Written by Christine Mass

“Mixed up” is a podcast for mixed raced people that offers “an unfiltered perspective on the mixed race identity.” Nicole Ocran and Emma Slade Edmondson candidly talk about a variety of topics ranging from interracial relationships, the portrayal of mixed race people in the media and their own experiences growing up mixed race. Nicole is a writer and co-creator of The Creator Union, which is a “union that represents workers in the Influencer, Blogger and Digital Content Creator space” and Emma is a sustainability consultant and creative director.

Nicole, when discussing how you met Emma on your podcast, you humorously mentioned that Emma “slid into your DMs” and a conversation on being mixed race quickly followed. From what started as a DM exchange, how was “Mixed up” born? 

Nicole: Emma slid into my DMs originally to discuss a project that she wanted to work on around secondhand shopping and styling ,which ended up evolving into her “Come Secondhand Shopping With Me” IGTV series! We met in person for drinks in Brixton and we basically haven’t stopped talking since! We didn’t end up talking about fashion for very long, despite it being something that both of us enjoy and we just started sharing stories about growing up mixed and how similar our experiences were-growing up in largely white communities and how that affected our world view over time.  

A question commonly encountered by people of color and of mixed race is, “what are you?” How a person identifies themselves can be a very intimate process. Has this lifelong questioning of one’s identity impacted you? 

Emma: When I first read this question, I understood it to be enquiring about a personal lifelong questioning of my own identity. I’m not sure if this is how it was meant, but I do know from doing the Mixed Up podcast and from the many messages we have received from listeners (and relatives, friends and partners of listeners) that the concept of a lifetime long exploration of identity for mixed race people is a very real one. Personally I feel quite strong in my identity and don’t remember a time when I didn’t.  

Nicole: I think I mentioned this in the first episode that the question “What Are You?” would be the title of my memoir or written on my tombstone or something! Growing up, this felt like the most triggering thing that anyone could say to me. I mostly felt like people were trying to “figure something out” about me when they would ask. And like the answer would somehow give them an “Aha! That’s why you’re the way you are.” 

For me, it sums up this “lifelong questioning of identity” that you mentioned here-or maybe not lifelong questioning, but more of a lifelong quest? I have always been trying to understand my identity in all of its complexities. What it means to me and what it means to other people. 

The most difficult times for me were my teenage years and early adulthood—I had always had a majority white friendship group at that age and I don’t think I really understood how that affected the way that I thought about things, my education, how desperately I wanted to assimilate because being Black and being Asian made me feel othered. 

Like Emma said, over the last five years, these feelings of “other” have been heightened, but it’s come at a time where I am confident and unwavering in who I am, who my family is and what that means to me. It’s an unbelievable sense of pride. 

Racial fetishization and exoticization has been experienced by many POC and mixed raced people, especially when dating. What are your thoughts regarding racial fetishization? Have you ever experienced it?   

Emma: One of my early memories of this is when one of my close school friends (I went to a predominantly white school) told me his friend would ‘like’ me because’ he’s into Black girls.’ 

We started dating and he seemed nice enough, but I remember moments where he alluded to the idea that he has always wanted a girlfriend like ‘Ashanti.’ Now I look nothing like Ashanti and it was confusing because I remember knowing I was supposed to be receiving this as a compliment and yet somehow even at that young age, I remember it stuck in my craw whenever I heard it. I wasn’t sure why, but I knew that although it was meant as a compliment, it was not. I sensed the reductive nature of the absurd comparison right away. Looking back I’m not sure what more I expected from a boy who shared Eminem’s Christian name and consequently felt compelled to have it tattooed on his arm. 

I also remember as a teenager often hearing mixed girls referred to as easy and crazy. I didn’t really understand the significance of the two things being linked in popular rhetoric at the time.

Nicole: I’ve experienced this constantly in dating. Also when you’re a woman of color dating cis white men…whew, it really is something that I had to brace myself for. I expected to be racialized or fetishized from the jump, unfortunately in the very early stages of my dating life that was something I thought I just had to put up with at the time. 

I’ve had men tell me I’m the first Black woman they’ve ever been with. I’ve had men tell me that I’m one of many Black women that they’ve been with. I’ve had white women tell me that they want their babies to look just like me because they want them to have my curls or my eyes or my skin tone. I’ve had men feel comfortable enough upon first meeting me to ask me questions about how good in bed Black women are...the list goes on and on. Like Emma says, the implication is always being easy and up for anything and living up to their fantasy. 

Emma, on your first episode of “Mixed Up” you discussed how your mother “equipped you” early on for challenges that she did not have to face. Do you think this helped strengthen your sense of self?

Emma: I feel that I know who I am as a person, possibly because I have grown up with a very strong family unit and a mum who although she was white was hyper aware of the difficulties I was likely to face as a child of color. And so for me, it’s more about how others receive me, and whether that marries up or indeed conflicts with my sense of self. I think this is heightened during moments in time that feel highly political and especially when there is an increased sense of racial tension-ie the last 3- 5 years and definitely during 2020. I think this feeling of heightened conflict during these moments in time is probably something common to people of mixed heritage. 

If you can choose any person to be a guest on your podcast, who would it be and why? What would you love to ask them? 

Emma: This is tough. We have so many dream guests. 

But for me it would have to be the most famous mixed race person we all know - Obama, of course. Cut the bullsh*t and go straight to the top for the answers I say. I’d love to ask Obama about having had to choose to employ the facets of his mixed identity that best served politics at any given time. I wonder whether this was all important in speaking to the various groups who he had to both serve, and also nurture trust and allyship amongst.I’d like to talk to him about growing up with his white mother, being estranged from his Black father and how he thinks that shaped his identity, how he thinks it contributed to him  becoming the first Black president that navigated white American spaces that were never made for him. 

Close second would be Meghan Markle, whom I’d love to speak to about her very public quest for racial justice and of course becoming the first Black/mixed race female in the British monarchy. I think it would be fascinating to dig into the intersections of class, nationality and race and of course, how these conversations play out in the media.

Nicole: Emma has taken my choices! But I’ve got so many more as well, like Colin Kaepernick—I want to talk to him about his childhood, growing up in a white family, and how that shaped his identity as a Black, mixed-race man. I want to look back at his incredible career and his political activism. He’s pretty much the only man who ever got me interested in football! 

Also this is a random one but I would love to talk to Mark-Paul Gosselaar— I don’t think that many people know that he is half-Indonesian. As a millennial who grew up with Zack Morris on Saved By The Bell, he played such an iconic all-American white boy on TV for so many years and I’m just so fascinated by that. I want to dig into how that shaped how he saw himself and even up to now he is reprising that role in 2020 for the reboot of the show. He also stars in Mixed-ish playing the white father to biracial children, so again I’m intrigued to find out more about that as he is once again a mixed-race man playing a white character. 

Can I run through some more? Tracee Ellis Ross—aka my idol, Rashida Jones, Thandie Newton, Zadie Smith, Amandla Stenberg, Elaine Welteroth…the list goes on and on, if I’m honest!