Tiegan Byrne is an actress from Lancashire. She says she gets laughed at for acting ‘too white’, but she thinks your identity isn’t about how other people see you.
‘My mum was born in Liverpool and my Dad is from Leeds. My mum’s parents are from Cork in southern Ireland, and my Dad’s parents are from Kingston in Jamaica,’ Tiegan tells Metro.co.uk.
‘Both sets of my grandparents came over to England for the same reason – a better quality of life. It just so happens that they came from different parts of the world.’
Tiegan says she looks like both her parents. She says she has an uncanny resemblance to her mum, but that’s often difficult for people to accept.
‘I have colour in my skin like my Dad, and the freckles of my Irish mum,’ she explains. ‘I have most of my mum’s features. Those who know me, constantly tell how much I look my mum.
‘We have the same curly hair (but mine is black and hers is ginger), we have the same smile, nose and shape of face. We look very alike.
‘So, it never fails to surprise me how when people look at us, often they are shocked we are related.
‘I remember being eight years old, and on a holiday in Jamaica. Whilst in the airport on the trip home, mum and I were separated by the security guards. I was taken into a room and repeatedly asked (nicely) who I was travelling with.
‘I replied, “My mum,” obviously. But, the security guards struggled to believe me, and I have vivid memories of them encouraging me to be honest with them.’
Tiegan says that at the time she was completely oblivious to what was happening, and the severity of it. But the discomfort she could sense in her mum is still fresh in her mind.
‘It was an intense, uncomfortable situation for her,’ recalls Tiegan.
‘How crazy and unbelievable that in this day and age, a white woman cannot be believed to have a mixed-race child. It frustrates, angers and confuses me.’
Tiegan was raised by her mum in a white, suburban area in Lancashire.
‘I went to church on Sundays with my mum and grandparents. I went to a very academic school, it was a very safe neighbourhood,’ says Tiegan.
She says that she feels her upbringing is world’s away from the images of black culture we repeatedly see in the media – which is more often urban and working class. But Tiegan doesn’t think that there’s one “right” way to be black.
‘I don’t know a single thing about black music, I have never tried any traditional Caribbean food. The most I know about black history is what I learnt in school,’ says Tiegan. ‘Do I identify with it? Yes. Because I know it must have affected members of my family, but have I seen it or witnessed it? No.
‘This is something that I only thought of as strange when I turned eighteen and moved to London. Suddenly, it was thought of as abnormal that I didn’t know “my” culture, “my” music, “black food”.
‘But surely, my culture is my mum’s culture. But I was consistently told that I needed to learn about my black roots.’
When Tiegan moved to London she made a more diverse group of friends for the first time in her life, but she says that they didn’t always make her feel entirely welcome.
‘I will admit I constantly felt like the butt of the joke. I didn’t understand “black girl problems,”‘ she explains.
‘The issues of having a weave, or how to gel your hair, for example. Or the difference between the taste of jerk chicken and curry goat. I had never heard of Bammy. I had never listened to Bob Marley. And I still, to this day, do not understand what a weave is.
‘I have so many questions for black and mixed-race people, but never felt like I could ask them because I would be alienating myself even more.’
Tiegan understands that there is a knowledge-gap there, and it makes sense. She had a very different upbringing to a lot of her new friends and hugely different cultural experiences.
But what she doesn’t like is the fact that she is ridiculed for being different to them, or the occasional implications that she is ‘too white’.
‘There’s a joke within a group of my friends that there are white people who are blacker than me. And I find this very interesting and very bizarre,’ Tiegan tells us.
‘It’s kind of a sly dig at my upbringing and my interests. Mostly I find it a really irritating joke because it suggests that there are people better at being me than me.
‘How can someone who is not at all black, be blacker than me, when I’m part black? It’s a crazy concept and I know people say it to annoy me.
‘Whether you like it or not, I am part black. Nobody can take away that my Dad is black, regardless of the fact that I my interests don’t always fit your stereotypes.
‘Sometimes I think – maybe it’s true, maybe I’m not as black as I should be. So, I laugh along at the joke. Sometimes I feel like I’m letting my black side down. But I can’t change who I am.’
‘Another joke my friends have is that I can have my “black card” taken away depending on what I do. It may be do a stupid dance, or flirting with the wrong person, sometimes something as stupid as ordering a Prosecco. Something very me.
‘So they take away my “black card”. Because I no longer deserve to be black, because what I did was “unblack”.
