The De/Construction of Identity: The Complexities of Loss and Separation for Mixed-Race Britain

Abstract

In the 2017 Danzy Senna novel, New People, the mixed-race protagonist is described as a white ‘passing’ mixed-race woman who interprets the death of her adopted Black mother as a symbol of the death of her Black identity. The book’s themes parallel ongoing multiracial political debates that explore the extent to which mixed-race people with proximity to whiteness perceive individual agency in identity negotiations. This paper examines how mixed-race people in Britain discuss the experience of loss and separation, thereby demonstrating how loss and separation interact with their sense of self. Employing a content and thematic analysis of 19 stories from the British-based organisation Mixedracefaces, my findings show that the mixed-race respondents saw their racially marginalised family members as critical connections to their own. Thus, a process of identity de/construction was instigated when they experienced a loss that perpetuated and/or challenged monoracism. I argue that we must disrupt oppressive monoracial paradigms of ‘race’ that uphold monoracial whiteness and prevent mixed-race identity agency. Through mixed-race counterstories, we can reveal further generational histories of struggles, resistance, love, and refusal in Britain. I intentionally provide a safe space for the millions of mixed people looking for connection through this experience.

1. Introduction

In June 2024, Dr Roberta Wolfson, Lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University, gave a talk at the Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) biannual conference entitled ‘I’m Not the Person You Think I Am’: Familial Loss and Multiracial Identity Erasure in Danzy Senna’s New People’. The book, New People, follows the story of the mixed-race protagonist, Maria, who undertakes a journey of identity renegotiation after the loss of her adopted mother, Gloria. Gloria is described as a monoracial Black woman, who Maria saw as a physical symbol and death of her Black identity. Dr Wolfson explored Maria’s encounter with racial imposter syndrome as a white ‘passing’ mixed-race woman, which is heightened when she loses the family member who represented a critical connection to her minoritised ancestry.

Inspired by this presentation, this article examines how mixed-race people with proximity to whiteness undergo identity renegotiations after losing a critical connection to their marginal racialised identities. This is particularly prevalent in a Western nation like Britain, which is historically constructed around monoracial paradigms rooted in assumptions and beliefs in singular, discrete racial categories (Wong-Campbell et al. 2024). Monoracism is defined here as a systemic social oppression that targets individuals who do not fit into monoracial categories, groups, or phenomena (Johnston-Guerrero et al. 2020). It is a nuanced form of oppression that targets multiracial people and can be used to expose systems of oppression that are generally ignored in the literature on identity development. Thus, mixed-race people in Britain have had to undertake complex identity negotiations in the face of monoracism (Campion 2019; Song and Liebler 2022).

Dr Wolfson’s talk, although grounded in fiction, challenged many of these monoracial paradigms and drew on several themes parallel to ongoing multiracial political debates; namely, debates exploring mixed-race identity validation and perceptions of agency. For example, in the book, Maria describes feeling her Black identity was validated through Gloria, aligned with discussions on mixed-race identity validation processes, which have typically been made to rely on monoracial sources (Song 2021; Song and Liebler 2022; Spickard 2022). Resultantly, many mixed-race people in Britain have reported feelings of unbelonging or even rejection by monoracial minority groups (Campion 2019; Long and Joseph-Salisbury 2018), particularly when they have proximity to whiteness. Therefore, seminal mixed-race scholars have emphasised the critical consideration of self-identification, arguing that mixed-race people have the right to identify however they choose (Bettez 2010; Daniel 2002; Root 1996; Zack 1992), with more recent scholarship critically examining the societal impact of that self-identification (Aspinall 2009; Garrett 2025; Hu 2024; Joseph-Salisbury 2018; Song 2021; Tsuda 2025).

Through a content and thematic analysis of 19 transcripts from Mixedracefaces from 2018 to 2025, this paper exhibits how monoracial paradigms of ‘race’ in Britain continue to uphold white supremacy and negatively impact mixed-race identity negotiations, but also how mixed-race people disrupt and resist these conceptualisations using their agency and self-identification. My findings show that the loss of a loved one caused mixed-race respondents to undergo identity renegotiations, where mixed-race identities were simultaneously constructed and deconstructed, or ‘de/constructed’ hereafter. This paper, therefore, contributes to broader discussions, building new ways to tackle the growing far-right political threat in Britain that homogenises, excludes, and discriminates against racially minoritised populations (Lowles and Mulhall 2025; Zambelli 2020). By examining mixed-race identity construction processes, we can see critical counterstories (Harris 2016) that challenge monoracial power structures and reveal histories of generational struggles, resistance, love, and refusal. As a mixed-race woman who has also struggled with self-identification, I intentionally provide a safe space for the millions of mixed people looking for connection through this experience.

2. Contextualising Shifting Images of Mixed-Race Britain

The UK has become a global hub of multiculturalism, containing an intricate tapestry of what it means to hold a racialised identity. Yet, mixed-race people continue to be overlooked in policy considerations (Agu 2022; Aspinall 2015; Sims 2007), in education (Campion 2022; Garrett 2025; Joseph-Salisbury 2018), in health sectors (Annan-Callcott 2023; Oh et al. 2024), and still experience colonial legacies that traditionally dictated we are ‘confused’ (Campion 2022; Mahanti 2014; Olumide 2002). Typically, mixed-race people in the West are associated with unbelonging and isolation, when we should be critically interrogating the colonial systems that have perpetuated this narrative (Gillon and Webber 2023). Therefore, there is a requirement to continue to build on the seminal work of mixed-race studies scholars who have constructed a more nuanced image of what being mixed means than has previously been articulated in scholarship (see Ali 2003; Aspinall 2022; Bland 2005; Campion 2022; Caballero and Aspinall 2018; Edwards et al. 2012; Ifekwunigwe 2004; Joseph-Salisbury 2018; King-O’Riain 2022; Sims 2007; Song 2021).

