AIBU to resent having mixed cultural backgrounds?

[TannyFickler]

I’m well into adulthood, and I resent having parents from two different countries/cultures. I never feel like I belong anywhere and I was very aware of this even as a child. Anyone else feel similarly? For reference, one parent is from the UK, I had some minor racism aimed at me in primary and secondary school but barely anything.

It's a strange feeling, not something you can easily put into words.
I, as many of my family, have emigrated and that could also be another reason why the sense of belonging is harder to find.
I feel that as a person I am naturally open to people from diverse cultural backgrounds. I also feel that there is never just one way of doing things, in the way some people do. Sometimes that's helpful but other times it's easier to lose your way and be less grounded. When you grow up with parents who have completely different upbringings it's easy to feel pulled in different directions, not consciously, but in choices you make. If as parents you have very different cultural backgrounds then you have to work much harder to create a balance for your children. It's not as easy as a mainstream family living in a place where their culture matches that of the nation in which they live.

I don't feel like this but I had a very positive upbringing and parents who gave me pride in Mediterranean, Caribbean and Asian mixed background.
I am visibly mixed race and have experienced racism but due to my upbringing have never felt sad, although I have felt other amongst wider family and generally in the UK, but that's a UK subtle racism issue

My mothers parents were at war over culture and religion and she had a lot of hang ups about it so never wanted us to.

I'm glad you're seeking support OP, hope it helps you

We're mixed heritage; I feel you, OP. I don't resent it though. I'm more... amused, these days, that our parents were oblivious to the challenges we faced. I would have minded way more if I'd been an only child. It really helps to not be the only person who looks like you or who shares your background. It also helps to grow older; I no longer care, the way I used to when I was a child.

But nowadays we are not tribal (at least in the UK) and there's vast exposure to various other cultures via TV as well as every day experience.

The UK is still very much tribal - it shows in politics, football, nationalism, etc. Being exposed to different cultures via media hasn't changed that.

I know when people see 'tribal', they generally think developing countries, "Africa", spears, indigenous, tribespeople, etc.

There are different ways of being tribal re: strong group loyalty.

godmum I am glad my comment was helpful to you. I find it particularly weird that some people expect me to place so much importance or something that might have happened to my parents or grandparents when I am nearly 46 and groaning over new wrinkles every morning and worried about DC schooling...

my best friend doesn't know who her father was and she gets asked so many weird questions - because she was ultimately adopted by a father with a different skin colour. Perhaps it's just generational, but she learned quite early to just tell people to naff off and her life is her life. She is over 50 though. I don't think we were raised with identity stuff the way it seems to be now, whether race or gender.

A pp mentioned about someone telling them they had forgotten their heritage - this often means forgetting about a heritage that relates to someone else? It's confusing but I just ignore that stuff when I can. If people go on about it, it's hard, but I've learned to say "Can you not do the interrogation, please".

It's like telling someone they should vote a certain way because their great grandmother was in the workhouse. Um....a lot of stuff has happened since then!! And the sides and the corners of my family vary hugely, with memories ranging from the workhouses to having someone in charge of the horses which you could ask the staff to bring road....

I am me. I don't contain all of that history, though it's very interesting. I sit in our small flat, wondering what our future will be like and the past, that far back, is a storybook to me.

the road where I first snogged my DP is my history! I smile every time the bus goes by. The past that far back - we were teens - yes, okay, more than 30 years, but something that happened to me, not someone else.

The place where my grandparents married - not my history, their history.

All of which is lovely and doesn't need to be judged or used a tool to judge anyone else.

@MangoIce

I also hate the terms biracial and BAME (most people seem to think these are just for people who are half black and ignore half Asians). I am mixed race.

There's nothing wrong with biracial.

Biracial people are also mixed race.

But not all mixed race people are biracial.

'Bi' just means two. So if you're of more than two races, then it isn't bi but multi racial or just simply mixed race.

It doesn't matter the race(s).
Biracial isn't in the same league as BAME.

I'm mixed Arab and Irish. Look very white but before marriage had a very Arabic name (I've shortened my first one so now both together sound very white. Hard to explain without giving away my name!)

Now I live in Northern Ireland and have a Buckinghamshire accent. I was brought up Catholic but my Irish mother but don't believe in God. In North Africa I'm British, same here but in England I didn't feel British enough. I just don't fit!! I'm sort of hoping my kids will see DH (who is white British) and I as British and associate with that. I envy them to have some sort of affinity with one 'culture' as I feel like an other everywhere.

I have a mixed background. I wouldn't say I resent it but the impact is there. Who knows how my children will feel in the future being even more mixed than me and having no strong connections to roots etc. My DH tries to keep a connection with his culture but it's hard. Like you my parents clashed a lot and I think that's a major factor in feelings. If they were happy that might have made us feel differently rather than the negative feelings from the issues they brought and faced. It's not easy being a different culture to my husband but us not having the issues my parents with each other makes life easier. Also to others my parents are obviously different but people think my DH and I are from the same background. I find family gatherings on all three sides difficult as I don't fit in. I dreaded them as a kid. My area is very changed to how it was when I was a kid too, my kids classmates are all different backgrounds and the kids don't stand out the way we did.

@HawaiiCalling I am half one race and half another.