‘I’m sorry, do black people not like Prosecco or doing stupid dances? And where is this handbook I apparently need to read? It constantly frustrates and upsets me, because, once again, I’m the butt of the joke. And it’s ridiculous to think that you have to act a certain way to be black.’
It hasn’t been entirely plain sailing with her white friends either.
Looking back, Tiegan can identify some problematic and othering remarks from the people closest to her growing up and, although she doesn’t believe the intention was ever malicious, the effect it had on her was very real.
‘I realise that when I look back at pictures of my childhood, or think back to important memories I see a sea of white faces,’ says Tiegan.
‘I am always the only non-white person in that picture, or in my immediate family, or in my group of friends.
‘I sometimes feel like those pictures and friendships would be so much more aesthetically pleasing without me there, the family would fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. But I am there, and that will never change.
‘And no one wants it to change, I know that. At this point, I am so used to being the only ethnic person in a white room.
‘In fact, I have never lived in a house with another person of colour, I have never kissed or dated a person of colour. I am constantly surrounded by white people and usually, I don’t think twice about it.
‘Growing up, my white friends would ask to touch my hair, or they would say; “Wow, you’re so brown.” I didn’t see it as racism at the time, but these comments have separated me from feeling like I’m part of the group.’
Tiegan says that dating white guys has thrown up its fair share of problems too. She says she is frequently approached by men who tell her that mixed-race girls are their ‘type’. What a chat-up line.
‘Once, a boy I was dating said: “You have the body of a black girl, but the mind of a white girl.” I ended the relationship immediately – out of shock, anger and discomfort,’ says Tiegan.
‘I’ve been told I am the perfect balance – the curves of a black girl, but more personality than a white girl, a bigger bum than a white girl, but not as “overwhelming” as a black girl. Men tell me this and think it’s a compliment, I find it disgusting, insulting and degrading.’
Tiegan is a working actress. A tough, unpredictable job for anybody. But she says that being mixed-race puts her at an advantage in some respects due to the current cultural ‘coolness’ of being racially ambiguous.
‘Being mixed has helped, improved and driven my career,’ explains Tiegan. ‘Being mixed raced is very fashionable at the moment, and it has got me into hundreds of rooms in just over a year since I graduated.
‘Which is almost unheard of for my fellow actors I have trained with. I am beyond grateful, excited and enthusiastic about my career.’
But there are also some specific drawbacks that come with having Tiegan’s look in the world of acting. She often feels forced down a path dictated by narrow assumptions about her abilities and casting potential.
‘I have always wanted to learn to do a Newcastle accent, but I was repeatedly told that it was “not my casting.”
‘They said nobody would expect to see a Geordie mixed-race girl on their TV, and that I should learn a London accent or an African accent instead.
‘When I disagreed with other black actors or teachers that I wasn’t interested in Nigerian accents, instead I wanted a Geordie or a Scottish accent – they were genuinely speechless. They seemed hurt and confused.
‘Teachers told me there was no point in me learning northern accents, that I’d never be asked to do it. I am still baffled by that assertion. I am a perfect example of a northern, Liverpudlian, mixed-raced girl – why shouldn’t I be?
‘Acting is completely about stereotypes. The stereotype of a mixed-raced girl, I have found, is either young and pregnant, doing drugs, or very working class.
‘I have been asked more times than I can count to be seen for a role as a mixed, cocaine-addicted, young mum. Which is a damaging stereotype.
‘But we are so much more than our stereotypes. I am mixed-race, I am intellectual, passionate and an adventurous romantic. But I am very rarely seen for a role of that nature.’
Tiegan is proud of who she is, from the ginger tints in her black, curly hair, to the stories of her family members from all over the world. What she wants is for people to stop making assumptions about who she is based on how black or white they perceive her to be.
‘I think the world has a long way to go to completely accepting that being mixed-race is more than just having brown skin,’ says Tiegan.
‘Being mixed has its own culture and way of being.
‘There are no sides, you can’t be blacker or more white depending on your upbringing and your heritage isn’t something that people can take away from you.’
Mixed Up
Mixed Up is our weekly series that gets to the heart of what it means to be mixed-race in the UK today.
Going beyond discussions of divided identity, this series takes a look at the unique joys, privileges and complexities that come with being mixed-race - across of variety of different contexts.
The mixed-race population is the UK's fastest-growing ethnic group, and yet there is still so much more to understand about the varied lived experiences of individuals within this hugely heterogenous group.
Each week we speak to the people who know exactly how it feels to navigate this inbetween space.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/23/mixed-up-friends-tell-me-im-not-black-enough-but-i-wont-change-who-i-am-10962515/
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