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Oona In A Spin About Dual Heritage
'It
sounds like a stately home off a minor motorway.'
Politician Oona King is pondering using the term dual heritage
after a 'concerned' white person pointed out to her that 'we don't
use that term any more'
Oona said in an article in The New Statesman, I find myself in the same
boat as my white gran, whom I ticked off for calling black people 'coloured'.
But I'm probably worse than my gran, because she was born in 1908, left
school at 13, worked in a cigarette factory, and didn't sit around discussing
race and multiculturalism. I have no such excuse. 'So what am I
these days?'
Oona goes on to say that the term dual heritage, 'sounds like a stately
home off a minor motorway. It's completely wrong.'
She then adds, 'I shall now break it gently to the white people reading
this: I have reason to believe that you are dual-heritage - just like
my gran, though she never knew it. Her father was Scottish, her mother
Irish. Though I often describe myself as black, I recognise some truth
in the term 'mixed'. Apart from Irish and Scottish, I have
African, Hungarian, American, Jewish, Geordie and Native American blood.
Not to mention my defining identity, which is British.
Intermix.org.uk founder Sharron Hall says,
'There are a few people now using the term dual heritage but to me
that can mean anything, it can mean Irish and English or Scottish and
French. When I hear the term mixed-race I imagine a person who is a
mixture of different races not necessarily a person who may have parents
from different countries. To me the term mixed-race is a statement
to those who hear it that this is a person who has a particular set
of experiences that have been defined by society's social construction
of race.'
What do you think of Oona King's comments?
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Source:The New Statesman