Popular conceptions of multiracial people and families in Britain have frequently been cast as modern phenomena, which Mahanti (2014) defined as ‘mixed-race amnesia’. Mixed-race amnesia refers to a cultural and strategic forgetting of mixed-race histories, which then, in turn, gets challenged by the lived experiences of mixed-race individuals. For example, mixed-race historical presence can be traced back to the Tudor era (Campion 2022), and mixed-race marriages have been around since 1578 (Ali 2003) yet did not emerge as a notable community feature until the 19th century. Therefore, despite the ordinariness of mixedness, it has simultaneously been strategically characterised as ‘new’ to forget colonial legacies (Campion 2022). Notably, it was not until 2001 that the ‘Mixed’ category in the England and Wales census was formally recognized and employed due to the sizable nature of mixed-race populations (Aspinall and Song 2014). Thus, mixed-race populations continue to grow at substantial rates and are becoming mainstream considerations in ‘race’ and ethnicity scholarly discussions.

As a Westernised society, Britain has become accustomed to thinking that identities—racial, ethnic or religious—are permanent features of the individual (Spickard 2022), when circumstances, governments, institutions, and social groups produce racial change, who is ‘raced’, and how those with multiple racial identities are understood. Texts as early as the 18th century have deemed mixed-race identities “dangerous” to society (Mok 2019), and by the early 20th century, racial mixing became a domestic issue (Campion 2022; Mok 2019). Ifekwunigwe (2004) defines this period as the ‘Age of Pathology’, referring to the derogatory pathological roots of terms such as ‘half-caste’ and ‘racial hybrid’, rooted in illogical ideologies that multiracial mixing with whiteness diluted ‘racial’ purity (Joseph-Salisbury 2018). Because of this, mixed-race people have been forced to assign themselves to lower or higher status monoracial ancestor groups rather than a mixed-race ancestry (Iverson et al. 2022), emphasised by images of the ‘tragic mulatto’ (Mok 2019) and the ‘marginal man’ (Park 1928). While these images have since dissipated from the 1990s onwards (Aspinall 2003; Mok 2019), events such as the publication of the Fletcher Report in 1930 and the elevation of lighter-skin Black mixed-race identities over darker-skinned, mixed-race people have been ideologised as being confused and torn by their identities (Christian 2008; Elliott-Cooper 2013; Joseph-Salisbury 2018), rather than confused and/or torn due to an oppressive environment.

Once Britain was made to confront the horrors of the holocaust post-WWII, the country attempted to shift the symbolic image of mixed-race people from its colonial pathological past into modern celebrations of equality, which Brennan (1993) deems the ‘Era of the Ego’. With the rise of media platforms, mixed-race representation increased in the 1990s, resulting in a new narrative for mixed-race people, defining them as a national story of a more tolerant, multi-ethnic, and multicultural Britain (Caballero and Aspinall 2018). Now, rather than being considered confusing ‘threats’, mixed-race people were considered the new faces of Britain (Ford et al. 2012). While this is a preferential movement away from pathologisation, it did very little to further the anti-racist movement (Aspinall 2015) and introduced mixedness as a ‘new’ face of Britain that assumes they were not there previously (Campion 2022). Ergo, mixed-race people have undergone several ‘iterations’ while remaining an ordinary and integral part of British society and have consistently had to navigate their identities along with societal changes.

Technology has had an influential impact on the shifting image of mixed-race identities across the globe but has drawn new questions about who ‘counts’ as mixed and how we articulate mixedness. For example, recent research from King-O’Riain (2022) on young mixed-race Asian and White people, or ‘Wasians’, usage of TikTok, and Tsuda’s (2025) work on multiracial self-identification, have both shown how many mixed communities still sometimes communicate their identities in monoracial ways that risk reinforcing genealogical legacies. Additionally, with the invention of things like public DNA testing, where individuals can now track their family ancestry, the contours of mixed-race subjectivity and relatedness have expanded (DaCosta 2022) and evoke new questions around who is mixed-race which are yet to be answered.

What has remained is the monoracial society rooted in discrete racial categories (Wong-Campbell et al. 2024), in which British mixed-race populations are left to navigate and challenge. Developing supportive spaces for mixed-race minoritised communities to explore their identities and senses of themselves is particularly prevalent in Britain’s current political climate. Following the UK’s decision to withdraw from the European Union in 2016 (Zambelli 2020) and the growth of the far-right political threat, concerns affiliated to racial, ethnic, and religious cohesion are at an all-time high (Lowles and Mulhall 2025). Therefore, as Mills (2004) teaches us in his chapter ‘Racial Exploitation and the Wages of Whiteness’, discussions of mixed-race identities should not only serve scholarly outputs but contribute to the fight against white supremacy and monoracial cultures that oppress minoritised groups.

3. Mixed-Race Identity De/Construction

Identity is profoundly relational in that it is bound up with others. Thereby, Bradbury (1999) articulates that the death of someone close to us signifies a loss of the part of ourselves that was constructed through our relationship with them. Consequently, our identities are subject to constant transformation throughout a life course as we ‘become’ ourselves (Hall 1996). Just as Maria lost her Black identity, people’s sense of self can shift following the loss of a family member who identifies similarly to them (Hockey 2010; McIntosh and Pasco 2024). Nevertheless, while loss and trauma can disrupt communities, collective trauma may also bind communities together to promote spaces of solidarity and safety in the face of challenge (Umberson 2017). Seminal ‘race’ scholars have articulated that academics have placed emphasis on the deficit power whiteness has over racialised people but must also consider the role racialised communities have played in reconstructing ‘race’ narratives to serve their communities in resistance to white supremacy (Hall 2017; Lipsitz 2003). Therefore, racial identity construction is characterised as a constant negotiation process rather than a static entity.

