Ashley John-Baptiste: “Being around racial diversity within Blackness was great for me”
Ashley John-Baptiste: “Being around racial diversity within Blackness was great for me”
The presenter and author on cultural identities, navigating whiteness and assimilation as a survival instinct
Hi, welcome back to Mixed Messages! This week I’m speaking to presenter and author Ashley John-Baptiste, who is of mixed Dominican and white British heritage. Ashley’s debut memoir, Looked After, chronicles his time in the care system, exploring how Ashley, a boy who once needed a wake up call to get to school each day, became a successful broadcaster, loving husband and proud father. Although race hasn’t a defining factor of his identity, it’s definitely influenced Ashley and the way he lives his life. Read his story below.
I’d love to hear about your racial heritage.
I am mixed-race, Black and white, but I have a very strong Black Jamaican identity because of my roots in foster care. I knew my mum was white British and years later I found out my biological father is Dominican.
The first place I really felt at home was with Carmen, an elderly Jamaican woman. She would regularly cook yam and plantain for Saturday breakfast, there was the music and the family parties, so that cultural upbringing is a part of who I am. I never had to grapple with a racial identity that felt separate from the family I lived with.
I'm grateful that my Blackness was never awkward for me in the homes I lived in. Perhaps some people answer the question of their heritage with a lot more clarity and ease. Because of my primary caregivers, that Black Caribbean heritage is so ingrained in who I am.
For a lot of people, race is a defining factor in their identity. Was that the case for you?
No, it wasn't, but it could have been. There are cases where interracial fostering can work, which is an important point to make, but I'm really grateful that I didn't have to. I never grew up with this complex about being a Black or mixed-race kid in a white home without any sort of Black presence. There were more pressing issues, namely not knowing my dad.
Whilst I had the opportunity, because of the families I lived with, to be really rooted in Black identity, I wasn't rooted in my Dominican heritage specifically. Even now, I don't really know what that means. There’s this myriad of cultural influences across the Caribbean, so Dominica would have its own bespoke culture and history that I don’t know anything about.
Over time, you come to realise what you didn’t know and how much you lacked. Social services could have given me the opportunity to know about my heritage. I'm a grown man now so I can go on that journey. But even still, I don't think my Dominican heritage is something that I can be proud of. I know nothing about it. It’s not a simple one, but fundamentally I’m Black British.
Would you want to go on that journey of learning more about Dominica?
100%. Not just for me, but for my daughters. I think a lot more about where I come from now because I want them to know their lineage isn’t just the care system. It's far richer. That requires me to do a lot of work that I haven't done yet. For me, it’s interlinked with rejection and trauma. It’s not a simple exploration. I'm sure at the right time, I will explore.
The book ends as you’re about to go to Cambridge University – was your sense of self tested there?
Identity has always been fractured for me for obvious reasons. Because I moved between these homes, I didn’t have a core sense of family. Even my racial identity, I’m taking from all these different families.
What I did know about me was that I’m working class from South London. I’m a young Black man, mixed-race but culturally Black. I had these core levers of who I was. I don’t think the bias or classism hit me until I started university. ‘Disadvantaged’ wasn't a label that I ever took for myself. I had to grapple with my identity on a completely different plane. But in a weird way, I really am grateful for that time. Being in Cambridge forced me to self-determine who I wanted to be and what my values were.
How do you feel about your white heritage?
My mum is a white blonde woman and I always had a very mythical and positive view of her. This was my biological mom, my greatest chance of belonging to a family. It would be a complete stretch to say I wanted to be white, but through the lens of my mum I had a positive white figure in my life that I aspired to be around and be accepted by.
When she moved to Manchester, she met a partner who had anti-immigrant sentiments among his family. I’d endure some of those environments for the sake of getting to know my mum. Navigating such whiteness was, looking back, uncomfortable.
My white uncle once took me to the local pie and mash shop, it felt foreign. The white aspects of my identity were more alien than plantain.
Did you ever get comments from Black people for being mixed? It’s a rhetoric I see online...
I never did. It would be a stretch for me to say that that was ever something I grappled with. Even in a home with Black British boys, being lighter was never problematic.
I'm grateful that I've not felt like I've been too light to be embraced as Black because I know that is a thing. My foster mum Joyce was West Indian, so she has Indian heritage and a lot of her children are light-skinned. Being in that home and being around that racial diversity within Blackness was great for me.
A lot of mixed people report being chameleon-like, fitting into different worlds. Is that something you feel you’d already been doing as someone in care?
100%. For survival, I’ve normalised having to pivot and assimilate into new spaces and environments. What I wouldn't want to do is downplay race, but I was having to assimilate into homes very quickly to survive in a range of communities. I've perhaps normalised that to the point where I'm not as sensitive to difference. It's like a survival instinct that has helped me beyond the care system.
What’s the best thing about being mixed for you?
I'm really grateful that being light-skinned and being mixed-race has never been something that has made me feel at odds in terms of my childhood, with all the rejection, the paraphernalia of being a looked-after child. I don't know how I would feel about being mixed-race if I hadn’t had Black carers, so I’m really grateful for that.
I celebrate what I know of my racial heritage. I take pride in the fact that my lived experience is not commonplace in the spaces where I now exist, that I have a difference of outlook and perspective because of what I’ve been through.
When I look at my upbringing, there's a lot that I feel could have been done better, but the racial expression of who I am is so rich and beautiful. As a mixed-race man who considers himself Black, I have to give respect to dark-skinned people. They have a legitimacy to say that there are bits of their lived experience that I may not be able to access.
Can you sum up your mixed-identity in one word?
Proud, 100%. I am very, very proud of my heritage, I'm proud that I can go to the pub with my mum in Manchester with the skinheads and also my mate’s Nigerian wedding with jollof.
When I consider where I am, the climate of our society right now, the isolation and division, I am proud to have a range of heritages and experiences. If there's one positive to take from my childhood, it's this diversity of social experience that has made me who I am. I hated the exposure to different worlds at the time, but I'm all the richer for it now.
Buy Looked After here. Next week, I’ll be speaking to chef Dominique Woolf. Subscribe to get Mixed Messages in your inbox on Monday.
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Mixed Messages is a weekly exploration of the mixed-race experience, from me, Isabella Silvers. My mom is Punjabi (by way of East Africa) and my dad is white British, but finding my place between these two cultures hasn’t always been easy. That’s why I started Mixed Messages, where each week I’ll speak to a prominent mixed voice to delve into what it really feels like to be mixed.