@turnupturnip

I am mixed race and happy. But I think one of the things that helps is that I don't use other people's judgements to define myself. No, I can't speak my mothers tongue, no I can't cook, no I have never worn a sari. I basically have my own version of being mixed race which is based on culture, religion and family. Not others people's ideas.

For example the Indian side of my family is Catholic, the English side is Protestant and that is more significant than if I can cook. Which I can't. How my family communicate about health is more cultural than anything. It's another world that you only know if you are mixed race.

Good luck figuring out your way. To be honest when you are able to be free of other people's ideas you will feel much better.

@MangoIce That means you're biracial also. As well as mixed race. You don't have to use the term 'biracial' if you don't like it, I understand.

Just saying that it doesn't matter the race, if you are half one race and half another, you are bi-racial (of two races) and it's okay to say it.

I understand that feeling. My mum is from the UK and my dad was from Cyprus, he moved to the UK in his late 20's.

My sibling looks 'typically' cypriot where as I am very, very fair. My sibling was always treated differently to me and was favoured on my dad's side because of this. I was also always picked on in school because of my non-English surname, it was so bad that I made the decision not to give my DD my surname as I was worried she would go through the same thing.

For reference, I’m half British Half Arab. Don’t speak Arabic.

@Gwlondon

I am mixed race and happy. But I think one of the things that helps is that I don't use other people's judgements to define myself. No, I can't speak my mothers tongue, no I can't cook, no I have never worn a sari. I basically have my own version of being mixed race which is based on culture, religion and family. Not others people's ideas.

For example the Indian side of my family is Catholic, the English side is Protestant and that is more significant than if I can cook. Which I can't. How my family communicate about health is more cultural than anything. It's another world that you only know if you are mixed race.

Good luck figuring out your way. To be honest when you are able to be free of other people's ideas you will feel much better.

That's interesting, @Gwlondon and you're entirely right to disregard other people's judgement of what you're supposed to be like with an Indian mother I found the different varieties of Catholicism in Kerala when I used to go there completely fascinating, and that you feel the significant different in your two family heritages is the Prot/Cath one. (Which is entirely understandable to me as an Irish person, even when the people involved are the same race and nationality.)

Could you say more about what you mean by the cultural aspect of how your family communicate about health?

Op , I totally get you .
I'm half white British and half Iranian .I absolutely love both my cultures . I have grown up back and forth in both countries.
As an adult I feel empowered by this but as a child it was so hard . I was darker than everyone else in an inner city north Liverpool school where absolutely everyone was white .
When I went back to Iran I was paler then everyone and it was mentioned in both countries and used to bother me immensely.
I also resented it when my parents divorced and unlike other children I had to be on the other side of the world with one parent and would miss the other so much . Could never nip round to dads .

Like most things is about how do you handle things or how sensitive you are.Some people would make the most of this situation and see it as a positive but others will see just the negative.

My parents are from different countries and races. I've lived most but not all of my life in the UK and feel the same. My skin is pale and I sound English but if you look carefully at me you'd know that I wasn't white English. Out of all the places I've lived England is home and I'd call myself British but I'm not sure why I feel like I don't belong. It could be because I've moved around quite a bit so an answer to the question "where are you from ?" is long winded and tedious because I don't live where I was born and I've lived in a few different countries and places.

No
But - I think that's because I was raised 'in a British way' . There was no conflict - I had no cultural input from my mother (who is not British) because she left when I was very young.

I could see in the mirror that I didn't quite look like everyone else - and I was also very aware that most kids weren't being raised by their nan - but I have a strong sense that I'm English because I was raised in English culture. In the same way that I know I'm a Northerner (even though I'm not on paper - I was born in East Anglia and that's where I live now - I was raised in the North East and have an accent so I identify with that)

My husband finds it extraordinary that I don't have any particular interest in investigating my heritage - or even visiting the country of my mothers birth (I mean I would, if we could afford it - but I don't have a particular longing to and I'm certainly not attempting to look up my family there)

I've just always known that this is where I belong. Even when we moved to Australia - to be fair we weren't there long enough to 'settle' but I loved living there - however there was always something not quite right in my chest. I guess you could call it homesickness but I can say that I never 'pined' to go back. However that feeling disappeared the second I arrived back in the UK.

Honestly it's only something I've thought about recently (in the last decade). But then mine is more of a cultural and religious mix, so not obvious. My parents moved to this country in the 60s, to a rural area in the south. Both white, but with noticeable accents. My mothers culture became the only culture. It was a conscious decision they made to set us up as a one culture, one religion family.

As I've got older I've explored my Dads side and visited where he came from, I speak directly to my family on that side as well now (rather than relying on via my parents). The more connected I feel to that side does give me some conflict, it's feels more complicated that it should do, but strangely it has brought some peace of mind. It's as if I feel better because I know more about both sides of my culture, no idea why, I can't quite explain it.

Sorry sent before my ramble was finished.

Where I grew up, the house feels like home but not the village - we weren't one of them. Neither place my parents come from are home either. I'm far too english to be at home there. My home is where I have created it, and wherever I move to next.

Reminds me of the poem, Diaspora Blues:

so, here you are
too foreign for home
too foreign for here.
never enough for both.
— Ijeoma Umebinyuo