3.1. Validating Mixed-Race Identities

In Senna’s novel, Maria is described as a white ‘passing’ woman, resultantly making Maria feel her Black identity was only validated through her adoptive mother’s monoracial identity rather than her own. White ‘passing’ refers to those who can be racialised as white or can perform ‘normative’ white culture (Guy 2018). In this context, whiteness does not only refer to phenotype but also to those who socially benefit from whiteness (Song 2021), which holds no biological grounds but does engender real social consequences. ‘Passing’ as an act is both an active and passive process, dependent on how a mixed-race person is perceived by others (Mahanti 2014). Therefore, mixed-race people can sometimes be afforded the privileges of whiteness without the added element of knowing when or where this recognition takes place. Waring (2023) has thus described this as ‘privilege by proxy’, or the “unearned resources, opportunities and advantages that multiracial people with a white caregiver may access, regardless of their skin colour or how they racially identify’ (p. 3). Investigating mixed-race people with proximity to whiteness and their identity validation processes, therefore, becomes a useful optic on the perpetuation of, and resistance towards, monoracial society.

Miri Song has extensively explored the relationship mixed-race people have with their identities. She found that mixed-race people with proximity to whiteness who appear racially ambiguous tend to seek minority identity validation from external sources (Song 2003, 2021). This external validation can take more forms than oppressive ones. For example, invalidation can occur through the rejection of multiracial people from monoracial communities (Campion 2019; Gillon and Webber 2023; Long and Joseph-Salisbury 2018) but can also be validated in more agentic ways. Song and Liebler (2022) recently found that mixed-race people were claiming more individualistic ancestries and forging new familial connections, challenging what they had previously been afforded. Interestingly, they found that it was Black, American Indian, and Asian ancestries where individuals felt their identities were more meaningful to who they were compared to their European ancestries. Thus, while their ancestors were the ‘validation’ source, they exerted agency over their agency building.

From this, we can see that familial connections have been found to play a significant role in the formative years of mixed-race identity construction and, much like Maria, influence mixed-race children’s sense of self. However, familial connections have also (knowingly or unknowingly) been found to promote harmful monoracial narratives onto their mixed-race family members (Olyedemi 2013) Although, as a society, we have moved beyond following hypo- or hyperdescent rules, where they were assigned to either their lower- or higher-status monoracial ancestor group (Iverson et al. 2022), families have been found to work within monoracial paradigms. Phoenix and Craddock (2024) found that colourism is still prevalent within British families, which children are often exposed to, creating a sense of shame and negative influences on children’s well-being and body image. Importantly, we must not assign blame towards the families themselves for any harm caused to their children, but critique society’s racial illiteracies towards multiraciality (Campion and Lewis 2022; Twine 2006; Twine and Steinbugler 2006). Disrupting monoracial paradigms in British society through a mixed-race lens thus further complicates how individuals gain a gateway to kinship, belonging, and identification validation.

Much like how Maria continued to feel the traumatic impact of losing her adoptive mother, mixed-race people can feel the effects of generational trauma passed on to them. Much like how harmful narratives of ‘confusing’ mixed-race identities have continued to the present day (Campion 2022), generational trauma caused by monoracial, white supremacist actions continues to influence the identity construction of mixed-race people. Generational trauma means that even if a person does not experience a particularly traumatic environment, trauma is still held within the body unconsciously (Jarvis and Smith 2020). For example, in Sweden, Dancus (2022) explores Sámi identities across generations through the medium of film. She demonstrates the impact of family trauma caused by the genocidal histories of the Sámi peoples, where mixed ethnic populations were unaware of their Sámi heritage because families that could ‘pass’ as non-indigenous, would erase their Sámi identities for survival. Thus, mixed-race Sámi individuals were left with generational trauma when rediscovering their ancestries that were transformed by racist histories.

Concerns about ethnic, cultural, and national identifications are also bound up with transracial adoption literature (Ali 2003). Jur (2022) and Goss (2022) argue that the adoption of mixed-race or transracial children from previously colonised territories to the coloniser’s land can cause difficulties in gaining a sense of belonging and undergo a specific negotiation process that is not often discussed in monoracial literature. The literature on transracial adoption overlaps significantly with mixed-race identity constructions, family dynamics, hybridity, multiculturality, and transcultural environments (Daniel et al. 2014). Subsequently, a disproportionate number of mixed children are in foster care (Edwards et al. 2012). Thus, CMRS is equally concerned with mixed-race and transracial adoption populations if it furthers the social justice and anti-racist movement against dominant white supremacist structures.

To summarise this section, rather than characterising mixed-race people as problems in society, what needs to be critically analysed is the monoracial society in which mixed-race people are navigating (Harris 2016). Therefore, my work aims to continue to amplify the stories of mixed-race people and their navigations of identity construction.

3.2. Perceptions of Agency in Mixed-Race Identification

The idea of self-identification has become central to mixed-race identity construction and has been widely debated in mixed-race literature. Historically, mixed-race people have had limited choice over their social ‘race’ identities in public, where they have had little control to define themselves on their terms (Olumide 2002). Formative works have since been published to reflect the agency mixed-race people hold over their identities. In her book A Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People, Root argues that social expectations placed on mixed-race people are psychologically damaging to the identity construction of mixed-race people, who have the right to move within racial communities simultaneously, shift according to context, live as multiracial, and live as monoracial (Root 1996). Building on this framework, Daniel (2002) also provided a refined set of ‘rights’, where he argues similarly that mixed-race identities can shift to whatever identity makes them feel accepted based on their social settings. Rather than being seen as representations of a new world order or people of the future (Mahanti 2014), mixed-race scholars have argued for mixed-race people to define themselves on their terms.

