Black/White Mixed Race - An interesting article

[N.O.R.F]

Colour blind

 

 

Tiger Woods opened America's eyes to the inaccuracy of seeing ethnic identity in terms of black and white. In Britain, the debate has not begun - but, in a series of exclusive interviews, Observer Sport reveals a surprising depth of feeling

 

Anna Kessel

Sunday October 29, 2006

The Observer

 

 

When Tiger Woods went on Oprah to declare himself mixed race, not black, it caused outrage across the United States. Many saw Woods's declaration as a rejection of his black heritage. In America, a country where the 'drops of blood' mentality still exists - measuring black identity into halves, quarters and eighths - one drop means you are black.

Even senior political figures, such as the former Secretary of State Colin Powell, weighed in. 'In America,' said Powell, 'when you look like me, you're black.' But Woods rejected such polarisation. His heritage is Caucasian, Black, Native American and Asian. He has invented a word to describe himself: Cablinasian. The debate in the US highlighted that, hidden behind the idea that the colour of a person's skin is irrelevant, there is a real issue for people who consider themselves neither black nor white - and, partly thanks to Woods, sport has become the focal point of the debate.

 

In the UK this debate has not begun, even though Observer Sport has discovered a surprising depth of feeling. You have only to look at England's World Cup squad this summer. Six out of seven of the players described as 'black' were mixed race, but this was not mentioned on TV or in the written press. Mixed-race people account for about 1.4 per cent of Britain's population, so for mixed-race footballers to make up 26 per cent of England's elite is a huge achievement. Theirs is the fastest growing ethnic minority in the country and yet 'mixed race' was included in the UK census for the first time only in 2001. Factor in that a high number of mixed-race children are raised in single-parent households and that mixed-race people are more likely to be victims of crime than any other ethnic group in Britain and it becomes all the more apparent as to why their achievements should be applauded.

This year, football's anti-racism campaign, Kick It Out, launched their week of action around the slogan 'One Game, One Community'. But mixed race challenges conventional notions about community. The very different stories of the six World Cup players gives an indication of how diverse that term can be - from David James's and Theo Walcott's experiences of growing up in predominantly white rural areas, to Rio Ferdinand's and Ashley Cole's urban experience of multi-ethnic London estates.

 

Cole is a good example. He isn't offended by being described as black. 'But,' he says firmly, 'I call myself mixed race.' Cole was raised by his mother in east London. 'It was a predominantly white home environment. I didn't really see my black family. At home we ate English food; when we went to parties we didn't listen to soca or reggae, it would be English music. But in football you're just seen as black or white; I don't think people realise the difference.'

 

But being either black or white in football can be difficult, as Stan Collymore's autobiography, Tackling My Demons, explains. 'Show me two rooms,' he wrote, 'one with black footballers, one with white footballers, and I would pick a room on my own.' Collymore, who grew up with his white mother in Cannock, felt alienated by the urban black culture he encountered at his first club, Crystal Palace. He says he felt 'torn apart' and 'isolated'. Paul McGrath told of similar stories and such experiences often form a stereotype. One well-known Premiership manager, who has worked with mixed-race players past and present, labelled them difficult, 'less stable' and 'confused'. If a respected manager thinks this way, what other forms of prejudice do mixed-race footballers face?

 

One of the most common, and offensive, terms to describe mixed race is 'half-caste'. Heather Rabbatts, born to a Jamaican mother and an English father, is the recently appointed vice-chair at Millwall. 'I haven't heard the word half-caste for many years, but I have heard it in football,' she says. 'I've heard it used by white managers, although I don't think they realise that it's racist. There's a long way to go before football understands how to talk about race.'

 

Palace winger Jobi McAnuff grew up in north London with his Jamaican father and white English mother. He feels strongly about the term half-caste. 'It's something mixed-race people have been labelled as for years,' he says. 'If you polled a cross-section of society I bet the majority of people would say half-caste. I don't like the word, but then you get people who are so used to it they are blind to its offensiveness.' He agrees the term is common in football. 'All the clubs I've been at I've been called half-caste. It's routine. I make a point of asking people not to call me it, though.'

