What do I do when I feel torn between identities?

Limit Situations:

Summary:

When asked to define their race/ethnicity and how they felt about it, some students who were mixed race expressed confusion (both explicitly and implicitly), noticing a need to have to ‘pick’ a side. In exploring this experience, students began to unpack themes around racial normalisation – of how they ‘accepted’ racialisation because that has been normative growing up in the UK. Yet, dialoguing with one another and hearing each other speak about their own experiences uncovered reflections on diluting oneself and one’s racial or cultural identity making connections to social realities that reinforce the same. Noticing the above also happened in conjunction with several moments of dialogue in the group – reflecting on being asked “where are you from?”, unpacking internalisation of the White gaze, and confronting the experience of ‘being in the middle’ – that allowed some of the participants to start positioning themselves differently in terms of their identity. This generative theme thus captures the process of moving from neutrality, confusion or identifying with the dominant identity position to taking a critical position and a stanceaware of the power dynamics. An example of this was one student and not wanting to connect with the country of their colonisers, but acknowledging the ambiguity and complexity of her position because she does not belong to her chosen country in the same way as someone who has been raised in it.