This, however, as Mahanti (2014) states, comes with a paradox, where ‘race does not exist, yet it remains a salient feature in the public imagination; (p. 24). In other words, mixed-race people have the right to self-identify as ‘race’ is a social construction, but cannot be done siloed from social, political, and economic considerations. For instance, it is wrong to assume Maria should only gain her Black identity validation through her family members, as it evokes the ‘one drop rule’ that assumes ‘race’ is biological (Song 2021). However, as a white ‘passing’ woman, Maria’s experiences in the social, political, and economic world are different from darker skinned Black women. Mixed-race scholars have looked to shift our perception of identity constructions from a binary Black–white dichotomy to seeing identities as ‘internal’ and ‘external’ self-definitions (Jenkins 2000) and ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ identities questioning the salience of a category for individual people (Song 2021). Again, self-identification is a vital right of all mixed-race people, but multiraciality, particularly when in proximity to whiteness, is also always linked to broader systems of white racial domination that must also be considered (DaCosta 2007).

The assertion that individuals must be investigated independently is common in mixed-race studies, as mixed-race people are not a homogenous group (Hu 2024; Small and King-O’Riain 2014). Yet, since monoracism is a system that targets the individual (Johnston-Guerrero et al. 2020), there is also a need to consider collective experiences and identities in mixed-race research without homogenising them all. For example, many mixed-race children are often associated with ‘identity confusion’ and have experienced rejection from monoracial groups from ‘both sides’ because of their multiracial positioning (Edwards et al. 2012; Tessman 1999; Zack 1992). From this, they have sometimes been characterised as unbelonging to the ‘other side’ and experienced forms of racial hostility and exclusion from monoracial minority groups (Campion 2019; Gaither 2018; Rocha 2022; Song 2021; Spickard 2022). But scholarship also shows that mixed-race people agentically reject whiteness, associating their white identities with oppression, blandness, and lacking culture (Bettez 2010; Garrett 2025; Storrs 2011). Thus, mixed-race people go through numerous identity negotiation processes that both challenge and perpetuate monoracial norms.

It is also important to note that agency in self-identification is a privilege. Mixed-race people from more privileged socioeconomic backgrounds are afforded more choice in their self-identifications (Fhagen-Smith et al. 2010; Song 2021), further complicating mixed-race people’s ‘right’ to self-identify. Additionally, how white ‘passing’ has been conceptualised has also shifted from being an isolating experience to something mixed-race people use agentically. In her book But Don’t Call Me White: Mixed Race Women Exposing Nuances of Privilege and Oppression Politics, Bettez (2011) outlines how white ‘passing’ women are ‘secret agent insiders’ to cultural whiteness, gaining a nuanced perspective of whiteness and ‘race’ borders. Particularly, when white ‘passing’ women have been characterised as shapeshifters, tricksters, and infiltrators, they have actively worked to subvert people’s dualistic perceptions of what ‘race’ is through their identities (Mahtani 2002; Todd 2016). From this, we can conclude that mixed-race identities are far from simple, consisting of several considerations that articulate a mixed-race person’s right to self-identify, their political identity and perceived identities within and out of ‘race’ group identities.

Like Maria, examining how mixed-race people negotiate their identities when a metaphorical representation of their identity is lost can reveal how white privilege monoracially continues to ‘other’ mixed-race people, yet also reflects the ways this ‘othering’ is resisted by mixed-race populations in Britain. Taking this critical perspective, my findings show that identity validation also comes from the family unit when they lose that critical connection to their racially marginalised identity. However, they are going through varied processes of de/construction when attempting to fit or challenge a binary monoracial British society.

3.3. Linguistic Choices

Because of its fluid nature, there is no homogeneous mixed-race experience (Song 2021) and no one term that can encapsulate being ‘mixed’. Throughout this paper, I have chosen to equip the term ‘mixed-race’ over other alternative terms such as bi-ethnic, multi-ethnic, mixed heritage, and dual heritage (Aspinall 2003; Aspinall 2022). The term mixed-race has been described as problematic as ‘race’ implies a biological connotation (DaCosta 2022; Gilbert 2005; Ifekwunigwe 2004) but has also been regarded as the strongest candidate for a homogenous term for mixed-race identities in the UK (Aspinall 2009; Aspinall and Song 2014), as other terms have previously been found to be unfavourable to the British public (Parker and Song 2007). Other countries have sought to make their terms, such as mestizos and Chicanos (Tessman 1999), but Britain has yet to do so, and ‘mixed-race’ has previously been found to be the strongest candidate (Aspinall 2009; Aspinall and Song 2014).

Major concerns scholars have had with the term ‘mixed-race’ is that it can risk invoking social categorisation, and ‘race’ itself has long been, and continues to be, the most contested concept in mixed-race studies (Aspinall 2022). I have chosen to make ‘race’ with apostrophes to mark ‘race’ in a similar way I mark mixed-race with a hyphen. For me, these act as symbols for the social construction of ‘race’ and represent my rejection of the idea of biological ‘race’. Other scholars have argued that using these markers could evoke an unnatural quality to them (Kobayashi and Peake 1994; Mahanti 2014). However, I believe ‘race’ is far from ‘natural’. The criticisms of mixed-race and ‘race’ as terms are valid; therefore, I stress that in this paper, ‘mixed-race’ is merely used as an ascriptive tool, chosen largely based on the organisation Mixedracefaces’ choice to use the term on their platform, and my political self-identification as a Chinese mixed-race woman.

4. Methods

I analysed the secondary data source from Mixedracefaces, a British-based organisation that captures portraits and stories of people with mixed heritage. On their website, they describe how they challenge the definition of ‘mixed-race’ by showing it is not so ‘Black and White’, creating a subjective space where mixed-race people can be open and truthful about their life experiences. I have no affiliation with Mixedracefaces as an organisation, but I have contributed my stories to their platforms, and it is only one of a few sources of information that describes mixed-race navigation of daily life. The stories originate from Mixedraceface’s open-access website Mixedracefaces.com, where there are eleven chapters consisting of 540 stories and photographs from 2018 to 2025. For my analysis, I only analyse the transcribed stories. Details of the website and the number of stories per chapter can be seen in

Table 1. The number of stories per Mixedracefaces chapter, 1–11.