 

Of all those interviewed for this article, opinion was divided on whether the term is offensive, although most agreed that 'it doesn't sound good'. Interestingly, many guessed at the true meaning of the word. Don Walcott, father of the Arsenal striker Theo, likened it to 'a fisherman who can't quite cast his line across a pond'; the Portsmouth goalkeeper David James offered, 'inhumanely manufactured'; McAnuff said: 'It means you're half of something, like there's something missing.'

 

In fact, half-caste is not far off the appalling term half-breed, one that Rabbatts remembers hearing growing up in Kent. Caste comes from the Latin castus, meaning pure, and the derivative Portuguese casta, which means race. Caste was first used in India in the sixteenth century to describe the Hindu system of hierarchy. The term half-caste indicates how pure you are racially and echoes the days of colonial slavery when words such as mulatto, quadroon and octoroon were commonplace in sales ledgers and even in post-emancipation days in the old United States census.

 

Curtis Davies, the West Brom defender, whose mother is English and father is from Sierra Leone, says he is so used to hearing half-caste it doesn't bother him, but he objects to the term quarter-caste. 'Half-breed is the worst, though,' he says. 'People say it in banter to me, but if they said it seriously I would be offended.'

 

Being described in fractions is like being seen as abstract parts, says James. 'It was a subtle prejudice that I felt,' he says, 'but people always commented on pieces of me - my hair, my colour - no one ever said anything nice about the whole of me.'

 

Growing up surrounded by white faces in Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire, James was the only non-white child at his junior school. 'I was called a coon and a black *******,' he says. 'I lived with my white mum so I couldn't go back to an ethnic home and relate the experience. At school I was asked if I was adopted. I got confused and I'd go home and ask my mum if I was divorced.' James believes that there was a direct correlation between bullying because of his mixed-race background and his low self-esteem. 'Trying to break records in goal was all about proving that I was valuable.'

 

Sitting in a quiet pub garden in Hemel Hempstead, Don Walcott muses on the subject. Next to him is Theo's older brother, Ashley. Although it is the father who is being interviewed, it is interesting how often he defers to his son for an opinion on being mixed race. It is refreshing. Most of those interviewed said they had never spoken to a parent about their identity.

 

'I'm black British and it's very defining,' says Walcott senior, born in Britain to Jamaican parents. 'But people often look at my kids - Holly, Theo and Ashley - and wonder, "What are they?" They've been asked if they're Moroccan and Asian. It shouldn't matter what they are. It's a shame that it does to some.'

 

The term half-caste starts an interesting exchange between father and son. Walcott senior says he doesn't find it offensive, 'but maybe that's because I'm black', he says. 'It's to do with your age as well,' says Ashley. 'Maybe,' says his father. 'Does that term offend you?' he asks. Ashley thinks for a moment before saying: 'It's not a big problem, but I prefer to be called mixed race.'

 

The distinctions are important to Davies. 'I'm as much white as I am black,' he says. 'People have got to acknowledge that. My mum is white and I don't want people to discount that.' Davies has an older half-brother who is white. 'Every time we went to football people couldn't believe we were brothers,' he says. 'They couldn't take that I could be related to a white person.'

 

McAnuff says the same of his white cousins who sometimes watch him play for Palace. 'My mum's side of the family are from Portsmouth. But I don't think many of the lads at football can imagine me sat round eating a traditional English roast dinner with my white uncles and aunts. People tend to see me as black, but there's a big difference between black and mixed race. I can identify with Tiger Woods on that.'

 

McAnuff celebrates his fluid identity, but he admits that in football there are racial cliques. 'From my experience I get seen as one of the "brothers". You walk into the canteen and there's a table of black boys and the white boys are up the other end, but I don't see it as a negative. I'd like to think it's easier for me to cross between groups, but my white friends at Palace still see me as black. People only see skin deep and society says I look more black than white.'

