Atlante Sultana is Maltese on her dad’s side and Fijian and Irish on her Mum’s.
‘I’ve honestly always seen my mixed-race heritage as having the “best of both worlds”,’ explains Atlante. ‘I’ve more often than not seen it as a hugely positive thing and I love telling people about my unusual mix or getting them to try to guess where I’m from (which they never can).’
Atlante grew up on the Cardiff Docks, which she says was a ‘melting pot’ of different cultures. As a result, she spent the early portion of her life rarely thinking about race, because everyone around her had a different ethnic background.
‘I don’t remember being very conscious of my mixed heritage,’ explains Atlante, ‘At least not as much as when I moved to a predominantly white high school and white area later in life.
‘I think this was largely down to the fact that a lot of my peers also had mixed heritage due to the colourful history of the docklands.
‘My wider family is literally the definition of a mixed-race family. On my mum’s side (Irish/Fijian), my cousins all have dads from different backgrounds, so our family photos really do look like something from a diversity campaign.’
Atlante says the wide amounts of diversity within her family has meant that there has never been any divisions or conflict over race or culture. Everyone is different, so there’s no one who feels isolated.
‘We are all in the same boat so to speak,’ explains Atlante, ‘and I love that we are a mix of such different cultures.’
Atlante says that she doesn’t experience racism directly. She says that her racially ambiguous appearance means she isn’t subject to outright abuse or open prejudice, but she says hostility rears its head in other ways.
‘The main issue for me is that as I can be white-passing, certain people feel comfortable enough to share their ignorant thoughts with me thinking I’m “on their side”.
‘I then have to have the very awkward conversation to point out that I’m not “what” they think I am, but that I in fact fall into the pool of people they are ignorantly talking about. Then I have to call them out for their ignorance.’
Atlante only remembers one incident of outright racism. She had just started high school and will never forget what the parents of another student said about her.
‘I was invited to a girl’s party at her house and the following week she told me her parents were shocked at how nice I was “for someone, you know, your colour.”
‘This was the first and only time anyone has ever outright commented on my race in a negative way, and as a shy 12-year-old it was a real shock to the system and made me realise that, unlike my time in primary school down the docks, I was now “different” to my peers.’
Atlante didn’t always mind being seen as different though. It became a part of who she was as she navigated this new school throughout her adolescence.
‘I sort of embraced being “the black friend” and it became part of my identity in high school – albeit I was still relaxing my hair to fit in aesthetically with everyone else.
‘Other members of my family have been on the receiving end of direct racism though, so there is definitely a discrepancy in how we are all seen.’
Atlante feels lucky to have been brought up by both of her parents and says that she was able to experience the cultures and traditions of both sides of her family equally.
‘Whether that was through the food we ate at home, the family parties we attended or the traditional names I call my grandparents.
‘My paternal (Maltese) grandparents met in East London. Both had separately moved to the UK when they were young – my grandfather actually snuck onto a cruise ship at the age of 16 with his belongings in a pillowcase to start a new life in the Big Smoke.
‘One day he went to a cinema and saw “the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen” working at the cinema serving snacks – he had a hunch that she was also Maltese. She sat in front of him and he pulled her hair to get her attention!
‘She swore back at him in Maltese and his hunch was proven.
‘They had six children together before moving to Cardiff where my Dad was born. Which means I have a serious number of cousins.
‘Nunu – the Maltese word for grandfather – worked in the famous Welsh coal mines where he learnt English from his West-Indian co-workers.
Atlante’s maternal grandparents met in Fiji.
‘Grampy, who is Irish, was in the Merchant Navy working out on the Islands. Much like my Nunu, it was love at first sight for him too,’ explains Atlante.
‘Grampy eventually moved back to Ireland taking Nan and my aunties and uncle with him.
‘Nan was the first black person my Irish family had ever seen and I believe it did take some getting used to for his family to accept the idea of Grampy being with a woman of colour.
‘Nan was aware of her differences the moment she stepped off the train in the UK – she told Grampy that everyone was staring at her. He responded that they were only staring at her because she was so beautiful.’
The pair ended up in Cardiff when Atlante’s ‘Grampy’ got a new job at the university. And, despite the many different elements that brought her family to that city, it is Cardiff which gives Atlante the feeling of home.
‘Since my parents were both born in Wales, I think I’ve most often identified more with being Welsh as opposed to one or the other of my multi-racial heritages,’ she explains.
‘I think growing up as a mixed-race individual in the UK, people often assume that I have one white-British parent and one who is Caribbean – as this is a common mix here.
‘It’s cool to be able to introduce people to a different idea of what mixed-race can mean.’
Atlente sees being mixed-race as a powerful tool of connection. And she doesn’t mind when people get her heritage wrong – she actually uses it to her advantage.
‘Being mixed has been the driving force behind me being able to understand and identify with lots of different people, whether in the workplace, at school or in my personal life,’ she says.
‘It’s more often than not a conversation starter and works as a nice little ice-breaker in new situations as I’m somewhat racially ambiguous and people like to try and figure out where I’m from, which I actually don’t mind at all (although I know some mixed people have an issue with this) – I love finding out people’s mixes.’
But there is one constant reminder of Atlante’s mixed heritage that has been tricky to manage over the years – her hair. She says falling into an ambiguous space between ethnicities can make it hard to find a stylist who can cope with her curls.
‘I’ve always found it difficult to find a hairdresser who could do my type of hair,’ she says. ‘The salons in my local area in Wales always saw my hair as a problem – it was “too much”, “too big”, “too curly”, which contributed to my anxiety of going to the hairdressers.
‘I always felt like a burden and would continuously apologise while they were doing my hair.
‘I’ve also been to black hair salons and have been told my hair is too soft for weave, or found they still didn’t know how to deal with my curl pattern or texture – overloading it with oily products which just doesn’t work for my hair.
‘I went through the sad stages of relaxing my hair all through high school – something I begged my mum to allow me to do so that I could fit in with the rest of my peers.
‘I call it a sad time as I feel so much more me now that I’ve gone natural and I still have the ability to straighten it as and when I fancy it – like I said earlier – best of both worlds.
‘I’ve ended up just learning how to do my hair myself. Whether that’s box braids, or bleaching it platinum blonde. YouTube is the big sister I never had when it comes to this stuff.’
Atlante wants people in the UK to understand that there is more than one way to be mixed-race. And she is more than happy to answer questions – it’s something she actually loves to talk about.
‘I love sharing the story of how I came to be,’ says Atlante.
‘I also love that my mix is so unusual as I’m able to tell people about the beautiful places that I’m from, as they may not have even heard of Fiji or been to Malta. It’s really nice to be able to tell people about these places.’
Mixed Up
Mixed Up is our weekly series that gets to the heart of what it means to be mixed-race in the UK today.
Going beyond discussions of divided identity, this series takes a look at the unique joys, privileges and complexities that come with being mixed-race – across of variety of different contexts.
The mixed-race population is the UK’s fastest-growing ethnic group, and yet there is still so much more to understand about the varied lived experiences of individuals within this hugely heterogenous group.
Each week we speak to the people who know exactly how it feels to navigate this inbetween space.
Source: Read Full Article