Chapter Title	Number of Stories Per Chapter	Year
Chapter 1–The beginning	82	2018
Chapter 2–Exploring the narrative	49	2018
Chapter 3–Forming a community	80	2018/2019
Chapter 4–Expanding the horizon	64	2019
Chapter 5–Creating paths	56	2019–2020
Chapter 6–Perseverance	56	2020–2021
Chapter 7–The light ahead	26	2021–2022
Chapter 8–Steppingstones	46	2022
Chapter 9–Opening doors	49	2022–2023
Chapter 10–Unlocked	15	2023–2024
Chapter 11–Fusion	17	2024–2025
Total	540

.

Through a content analysis of the 540 stories, I chose to use stories from respondents who self-identified themselves as ‘British’ or ‘English’ in their titles. I chose to do this be-cause Mixedracefaces used ‘British’ and ‘English’ to refer to respondents with white racial ancestry. I have not used other terms, including ‘Scottish’, ‘Welsh’, and ‘Northern Irish’, to make the deconstruction of a large data set of 540 stories easier to analyse, and it ensures the respondents resonate with a British or English identity in some way. Additionally, I recognise the potential harm of including whiteness in ‘race’-based research practices as it can risk centralising and serving the interests of white individuals over minority racial groups (Garay and Remedios 2021). While I acknowledge mixed-race does not mean ‘white’, I sought to expose the inner workings of white ‘privilege by proxy’ (Waring 2023) and its influence on identity reconstruction in Britain.

After the content analysis, I was left with 121 qualifying respondent transcriptions. I then conducted a thematic analysis of responses using NVivo and found 19 who discuss the themes of death, loss, and separation. The self-ascribed ethnicities of the respondents can be seen in

Table 2. Table of self-ascribed ethnicities of respondents.

Self-Ascribed Ethnicity of Respondents
English | Malawian
British | Unknown
British | Unknown
English | Algerian
English/Irish | St Lucian/Antiguan
British | Jamaican
British | Indonesian
British | Sudanese
English | Guyanese
British | Pakistani/Indian
British | Nigerian
English | Jamaican
English | English/Jamaican
English/Welsh | Indian
British | Ghanaian
English | Iranian
English | Mauritian
English | Korean
English | Indian

as defined on the Mixedracefaces website. Each transcription was short, only consisting of 200–600 words, which varied depending on what the individual chose to disclose. Respondents were asked to complete a qualitative survey on an Excel spreadsheet made by Mixedracefaces that was then pieced together by the organisation to create a transcription alongside a photograph of the respondent, also taken by Mixedracefaces. The survey respondents were asked about their parental origins and difficulties with familial integration and cultural isolation. Each column in the spreadsheet answered a different question, and all questions and answer lengths were optional, giving freedom to the respondents to answer questions they were comfortable with.

Mixed-race scholarship has debated whether some multiracial people are considered ‘whiter’ than others, complicating the act of generalising what it means to be ‘Mixed’ in Britain today. Song (2021) argues that there cannot be one single conceptualisation of ‘multiracial’ across societies because the overarching ‘Mixed’ category in Britain is too broad to be meaningful, even though this category comprised several subgroups. Therefore, when considering a collective mixed-race experience, we should not draw unfounded distinctions between monoracial minorities and ‘mixed’ people and isolate ‘mixed’ people as a distinct group in society. Moreover, we must consider numerous factors such as physical appearance, social class, school/region, gender, and multiplicity at the ethnic group/cultural background level (Song 2007; Aspinall 2009).

This is not to say there is no shared mixed-race experience. Hall (2017) and Olumide (2007) disagree with the argument that there is no coherent mixed-race experience in Britain. The authors argue that there are emerging commonalities and patterns in mixed-race experiences across Britain that need to be addressed in scholarly work. This point is worth noting because I am referring to a collective experience of loss and separation while addressing a community-less community that arguably cannot be categorised. Rather, my work seeks to find growing commonalities and patterns in the mixed-race experience of identity negotiation and construction.

Notably, Mixedracefaces is not an academic organisation but one that shares the stories of diverse mixed-race faces. Other scholars have also used online platforms such as TikTok (King-O’Riain 2022) to gather information on everyday experiences of ‘race’. For example, Gay et al. (2022) use Reddit to explore Black–Asian community identities and experiences. Given the lack of an academic setting, respondents might have felt more comfortable writing their authentic truths and been more vulnerable with their story sharing. As someone who has contributed to the Mixedracefaces platform, I was moved by their mission to promote and amplify mixed-race stories and, in turn, encouraged to share my lived experiences more explicitly.

5. Symbols of ‘Race’

Through my Mixedracefaces investigation, I found that mixed-race respondents used their racially marginalised family members as symbols of their critical connections to their racially marginalised identities. In turn, when the respondents lost a loved one, their sense of self was also influenced. However, rather than suggesting mixed-race people’s minority identities were solely constructed around the validation of others, I argue that they underwent multiple identity de/constructions in the face of loss and separation.

5.1. “A Final End for My Dad and a New Beginning for Me”: Renegotiating the Self

When someone loses a family member who played an integral role in their identity construction, their loss signifies a loss of the self (Bradbury 1999; Hockey 2010; McIntosh and Pasco 2024). Thus, the respondents underwent identity renegotiation processes in which they simultaneously de/constructed their identities, perpetuating and resisting monoracial paradigms. When exploring how mixed-race people consolidated their identities in the face of loss, I found that respondents saw the loss as more than a loss of themselves, but a new de/constructed beginning. A respondent who self-identified as English | Malawian explained how the death of their Malawian father influenced their identity construction, as “losing him made me feel like I had lost that part of me”. Like Maria, the respondent described how the loss of their father symbolised a loss of the self, not only grieving a parent but also grieving a loss of themselves. Resultantly, the respondent was struggling to “remember who I am”, as the loss of their father promoted a “disconnect” to their Malawian identity. Therefore, not only can mixed-race people forge familial connections through ancestry (Song and Liebler 2022) but also de/construct their identities in the process.

