Leon Mann is a good guy, I met him a few times when he was working for Kick It Out – a great campaign for removing racism from football. These days it looks like he’s working for the BBC, I was just watching an article by him, which I found very fitting for my blog:

Obama casts light on mixed race.

This is something I’ve written about a few times over the years, of course it’s something very close to home with me, and it’s such a complex issue that I myself don’t fully understand it.

To be honest it’s really interesting that when a Black person of mixed heritage becomes popular, they are referred to as Black (Bob Marley is probably the most famous Black man ever?), but your everyday mixed Black person is usually referred to as mixed race (by Black people, that is). It’s a kind of inside-racism, that I didn’t discover until I moved to London.

Growing up in a majority white town, I learnt that Black is Black. Which is why I find the term coloured more fitting, because it can account for anyone that is non-white. Not that I like the term, I just find it more fitting through this definition. Malcolm X (a great inspiration of mine) referred to all non-whites when he used the term Black. But what is Black? Or rather, what does it mean to be Black? Are labels even that important.

Yes. Labels are important. As much as we hate to admit it, labels are the way we define who/what we are. I usually define myself as Jamaican British by nationality, and mixed Black my ethnicity. I really hate the term mixed-race, because it’s so ambiguous – so I coined the term mixed Black. I have to keep the word ‘mixed’ in there somewhere, because as much as I don’t like it, I’m not permitted to label myself as Black. I’m not rich or sucessful enough to pull off that label. My Black community simply don’t allow it. I’m not one to conform, but I see it as a compromise. Explaining that I’m ‘Black with dual heritage’ is far too complicated, although it’s more correct.

These two videos are the most spot-on definitions of the mixed race vs Black discussion that I’ve ever seen;

Black man’s P.O.V / White man’s P.O.V.
Notice they both describe their point of views in different ways, but are really saying the same thing. That the Black community is just that, a community. We should stick together as a community and not be trying to split ourselves up even more.

It’s about time this discussion was in the public domain. We need to get it sorted once and for all. White people are too eager to label me, and Black people are too eager to de-label me. That’s the story of a mixed Black life, I’m affraid. You get used to it… kinda.

[Update] Maybe we should ‘re-brand’. If we all coin the term Brown (fully Black and mixed Black alike) then we can own it. Let’s stop using labels that are thwart upon us. The word Black is just insulting when you think about it properly, tbh.