Ava Welsing-Kitcher: "I’m more complex than the boxes you want me to fit into"
We need nuance when it comes to identity, the beauty journalist argues
Hi, welcome back to Mixed Messages! This week, I speak to freelance beauty journalist Ava Welsing-Kitcher. Ava is of Ghanian and White British heritage, and wrote her dissertation on mixed-race identity while studying English Literature and Visual Culture at University of Exeter. Ava’s musings on being mixed put into words some incredibly complex emotions, so it was invigorating to speak to her. Read on to hear what Ava has to say!
How would you describe your ethnicity?
My mum is Ghanaian and my dad is White British. I normally identify as mixed around mixed people, but usually default to Black, because that’s how I’d been labelled in the white environments I grew up in.
I was called ‘mulata’ when I lived in Portugal as a child, which wasn’t meant with offence. The first time I heard the word, I thought it was a compliment until I found out what it meant. Someone also referred to me as ‘meia de leite’, which means latte. Why are Black and brown women always labelled as edible?!
Was there a point when you realised you were mixed-race?
When we lived in Bournemouth, I was quite aware of being a mixed-race family. We were stared at in the street and given dirty looks. When my friends were dropped off for sleepovers, their parents would be startled by my Black mum answering the door. I think they assumed that she’d be the white one out of my parents, as is typical in many mixed families.
My mum grew up in Edgware, so I think people made presumptions after speaking to her on the phone because of their limited experience with Black people.
In Amsterdam and Portugal, we were treated as Black. My parents broke up at that time, so my mum was a single parent and we all faced racism and prejudice together, with no white family member to protect us. I saw how my mother, with darker skin than mine or my sister’s, had to face the worst of it.
Have you always felt connected to your culture?
My Ghanaian family is so complex. My grandma moved to England when my mum was five, so while Black and Ghanaian identity is central to my mum and her siblings, they’ve gradually forgotten how to speak their Fante dialect fluently. They haven’t tried to become more anglicised; they’re citizens of the world. We’re very Ghanaian in our superstitions and we all know how to cook certain Ghanaian food.
I don’t think anyone should feel embarrassed or apologise for growing up in a certain way. My grandma never denounced her Ghanaian culture, but she wanted her kids to have the easiest possible life. People don’t have an understanding of what our predecessors had to give up to ensure that, and children and grandchildren are the bearers of that. It’s created such a complex generation of people and limits us down to such small markers of character. People measuring me on a sliding scale of white to Black don’t deserve my time and energy because I’m a lot more complex than the different boxes you want me to fit into.
How does it make you feel when people say that ‘mixed-race’ guys are their type? It frustrates me that people use that as shorthand for someone who is mixed Black and white.
Whenever a girl says that on Love Island, I root for them to be kicked off. Our generation are allegedly more switched-on when it comes to racism, but still think that by idolising their future mixed-race baby they get a pat on the back for being progressive. What they really want is a designer baby, which is fetishisation, and a partner who has all the qualities of the Black men they fetishise, packaged in a form that their slightly prejudiced white family won’t make a fuss about. It’s a safe way to play into Black culture.
There’s a stereotype that mixed girls are happy to go along with how colourism affects them in dating. I’ve gotten into heated discussions with both mixed and Black men about their problematic views of Black women. They get defensive, and start trying to evaluate me on a sliding scale of Black to white because I challenged them. Those narrow parameters by which people grade mixed-race people are all rooted in colourism and Eurocentrism. I don’t want to measure myself against a pillar of whiteness; I want to move away from that, while acknowledging that it’s an integral part of how we’ve been forced to identify ourselves.
If you could describe being mixed in one word, what would that be?
I feel differently every day, so I’ll say fluctuating.
Next week, I’ll be talking to writer and the author of Mixed-Race Superman Will Harris. Subscribe to get Mixed Messages in your inbox next Monday!
Mixed Messages is a weekly exploration of the mixed race experience, from me, Isabella Silvers. My mom is Punjabi Indian (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.