However, rather than perpetuating emotions of unbelonging to their heritage, the respondent challenged monoracial paradigms by developing a closer connection to their culture. For example, they describe how reflecting on their father’s death made them feel “connected to the ancestors” and “grounded” in their heritage. Monoracial systems of racial hierarchy have traditionally dictated that mixed-race people are confused or torn by their identities (Christian 2008; Elliott-Cooper 2013; Joseph-Salisbury 2018). Yet, these findings show that despite this, respondents de/constructed their identity on their terms. Additionally, this identity de/construction process took place later in life for the respondent, showing that family dynamics influence identity construction not only in the formative years (Campion and Lewis 2022; Olyedemi 2013; Phoenix and Craddock 2024) but also in adulthood in the face of loss and separation.

This experience was not unique to individual respondents, as another respondent who self-identified as British | Ghanaian also lost their critical connection to their marginalised heritage. However, they did not feel any less “Ghanaian”. The respondent described how they made an online documentary about their late father to “track down my Ghanaian family” they had previously been separated from. The respondent described how the separation he experienced from his Ghanaian family also influenced the separation he had from his Ghanaian heritage, as he was physically separated from a ‘huge Ghanaian family who he [their father] had told me almost nothing about’, which has also been found to be a common experience for mixed-race people in Britain (Campion 2022). Yet rather than only feeling a loss of identity, he described how his father’s death was ‘a final end for my dad and a new beginning for me’. This narrative is powerful because historically, mixed-race people have been regarded as being ‘half’ of an identity, rooted in derogatory pathological ideologies that suggest ‘race’ not only exists but is a permanent feature of a person (Joseph-Salisbury 2018; Spickard 2022). Stories like the one presented by this respondent resist monoracial systems of oppression by not associating their identity with ‘fixed’ events like loss.

Other respondents articulated how loss and separations made them develop a stronger connection to their marginalised racial identity. For a respondent who self-identified as English | Jamaican, the loss of their Jamaican grandfather resulted in an increased appreciation for their family histories. He recounted how he could sometimes be ‘mistaken as White’, making him feel he could not ‘celebrate’ his heritage like monoracial people could. His words resonate with many other mixed-race counter stories, who describe not feeling belonging to their marginalised identities because of their mixedness (Campion 2019, 2022; Long and Joseph-Salisbury 2018; Waring 2023). Rather than rejecting his white identity (Garrett 2025; Storrs 2011), the respondent recognised that his white ‘privilege by proxy’ (Waring 2023) afforded him societal benefits, and he still experienced “moments of doubt” that he could claim a Jamaican heritage. When he had these moments, he would “think of my [Jamaican] granddad… who left his home country with minimal belongings, not knowing what the other side of the ocean would be like”. Building on findings that show mixed-race people forge familial connections to their monoracial ancestors (Song and Liebler 2022), the respondent connected to his granddad’s legacy, generational struggles and histories that resulted in his conception and de/constructed a new connection to his Jamaican heritage in the process.

These stories remind us of the oppressive realities of white supremacy but also reveal narratives of resistance and resilience, finding beauty in these unjust experiences (Hall 2017; Lipsitz 2003). Even when the respondents had traumatic connections to their racialised minority identities, when they experienced loss, they were simultaneously de/constructing their mixedness in the process and actively disrupting monoracial paradigms.

5.2. ‘Struggle with Regret’: Exposing Monoracial Normative Privileges

Despite holding agency and power over their identities, monoracial systems of social oppression still played a role in mixed-race identity de/construction, reflecting that monoracism is still a concerning lived reality of mixed-race populations in Britain. A British | Indonesian respondent, for instance, reported that losing their British father at a young age resulted in an identity crisis later in life. Specifically, the respondents questioned whether they would be considered ‘more English and less Indonesian’ if their British father was still around, evoking monoracial ideologies that suggest ‘race’ is a biological feature of an individual (Johnston-Guerrero et al. 2020; Wong-Campbell et al. 2024). Like Maria, the respondent had attached their ‘English’ heritage to their father, and after losing him, they questioned whether this influenced his claims of an English or Indonesian identity. While nations like Britain have surpassed pathological illogic’s of eugenics, its legacies can be seen through the self-narrations of mixed-race people.

Concurrently, other respondents described how monoracism influenced their family dynamics. A respondent who self-identified as English | Jamaican discussed how they had little connection with their Jamaican grandparents and questioned whether this would influence their children. Specifically, she perpetuates the profound and painful relationship between phenotype and genotype, where phenotype typically remains the dominant determinant of whether someone belongs to a ‘race’ (Ifekwunigwe 2004). She describes how her children ‘appear white’ while she appears more marginalised, giving rise to queries about their children’s parentage asking ‘if they are mine’. Her story encompassed a common experience of mixed-race families in Britain, where mixed-race children have previously stated how they have been assumed to be someone else’s child based on the colour of their skin (Campion and Lewis 2022). Difficulty, her child picked up on monoracial paradigms at a young age, claiming she was “white like daddy”, and making the respondent feel her daughter was not connected to her heritage, and whether a separation from her grandparents played a part in this. In stories like this, it is important not to critique individual families (Campion and Lewis 2022; Twine 2006; Twine and Steinbugler 2006) but to critique the way British society has allowed racial illiteracies like these to influence mixed-race children at a young age.

Binary ideologies of ‘race’ were prevalent in the mixed-race respondent’s stories, showing how monoracism is embedded in British society. A self-identifying British | Sudanese respondent reported how they experienced racism from “both sides” and used the binary metaphor that they had “a foot in both camps”. British society and the influence of global technologies have the power to create new communities of mixedness, but also risk perpetuating Western colonial perceptions of binary genealogical ideologies of ‘race’ (DaCosta 2022; Gillon and Webber 2023; King-O’Riain 2022; Tsuda 2025). The respondent articulated that this also influenced their lived experience, where they experienced being told ‘really offensive things in the past about Muslims and Jews’. Although in the context of British and Sudanese identity, the story evoked ideas of ‘horizontal hostility’ (Campion 2019) and colourism in mixed-race families (Phoenix and Craddock 2024) that dictate that mixed-race people can experience discrimination from multiple parts of their identities. Therefore, mixed-race scholarship and perspectives are particularly important to shift British conceptions of binary ‘Black white’ logic into a more fluid space (Jenkins 2000; Song 2021).

