Ben Bailey Smith: “As a mixed person, you’re not allowed nuance”
The actor, comedian and rapper on Irish solidarity, being thrown under the bus and mixedness as a Trojan Horse
Hi, welcome back to Mixed Messages! We’re back from our sick leave, speaking to actor, comedian and rapper Ben Bailey Smith, who is of mixed Jamaican and white heritage. Ben is such an incredible voice on race, no matter his medium, so I was excited to sit down with him in North West London and dive into his mixed heritage. Ben is so candid and I can’t wait for you to read his story below.
How do you define your identity?
I'm half-Jamaican, half-English. My mum was born and raised in St. Elizabeth, a rural part of Southwest Jamaica. She moved to the UK when she was about fifteen. My dad’s from Croydon with Irish heritage.
Only a few generations back, my mum’s side would have been trafficked slaves from Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Cameroon… All these histories are lingering, becoming part of our bloodstream. They affect the way that you look at the world. When I think of the things I’m most passionate about, it’s inherited. The injustices and brutalities of the past make me politically and socially the person I am today.
Did you grow up around those cultures at home?
Growing up in Kilburn, we were surrounded by Irish people. My mum’s best friends were Irish, my stepdad is Irish, I married an Irish woman, my sister married an Irish man… it’s not coincidental. Kilburn has this population of upwardly mobile working class Irish people, who were underpaid workers, immigrants, victims of mass ridicule and abuse. When there was this white flight in the ‘30s, they could buy the homes they were paving drives and building roofs for cheaply with the money they saved from labouring.
When Caribbeans arrived in the ‘50s, trying to find someone who would rent them a room was fraught with difficulty before they stumbled across the Irish in Kilburn. The Irish said ‘you got money? Let’s do it,’ seeing this shared experience.
As for my Jamaican side, it was reggae music and food. The best thing I can cook without any instruction is ackee and saltfish, coconut rice and peas and fried dumplings. Don’t get me wrong, I feel immense pressure if I’m cooking for Jamaicans.
People will think that language isn’t a barrier for the British children of Jamaicans, but it kind of is because of the way Jamaicans speak. You’ve got to train your ear, it takes a while. You can’t just learn the language and have people admire you for giving it a go – you're going to look like a dick trying to use patois. So much patois has infiltrated British street slang, so that’s helpful. Second generations can own that at least.
Has your sense of identity shifted over time?
Not really. One of my earliest memories is looking at my hands at five or six years old, looking at my sister and my parents thinking ‘I don’t look like my mum, I don’t look like my dad, so what am I? What team am I on?’ Looking at my sister was really important in that moment, we were on the same team. Then you go to school and you see other brown people – those were the closest days to an identity crisis.
Then at around fifteen, which is when everybody has an identity crisis, by that stage, it was more ‘which team do I go with?’ Outside of those moments, it's always been crystal clear and heavily politicised. Both my parents were quite political.
There’s a lot of conversation around mixed identity online, often from outside the mixed community. Do you have any thoughts on what you’ve noticed?
If I won GQ Man of the Year 2025 and landed a cover, which I have no interest in by the way, there’d be some dialogue that asked where dark skinned people were. It’s absolutely a valid question, but I find it interesting that there’s a lean towards blaming the person. What control does this person have over the way other people view them? I do think mixed people can often be thrown under the bus in those debates – we really can’t win.
The conversation around white mums annoys me as well. I was one of the only kids with a Black mum, I know it’s normally the other way round. But the experience of the child in terms of how they're viewed is exactly the same.
We exist in a tricky space. If we protest too hard about Black issues, people look at you as a try-hard. But that’s my issue that I’m passionate about. So we can complain but not be at the top table – that’s for pure bloods. Then the other way, you’re looked at as a sellout. ‘Why are you moaning about white shit? White people are fine, stop advocating for them.’ But over the past ten, fifteen years, white working class males have been the most underachieving, poverty-stricken group in the UK, which is what my dad was.
You can’t bring that up as a mixed person, you’ve got to pick a side. You’re not allowed nuance. The amount of judgement does my head in.
Do you think being mixed leaves you open to those nuances?
I see it as a superpower, a way to see both sides. Being mixed, you start life quite quietly. You don't really understand your dad's world, you don't really understand your mum's, whereas in monoracial households you’re united. You have to sit and ask where you fit in.
I’m not gonna say we’re the most thoughtful human beings on the planet, but from very early on we’re forced to ask ourselves quite nuanced, complex and philosophical questions that other people are not. It helps us stay curious as we get older.
What’s the best thing about being mixed for you?
I love everything. I love going to different countries and people assuming that I'm from there. I love the element of surprise.
I genuinely see it as a superpower, I have very little negative to say about it. The irony is that the negative stuff tends to come from the people that should be right there behind us, liberal Blacks and whites. By the time I was 21, the most racism I'd experienced had been in Jamaica and Ireland. Considering that's my heritage, I think that's quite a funny irony.
There’s some cliched Trojan horse aspect of being mixed. You can creep into Black and white spaces and then drop an absolute bombshell. Often as the only person of colour in a white space, we can attack the subtleties of racism in a way that they find non-threatening. As a Black person in a white space, you’re at best a novelty and at worst a suspicion. As a mixed-person, you’re that Trojan horse.
Can you sum up your mixed experience in one word?
Illuminating. Around nine or ten years old, I could feel the power of racism and how negative it was to not be white. We've got to ask ‘why is that person staring at me? Why has that person said that derogatory term to me? Why does my mum's family treat me differently than my dad's family?’ We have to ask all these questions at a really early age, so it’s illuminating.
Next week, I’ll be speaking to musician Leigh-Anne Pinnock. Subscribe to get Mixed Messages in your inbox on Monday. Shop Mixed Messages on Etsy now!
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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.