Jack Dawkins, 2008; significantly updated in 2024.
We have a complicated relationship with our ethnic backgrounds: Afro-Caribbean, Western European, South Asian, Black American, and a little bit East Asian. Most people just see us as Black American, though. As a system, we are as diverse as our collective background: we are European, West Indian, Black American, Middle Eastern, East Asian, South Asian. Reducing ourselves to a Black American identity erases our complexity, and it is often difficult for us to talk about our background without omitting the details that make our life what it is. It’s not that we hate our Black background. It’s quite the opposite; we would not be ourselves if we did not see ourselves in the struggle of Martin Luther King, Bayard Rustin, Kimberlé Crenshaw, W. E. B. DuBois, and Harriet Tubman to fight for their humanity in a world that saw them as 3/5 of a person. But we can’t dismiss the rest of us either.
We hate having our racial background reduced to the Black American experience when interacting in our singleton persona, but it’s especially offensive when people do that to us with the full awareness that we’re plural and have individual backgrounds. In October 2008, Hess had a conversation with a friend of ours (on whom we were emotionally and financially dependent, even) that turned out to be supremely racist. Hess mentioned our plans to legally change our name to an Irish name to honour our heritage, though we weren’t fully conscious of the choice at the time. Although we knew vaguely that we were of Irish descent, we were too gobsmacked to respond—at the time, we had internalised the racist idea of the one-drop rule and thought our Black American identity trumped all else, whether Indian or Irish or even Afro-Caribbean. They told us that the name might seem weird on a Black person because it’s Irish.
If our memory serves us right, our biological paternal grandfather was from Ireland, though this fact was lost thanks to dissociative amnesia, other than vague wisps. (On top of that, our maternal grandfather had a Celtic surname, though Scottish/Welsh rather than Irish.) If anyone has the right to choose an Irish name, it’s us. We’re just as Irish as we are Black American. And even if we weren’t, we’re allowed to choose whatever name we jolly well like, and Irish names are common enough in the English-speaking world for that not to be the case. There are innumerable Black men called Sean, Shawn, Shaun, DaShawn, LaShaun. Many years ago, we knew a Black woman called Siobhán, and there are others called Shavonne, which is just a respelling of the Irish name. But no matter. I burst into tears and was miserable for days. I’m English with an Irish mother. Of all of us, I am one of the most connected to our Irish background, along with Fiona. Yet again, someone couldn’t see past our skin colour, and it was especially painful to see it come from someone we held in such high regard.
Hess was also upset, though it manifested as anger, rather than my sorrow: he asked her, “What would be better? Jamal or something?” They said no, but the damage had been done: we had fallen victim to racial stereotyping and pigeonholing. We are not, and will not be, limited to stereotypical names like Jamal or Latisha (even though those names are Arabic and Latin—Latisha is merely a respelling of Letitia or Laetitia, Latin for “happiness”).
This friend also showed concern that all the photos we used to represent ourselves were of white people. Most of this was because we couldn’t find good stock photos to represent us well, so we went for pictures that gave a vague impression. I’m the one who does most of the art here, and at the time my skills weren’t up to the task. Just as we with the comment about the “weird” Irish name, we were horrified that our skin colour overrode any other consideration. I don’t think this friend even saw us as separate people, just aspects of a nonexistent “real one.” (Also, to paraphrase Mean Girls, you don’t just go around asking people why they’re white, Karen.) We felt as though we weren’t allowed to have any kind of individuality whatsoever. I was astounded by the superficiality of this person’s behaviour, and I know I wasn’t the only Promethean to feel that way.
Fortunately, we distanced ourselves from this person over time without cutting off contact, and they did apologise a year later. But we are still more than a little angry about the amount of racism we have encountered, even from people who profess to care about us and our welfare. We aren’t the only system whose members’ ethnic backgrounds don’t exactly match their front body’s. The majority of systems we’re friends with also have racially diverse members. No, I’m not Black, but that doesn’t make my individual background illegitimate. It just draws from a different part of our heritage. (And even if it didn’t, it would still hold value, since cultural identities are not based solely on genetic markers.)
It’s all right for systems to ally themselves closely with their external ethnic background, but it’s also fine not to do so. As long as stereotyping and bigotry are avoided, there is no right or wrong way to express subjective cultural backgrounds within a system.