Monoracism embodies white supremacy, which negatively influences all racially minoritised identities, but the stories I analysed showed the way this oppression impacted mixed-race people (Johnston-Guerrero et al. 2020). A self-identifying English | Iranian respondent narrated how the loss of their grandparents represented a loss of connection to their ancestry. They explained how they “struggle with regret” as they did not understand “their experiences with Iran” better, creating a disconnect between them and their Iranian identity. Death is closely aligned with identity de/construction processes (Bradbury 1999; Hockey 2010), and my findings show that mixed-race marginalised identities were also entangled with their relationships with their ancestors. In a society that can sometimes misconstrue ‘race’ with DNA, and ancestral features, the boundaries around ancestral claims are becoming blurred (DaCosta 2022). However, this is not because the respondent does not have a claim to their ancestry, nor did they lose their identity validation in the face of loss, but monoracial British society dictated that their ‘race’ was somehow impacted by the death of their ‘biological’ Iranian family.

As a CMRS scholar and Chinese mixed-race woman, I am a firm believer in mixed-race self-identification, following the teachings of scholars like Root (1996) and Daniel (2002), who have promoted mixed-race people’s right to move within racial communities and live however they choose. Yet, we must still recognise the way monoracism in British society continues to harm the identity de/construction processes of its mixed-race populations. This is particularly important now as the far-right continues to segregate racial, ethnic, and religious identities (Lowles and Mulhall 2025).

5.3. ‘Questioning Whether My Heritage Was a Mistake’: Recognising Multiracial Familial Trauma

As identities are inherently relational, they are tied together by generational trauma passed down environmentally, socially, and biologically (Jarvis and Smith 2020). In Britain, I highlighted how mixed-race people have experienced significant generational trauma, which the country has since attempted to ‘forget’ (Campion 2022; Joseph-Salisbury 2018; Mahanti 2014; Mok 2019). In this mixed-race amnesia (Mahanti 2014), I found the respondent’s mixed-race identities were being impacted by unexplored generational trauma.

A self-identifying British | Sudanese respondent, for instance, articulated how their maternal [white] grandmother ‘refused to ever meet my dad’ and died before they were born. The separation from their grandmother made them question ‘what she would’ve made of the multicultural grandchildren’, implying that they felt the grandmother would not accept her mixed kids like generations have refused to do throughout British history (Ali 2003; Caballero and Aspinall 2018; Campion 2022; Edwards et al. 2012; Ifekwunigwe 2004; Joseph-Salisbury 2018; Mok 2019). While the respondent herself did not perpetuate harmful racist narratives onto her children, she questioned whether the presence of her white grandparents would change her sense of self. Britain’s colonial legacies, which are currently facilitating the growth of harmful messages from the far-right (Lowles and Mulhall 2025), are therefore being passed on through generational trauma.

The theme of physical separation from a familial racial identity and identity reconstruction continued and had a negative impact on mixed-race respondents’ relationships to their marginalised identities. An English | Korean respondent said they grew up “disliked[ing] being half-Korean” and wanted to be “fully English”, meaning white. This was primarily because they were “separated” physically from Korea, as they geographically grew up in Britain. This story draws on several harmful narratives that have been perpetuated by British governments, equating ‘Britishness’ with whiteness (Hall 2017; Lowles and Mulhall 2025) while also implying that physical separation from a country of origin becomes a separation from the identity itself. Therefore, without an increased understanding of multiple processes of identity de/construction, stemming from generational trauma, policy and practice cannot effectively support mixed ethnic populations who experience this in the face of loss and separation.

Similarly, a self-identifying British | Pakistani/Indian respondent felt their family ‘was not prepared for me as a mixed-race first-born’ and questioned; whether my existence as a firstborn with my heritage was a mistake’. The respondent implies that the tensions present within their multiracial family were their fault, taking on the generational trauma which previously shunned multiracial relationships (Ali 2003; Caballero and Aspinall 2018; Campion 2022; Edwards et al. 2012; Ifekwunigwe 2004; Joseph-Salisbury 2018; Mok 2019). These findings show that mixed-race children are impacted by generational trauma by the significant amount of emotional labour on mixed-race children themselves to understand their identities that are inherently based on, and created from, legacies of British colonial racism (Campion and Lewis 2022). The scholarship of mixed-race histories and approaches is a vital part of conversations around British legacies and protections for marginalised communities in Britain, shown through their identity de/construction processes within the family unit.

Separation impacted not only respondents who lost family members later in life but also respondents who never met them. Mixed-race people are more likely to be adopted than many other ethnic groups (Campion 2022), making adoption and identity constructions a mixed-race issue. A respondent who identified as English/Irish | St Lucian/Antiguan described how they were adopted by Polish and Jewish parents, but their biological father and mother were St Lucian and Antiguan and English/Irish. Resultantly, they recounted constructing their sense of self in a predominantly white family and thus felt separated from their racially marginalised identity. Growing on this, they said they also had an adopted sister who was ‘white’ and was often ‘mistaken for our parents’ biological daughter’, a luxury they were not afforded themselves as she ‘did not look as though I am a part of my family’ which she attributed to her ‘afro’. These findings show that, again, the phenotype was prioritised over genealogical, cultural, or kinship connections (Ifekwunigwe 2004) when undergoing identity de/constructions in the face of separation.

