The Complexity of Being of Mixed Race

My parents, some 25 years ago - Credit Savine Dosda

I was born in Guadeloupe, in the French West Indies. My father is black, my mother is white. I am a French citizen.

Writing these words feels to me like a coming out.

Pour une version en français de cet article, c’est par ici.

Funnily enough, I wear this reality on my face, my skin, my hair. It’s pretty obvious, even though the mixed result in my case induces many people to think I’m Maghrebian.

It’s visible, and yet, I have this belief inside me that it should not be mentioned out loud. That to have a spot in society, it is way easier to pretend that my being black is not relevant.

And it does work, it did work pretty well for me.

With an engineering degree, I got pretty good consultant and executive jobs in the Telecom Industry, which brought me a good level of financial security and social status. I founded Magic Makers, and felt like I was finding my spot in the French Tech and Startup environment, playing a visible role and getting recognition for it.

During all these years, I rarely mentioned my origin in my talks or media interviews.

The reason I gave myself at the time was simple : “It is not relevant. My topic is to give kids power over technology. The fact that I am of mixed races and coming from the Caribbean has nothing to do with.”

It is enlightening for me today to realize that I didn’t think that giving kids more empowerment had anything to do with my personal history and lineage.

My heritage is complex.

My father’s lineage is a lineage of black slaves.

The only exception on that side, that I know of, is my grand-mother. My father’s mother was born the daughter of a “béké”, a white creole as they are called, of those whose family owe their presence on the island to the exploitation of land and black slaves.

My grandmother's mother was working as a black maid in his household, which at the beginning of last century in Guadeloupe,  was pretty close to being a slave, with regards to poverty and lack of capacity for self determination. 

I truly doubt that my grandmother's birth was the result of a consented love affair.

As far as I know, there is no other race mixing on my grandfather's side, who indeed had a skin of such a dark shade that it is casually called “Kongo black” in my island.

Slavery was finally abolished in 1848 in Guadeloupe.

My grandparents were born at the beginning of last century, roughly 60 years after that emancipation that officially ended over 200 years of enslavement of the million of black bodies that were deported to the French Caribbean Islands. 200 years of physical and moral suffering: without undervaluing the physical harshness of cultivating pricky sugarcane under a blazing sun, it comes on top of being torn from your roots, physical violence (whipping, death enforcement at the slightest sign of rebellion), sexual violence, the impeding of love connections that any human being requires to thrive, and the deprivation of dignity, of any right to self determination of any kind, or even any recognition of one’s humanity.

That is not something that can be disregarded.

I inherit this history.

From my father’s lineage, I inherited a tremendous resilience. I am here because my ancestors survived excruciating conditions, and still transmitted life.

In my grandparents, my father and myself, I can see that this resilience took the form of entrepreneurship. The capacity to create something that wasn’t there before you.

My grandparents had nothing, and found a way to found public work companies, first buying a truck to convey gravel, then getting to exploit rock quarries for construction.

My grandmother gave birth to twelve children, which did not stop her from running the family business. She sent half of them to study in Paris, which is where my father met my mother, as he was studying engineering there in the 60s.

I find this is already an extraordinary feat they achieved, this amazingly fast social ladder climbing they succeeded in making. My father then founded his own company, as my sister and myself did on our own time.

From my mother, I inherit a different history.

I come through her from a lineage of bourgeois from the North of France.

Though she was born in Paris, where my grandparents came to live during World War two, her whole family comes from the region around the town of Lille, from a historically well off background, where men possessed and ran companies from the rise of the industrial era.

Through my mother, I inherited a feeling of social safety, of believing in my capacity to belong to the French elite, knowing the required codes and how to be accepted easily.

Today, I feel like I am sitting on this double heritage, not knowing yet exactly how to reconcile this duality I feel. Naming this publicly feels like an important step to work towards this inner reconciliation.

I was talking with a friend last year on what it takes to succeed in France being a black person. Every story is different, but when he shared his with me, a sentence stayed with me.

He told me how he was raised with a recurring admonition from his parents : “Ou ja neg, pa fè si, pa fè sa.”

In creole dialect, “Ou ja nèg”, means : “You’re black already” (it actually litterally means “You’re a nigger already”). They would add “Don’t do this”, meaning, you cannot afford to be seen and create trouble. Watch what you are doing.

I feel that I too somehow erased my “difference” in order to belong and be accepted.

I have always refrained, albeit unconsciously, from showing a creole accent when speaking. I have always acted that it was normal to be the only black person in a white assembly in most social gatherings. And to refer to Guadeloupe to mainly stress what a beautiful place it is.

To never mention, even to myself, that I come from a lineage of black slaves. To pretend it is not a topic, that everything is normal.

And to not acknowledge the shame it makes me feel.

So here I am now, naming things, saying them out loud. It is a first step in my exploration of my identity. I don't know where this will lead me, but I know I want to look at my heritage, own it,  and integrate it fully.