Bilal Harry Khan: “Why can’t being mixed be cool, not a struggle?”
The podcaster on why the mixed conversation needs to develop – and fast
Hi, welcome back to Mixed Messages! In a change to the schedule, this week I speak to Bilal Harry Khan, who is of Jamaican, Kenyan and South Asian heritage. Bilal is a Diversity and Inclusion Facilitator and co-host of Over The Bridge, a podcast featuring four Black and mixed male Cambridge grads talking about life after the ‘bridge. He’s also hilarious on Twitter. Mixed Messages will always represent a wide range of mixed, so I was intrigued to hear from someone with a mix I don’t read much about.
How would you describe your ethnicity?
I’d say mixed-race. I used to try saying mixed-heritage, but that was too many syllables. If people want the long story, I say that my mum is Jamaican and my dad is Kenyan. Then I have to explain a bit more and say that my mum is mixed-race, she’s Black Jamaican and East Asian Jamaican, and that my dad is Asian but from Nairobi, Kenya.
How did you connect to all of those cultures growing up?
For my mum’s culture, it was very much in the food we ate, going to church on a Sunday, the music that we listened to while cleaning the house on a Saturday morning and the patois I heard. My dad’s mum didn’t speak much English, but spoke to me through food. She’d always give me £5 as well. I do wish I could learn more about those Asian traditions and that side of me.
I’m having a kid now, so with my own family, I want them to be proud and excited of their heritage. I also want them to be comfortable getting their food from bossman shops and not seeing that as a weird thing to do – that’s the culture I knew!
Have you and your mum had shared experiences and feelings about being mixed?
Not so much. She’s a different mix to me, so her parents were still from the same country, even though she wouldn’t be considered Black in Jamaica in the same way she is in the UK. She didn’t have that much of a difference in terms of cultures, traditions, heritages and languages, like I did.
Until recently she’s always considered herself a Black woman. Now, she’s redefining her own mixed identity at 60 years old.
Do you ever refer to yourself as Black?
Sometimes I’ll be asked to speak on a panel as a Black speaker, and I have to say that I’m not Black. The older I get, the less I refer to myself as ‘Asian’ or ‘Black’ because I can’t separate out those parts of me. I also don’t want to speak on behalf of an experience that’s not mine.
Depending on my appearance, I can be treated as ‘more Black’ or ‘more Asian’. When I wear cane rows and a flat cap, I’ll get stopped and searched more or asked for weed. When I have a beard and straight hair, I’m seen more as Asian and people will move away from me on the tube. They’re confused because they don’t expect terrorists to have nose rings, but they move anyway. People need to fit me into a category to make sense of me.
Do you think there’s a stereotype of what it means to be mixed?
Yeah. There’s this idea that to be mixed, you have to be a combination of just two heritages. We need to move beyond that and stop using terms like half- and bi- that imply one and another. I want the conversation to move towards highlighting non-conventional mixed stories, and to have more representation on TV, in books and for kids.
For a lot of people, there’s this narrative that being mixed is so hard and confusing, but why can my identity not just be something that I celebrate? Why does being mixed have to be a struggle? Why can’t it be this cool thing?
I think people are going to wake up and realise that we have all these mixed people who aren’t half-Black and half-white. The world is becoming more and more mixed, so why does this conversation still feel new?
If you could define your personal mixed experience in one word, what would that be?
Wicked!
Make sure to follow and subscribe to Over The Bridge. Next week, I’ll be talking to Radio 1 DJ Jaguar Bingham. 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.