“Mixed race? What’s all this mixed-race nonsense? If you’re not white, you’re black.” So said a legendary black British broadcaster to Sunder Katwala, a mixed-race Briton I interviewed for my new book Biracial Britain, during a conversation they had on identity.
Katwala has an Indian father and Irish mother with no black roots of which he is aware. When he pointed this out, he was asked why in that case he didn’t simply call himself Indian. Was he ashamed of his Indian roots?
The exchange typifies the kind of social reality mixed-race people know all too well: one that combines a binary way of thinking about identity, and the right monoracial society confers on itself to tell mixed-race people how they should identify.