 

Tottenham striker Jermain Defoe is not mixed race but grew up around mixed-race families in the East End. He says that half-caste is derogatory. He sees his mixed-race team-mates as black, he says. 'If we were messing about, having a kick around, and someone said let's play black v whites, I'd expect JJ [Jermaine Jenas] and Aaron [Lennon] to come with us. I don't think they'd even stop to think about it.'

 

Surrey cricket captain Mark Butcher was born to a Jamaican mother and an English father. 'There's often a tribal thing in sports teams where all the black players go out together, but I never got into that. Often music will split a room, but in our house there was never anything you shouldn't listen to. I remember sitting up Sunday nights, we'd get the stereo and crank it up. Mum would put on Deep Purple and dad's got the reggae on.'

 

For Davies, a fluid identity can also raise difficult questions. 'If I'm walking down the street with black mates, it's cold and we've got our hoodies up, we are likely to get name-checked by the police. I've been with my white mates, same area, same hoodies and it's never happened. The police don't even look or slow down. I guess that's another aspect about the split in my race,' he says.

 

England women's striker Rachel Yankey grew up in west London with an English mother; her Ghanaian father did not live with them. Sometimes it is the small things about a mixed-race background that make the most impression. 'I've been in a shop with my mum and they've looked at both of us and gone, "I can see you're related", and I'm thinking, "Why say that?" Or hairdressers, that's the most common one. I remember going to white hairdressers with my mum and they couldn't cut it right, or they put the wrong products in.'

 

Yankey says she feels uncomfortable when people assume things about her because of how she looks. She tells the story of an African mother to a child who attends her coaching sessions. 'She brought in some traditional African food for me and asked if I knew what it was. She wasn't quizzing me, but I felt that being half-African I should know. It bothered me that I didn't. I felt I had to explain. I said that my dad didn't bring me up, I didn't grow up eating African food.'

 

The example of Collymore and his rooms full of black and white people elicits interesting responses. James says he would probably hang out on his own, while Davies is aghast at the idea of having to choose. 'Choosing which room to go into?' he says. 'That's like choosing who to save from a burning building, your mum or your dad.'

 

Yankey's view is more complex. 'When you go in the white room you know you're different looking, but I've grown up with white people so that's probably where I'd feel most comfortable. When you go in the black room you look similar but you don't feel as comfortable inside. I'm happiest when I'm surrounded by a mix of people.'

 

Rabbatts says: 'For many years you had to be in one camp or another, but it's becoming less about a singular choice these days. My son is able to support four different national football teams. When I was working in diversity groups not long ago it was all about the cricket test: if you didn't support England you were in trouble. For me at Millwall it's about being with my black players and my white players. If I have any advantages in life it's that I can understand and be part of both of those spheres.'

 

So how does football's anti-racism body, Kick It Out, view the position of mixed-race individuals in the game? Director Piara Powar says the use of the term half-caste is a form of abuse. 'If a player came to us with a complaint about it we would support their case,' he says. 'It's an issue the industry needs to be educated on.' Still, Powar believes that had Ron Atkinson abused a top mixed-race player using the term half-caste, in the way that he abused Marcel Desailly - in an unguarded moment, he called the Frenchman a '******* lazy, thick nigger' in April 2004 - there would have been nowhere near as severe repercussions for the former ITV pundit.

 

Kick It Out do not currently educate on mixed-race issues, but Powar says that the term half-caste could be introduced into steward training packages as a primary step.

 

So what does the future hold? Cole is not confident that much will change. 'It's the adults that are teaching the kids the word half-caste; to get them to change you need to re-educate them first,' he says. McAnuff says the media is a vital tool in this. 'I don't think people realise saying mixed race would make such a big difference to mixed-race players like us. The media is powerful. Imagine if they started using it in the newspapers and on Match of the Day. It would educate people. I think it's something we could look at.'

 

In Britain, mixed race is the youngest age profile of any ethnic group, with about 50 per cent aged 16 and under. It is likely many more top footballers will emerge from this group. Walcott senior says it takes a generation for people to be educated on these issues. His son Theo, nicknamed Tiger Woods at school, may just be part of the next generation to effect that change.