reply, “London<\/a>,” they say, “Oh, no, where are you from from,” or, “Where are you actually from?” It’s a polite way of seeking an explanation for my colour. Most of the time, I don’t find it offensive\u2014I am half Pakistani and half English and look racially ambiguous.<\/p>\n

If you are mixed-race (as one in ten British children now is), you don’t slot neatly into racial or national categories. The conversation above tends to continue, “Do you go back home often?”\u2014which feels strange, as until now I have visited Pakistan only as a baby and “home” is Queen’s Park<\/a> in north London. Having one English parent makes you as much English as anything else\u2014arguably more English than not, if you live here\u2014yet most people’s default position is to define you by your difference.<\/p>\n

It isn’t necessarily a bad thing to show interest in someone’s background. It becomes corrosive only when it is tied to a non-inclusive sense of Englishness that is hostile to “the other” and suggests that, because you have a mixed heritage, you cannot share ownership of the place where you live…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On being mixed-race New Statesman 2011-04-07 Samira Shackle I grew up thinking of myself as equally English and Pakistani, writes Samira Shackle. Was I wrong? When I meet people for the first time, it’s not unusual for them to ask, “Where are you from?” If I reply, “London,” they say, “Oh, no, where are you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,125,8,394,10],"tags":[5935],"class_list":["post-13155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-uk","tag-samira-shackle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}