Someone asked me earlier this week, “do you have any issues with belonging?”
I thought for a while, before I answered this question. Where do I start? Do I start as a small child, with my parents getting a divorce? Growing up in my grandparents’ house? Feeling like I do not belong. Feeling loved, but alone. Different? Drop offs and picks up and play dates, at my grandparents’ house while other children live with a mommy and a daddy.
Do I start as a child, road trips to South Africa? Harassed at the border because I am too white to be the child of a dark brown man. Or holidays in St Lucia where we cannot stay unless my father’s white girlfriend makes the booking. Because otherwise, we will not get in.
Do I start where I attended “white schools” or an international school. Mixed. Diverse. But still I feel like an outcast when the Swazis in the room all talk our native tongue and I don’t understand. And me, a fan of rock music. Do I fit in with my brown friends now? Of course not. They laugh at me when Nirvana comes on. So, I learn to love R&B. I buy the brands they buy. I make myself more like them. To fit in. I lose myself.
Do I talk about the way our black “maid” and “garden boy” were treated? You drink from a separate cup. Do not use the inside toilet. Racism in my home? But what makes them any different to me?
Do I talk about when people ask me “yes but what are you REALLY?” when what they’re asking about is my skin tone. They want to know why I am so brown. Not my history or my nationality.
Do I start where I was too white to be coloured in the way that my friends were. “Oh, she has a white mother.” I am different from my mother and her family. I am different.
Do I talk about how I could not speak to my black gogo (grandmother – my great gran) in the only language she could speak. Because no one ever taught me the language. No one ever thought I needed to know. So we hug and kiss and communicate love with physical affection. She talks to me, and brushes my face, hugs me in and I wish with ever part of me I knew what she’s saying.
Or how officials called me Mlungu (white person) when referring to me – and having to be silent. How about the time they refused to give me my passport? Because I am too white to be SWAZI. A lost feeling of emptiness. What am I then? Where do I belong, if not my home?
Or do I start when I moved to Cape Town. To attend the best University. And suddenly. I am a different kind of coloured. This time, not Cape-coloured enough. I do not speak with the “right” accent. I do not look the same or eat the same food. I do not belong all over again.
I go home for holidays and my brothers call me white. They have the SAME genetic makeup as me. But they consider themselves coloured. But not me. I question them until it turns into a fight. Turns out they cannot explain what they mean. We change the subject for the sake of our relationships.
Or do I talk about how before meeting my new boyfriends parents, my well-meaning grandpa says to me “make sure they know you’re coloured” he’s trying to protect me from a world that always divides. I feel annoyed. The comment stings. Why would that matter? But of course, he was right.
Oh, they say, but you’re not a REAL coloured.
This cuts me like a knife. WHAT THE FUCK IS A REAL COLOURED????? I want to scream. And they mean it as a compliment. I don’t know if I should be offended or relieved. All I feel is angry. I am a real coloured. This is who I am. I am me.
Mixed race. Not white enough. Not black enough. Not even coloured enough. FUCK this world.
All I do is feel out of place. All I want is to belong. So I decide, the only way I’m ever going to belong is if I stop caring about fitting in and just embrace who I am. I am proud of my blood, of my genetic make up, of my brown skin that makes people compliment me on my tan. I am proud of who I am and no, I don’t fit so easily into boxes. So fuck the boxes they created. I don’t need them. I am me. I am brown. I am mixed race. I am Swazi. I am South African. I am who I am.
So I think for a while, as she waits for my answer… do I have any issues with belonging?
She means as a migrant. As a Swazi/ South African in New Zealand and I think, what a loaded question to ask…
and I answer…
“Where do I even begin….”
More I’ve written on this issue…
Wow, Jonelle. I never knew these struggles of yours but I think I can understand your difficulty.
More and more I realize that I neglected being coloured and chose to identify with black as that is where I felt accepted. So often people, even well meaning people like Kambe, would say “Ï forget that you arent black”. Now, living in a predominantly coloured family I realise that it is a completely different culture and as much as it has wonderful elements I feel like coloured South Africans are more racist than black Zambians that I grew up amidst. . .
Where do you even begin, I feel you. However, you have flourished so beautifully and I am glad you have settled into you. Much love!
Hi Kiki
Thanks for your comments and for sharing your experience. I can honestly say, being not coloured enough was never more prominently obvious to me than when I moved to CT. It was rough. I’m glad that you had your place to belong growing up but I can imagine that it was hard hearing those words, when you felt like you were black. And even saying that, what does “black” mean. I remember being in New Zealand on holiday and my friend introducing me as black because here, there’s only Maori, pakeha (white) and black is what someone like me would be classified as i guess? I don’t even know. I was surprised by the descripton because I’d never been called black before but in the US, that’s the most common classification for non white right? it’s a strange place to be, mixed race! xxx
Thank you for this post. ‘Not even coloured enough’. Wow.
Thank you so much for reading my story <3
It is so sad that even in 2020 people still have this shitty attitude.
I am so proud of the strong woman you have become in spite of all of this. Keep standing tall my angel. Love you lots xxx ❤️
Thank you mum, I wouldn’t be me, without you.
Thank you for being the best mum.
Love you.