Raurie Williams: “I felt embarrassed to be Black – but I was in the wrong crowd”
The content creator on owning his voice, acceptance and being his own inspiration
Hi, welcome back to Mixed Messages! This week, I’m speaking to Raurie Williams, better known online as @nohun, who is of Jamaican and Irish heritage. As a fellow Brummie, I can’t get enough of Raurie’s funny and insightful content, so I was excited to speak to him about his mixed identity. Read his story below.
How do you define your ethnicity?
I’m half-Irish and half-Jamaican, my Grandad came here on Windrush. I don’t really refer to myself as being mixed-race, I just tell people that I’m Black. I’m proud of my heritage and my skin. That’s how I see myself and how other people see me. People don’t see the white in me.
When my Grandad arrived in the UK, signs on the doors read “no Blacks, no dogs, no Irish”. Now, I know a lot of mixed-race people with Irish and Black Caribbean backgrounds in Birmingham, and I wonder if it was the attitudes against them that brought those people together.
How have you connected to your cultures?
I was raised with both of my parents, including music, food and drink from Irish culture and then my dad’s Jamaican culture with different music, food and attitudes towards certain things. Family is also big on both sides.
Do you call yourself Black because of how other people see you, or how you see yourself?
I see Black when I look in the mirror, even though I’m half-white. The physical representation of me is Black. I’m proud of being Black, even more so as I’ve gotten older.
The past few years, I’ve done my research and we’ve all seen how Black people have been treated in the news, so now I want to have a voice, own who I am and not try to change myself or be embarrassed of who I am. There was a time I felt embarrassed to be Black, especially as the only Black person in social situations, but I realised that I was just with the wrong crowd. When I started doing videos, I came across movements and connected with more people – the universe just made it happen. I’m now with people who make me more comfortable. I’ve educated myself to be more accepting of myself. In those spaces, I wasn’t going to find stimulation or education.
In doing this newsletter, I’ve found that people from Birmingham used the term ‘half-caste’ a lot longer than in other places. Have you found that to be true?
Yeah, I think people will still use it here now. It’s been normalised. It makes me uncomfortable, but you just have to educate people.
Were there any mixed people in the media who resonated with you growing up?
Mel B was one of the only mixed-race people on TV. Then in the early 2000s, there was a surge in popularity of urban artists like Christina Milian, Rihanna and Teairra Mari. Western culture takes a lot of its influence from Black people now – everybody wants to eat rice and peas and jerk chicken. That’s when I started to feel more represented, even though they weren’t mixed.
Today, there’s nobody like me on the internet. There’s never been a Black gay Brummie who raps and screams at the camera. I’m not looking to anybody else for inspiration anymore, I’m inspiring others.
How do you want the conversation around being mixed to change?
Maybe we need to talk less about it. We are who we are, people need to accept who we are. We’ve done a lot of talking now, if the message hasn’t gotten through to certain people, it never will. If you can’t make an informed decision on how you respond to people of colour, the consequences are on you. We’re still going to live a great life and be proud of who we are.
What’s the best thing about being mixed?
Being part of different cultures and to actually grow up in them, not just be shown them. If I could go back and be born differently, I wouldn’t. I love the colour of my skin, I love what it represents. I love my white and my Black side.
Can you define your mixed experience in one word?
Spicy.
Follow @nohun on Instagram and shop Raurie’s new clothing brand Bad Bear UK. Next week, I’ll be talking to Mandu Reid, leader of the Women’s Equality Party. 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 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.