Kind of like being mixed race. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I identified with Heathcliff (he’s a dark-skinned Gypsy anti-hero) because I have been straddling the borders of race liminality my whole life. To me, mixed-race identities in western society are routinely marginalised in social and economic spaces, or conflated with whatever race appears to be most dominant in us. And don’t get me started on the sexual fetishisation of mixed people (when I was in South America I heard the phrase: “White women are for marriage, black women are for work, mulattas – mixed-race women – are for fucking”). I enjoy subverting people’s expectations of me, and using the terms “black” or “mixed-race” interchangeably, and have found that being mixed-race allows me to instantly connect with so many people.

Source: The Guardian August 26, 2017 05:46 UTC