The respondent did not blame her identity de/construction difficulties on her family’s racial illiteracy. But rather, she placed the blame on the society she was brought up in which ‘constantly reminded’ her that physical appearance dictated familial belonging. The respondent recognised that issues such as colourism and white privilege exist in society (Elliott-Cooper 2013; Song 2021) but also challenged monoracial norms that suggest any ‘whiteness’ equals privilege on equal grounds (Waring 2023). Therefore, the de/construction of mixed-race identities challenges monoracial assumptions that dictate ‘race’ and familial connection are based on biological phenotype and not on a social construction.

This point of resistance against racism in society was also articulated by a British | Jamaican respondent who argued that British society should have done more ‘to expose me to Black culture and more support could have been given to my parents from the adoption agency’. The respondent stated that she was lucky to be paired with ‘a Jamaican foster carer’ because she is ‘someone who represents my background and can educate and show me more about it’. Like Maria with Gloria, the respondent shows that the separation between her and her biological parents did not influence her identity construction, as she felt connected to her Jamaican heritage through her foster carer’s identity. The issue, she argues, was the lack of consideration given to ‘race’ and culture in the adoption sector. When the Children and Families Act of 2014 removed the requirement that adoption agencies should consider a child’s religious persuasion, racial origin, and cultural and linguistic background, it gave less policy legitimacy to supporting multiracial families in the context of adoption (Agu 2022). Policies like this can be harmful as they do not consider the importance of racial kinship in familial dynamics, even when the child is not related to the carer. Despite not being biologically related to their carer, the respondent was grateful that she could de/construct her identity through her mother’s Jamaican culture without having her biological mother physically in her life.

6. Conclusions

In the book New People, author Senna reminds us that the loss of a mixed-race parental figure can mean more than the loss of a loved one, it can also mean the mourning of a sense of identity validation. This paper has explored how mixed-race people with proximity to whiteness in monoracial Britain de/construct their identities to fit and/or challenge binary systems. My findings have highlighted how racially minoritised loved ones symbolised a critical connection to the respondent’s sense of self, which shifted in the face of loss. Having to navigate the normalcy of monoracism in British society, the respondents went through several identity de/construction processes. However, rather than perpetuating harmful ‘tragic mulatto’ (Mok 2019) or ‘celebratory’ narratives (Brennan 1993; Ifekwunigwe 2004), the stories showed that in the face of a monoracial society, mixed-race people constantly de/construct their identities in the face of loss and separation that challenge and/or perpetuate monoracial norms.

Therefore, when you have the existence of white ‘passing’ cultures where mixed-race people with proximity to whiteness have access to certain resources that those further from whiteness cannot (Guy 2018; Mahanti 2014; Waring 2023), debates become even more complex to know the consequences of claiming a ‘race’ identity. These discussions are particularly prevalent now as Britain is potentially heading towards detrimental mental health impacts and discrimination caused by the downsizing of mixed-race identities to fit monoracial binaries (Campion 2019; Oh et al. 2024).

Resultantly, mixed-race scholars have articulated the importance of self-identification as an act of resistance against binary identity systems (Bettez 2010; Daniel 2002; Garrett 2025; Root 1996; Zack 2010). However, like the ‘critical’ in CMRS (Daniel et al. 2014), we must be critical of what it means to be mixed-race and self-identify with a racialised identity within colonial contexts (Aspinall 2009; Jenkins 2000; Song 2021). What mixed-race scholars can agree on is that the real issue is the need to challenge monoracial paradigms of ‘race’ that are upholding monoracial whiteness to disrupt oppressive racial categorisation that is preventing agency in self-identity (Gillon and Webber 2023; Harris 2016; Johnston-Guerrero et al. 2020; Wong-Campbell et al. 2024), an agenda my work hopes to serve.

Mixed-race people are not just a subject of scholarly interest to be exploited. We are real people with real interactions with the illogical biologisation of ‘race’ who are being forced to de/construct our identities to fit a wrongful hierarchical system of white monoracial supremacy. At the same conference where I saw Dr Wolfson’s talk that inspired this paper, co-founder of the conference, Professor Wei Ming Dariotis, described the study of mixedness as more than an academic endeavour, but a movement. Mixedness is not new (Campion 2022; Daniel et al. 2014; Mahanti 2014), and we must continue to build upon the collaborative efforts between scholars, creatives, artists, storytellers, and activists alike. Therefore, spaces like Mixedracefaces outside of academia are essential archives of knowledge to understand the lived experiences of mixed-race British populations without exploiting them to further a monoracial agenda. Like them, I intentionally provide a safe space for the millions of mixed people looking for connection through this experience. Therefore, in

Table 3. Quotes of solidarity taken from Mixedracefaces stories.

Quotes of Solidarity
“I think that things have started to change but I feel like it’s just the beginning, there are still a lot of narrow-minded people out there who just don’t accept others who are slightly different. The realisation that actual being mixed is a beautiful thing to quote Jassa Ahluwalia ’We’re both, not half’. ‘We are more, not less’”.
“I believe it is so important for mixed-race people to see other mixed-race people marketed as the mixes they are and not being trapped in one box. This would enable people to also feel they do not have to ’pick a side’ and it is okay to identify as ’mixed-race’.”
“I have found such kinship with mixed friends and like to think we form a community of our own.”
“I would like us to be seen as a unique voice on diversity issues, and not lumped into one category, I would like to see the voices of mixed-race people help to expand people’s awareness of culture and life!”
“Not a lot of people can do that. Not a lot of people can call two different distinct places or foods or cultures or whatever, home. It’ is a massive blessing.”
“I think that it’s pretty damn cool to be made up of different cultures, so I embrace it and am proud of it.”
“People of mixed-race are uniquely positioned to bring groups which—in many cases—remain segregated together. We neither belong wholly to one group or another, nor are we dismissed. We are less scary because we are familiar despite our difference. That gives us a power if we can learn to use it for”
“Being mixed-race allows meeting other individuals who are mixed-race is one of the biggest positives”
I think that when you aren’t necessarily the same race as the rest of your family it helps you to view differences in race as something to celebrate rather than to be used to separate, which is something that I think is really beautiful.”
“I believe it is so important for mixed-race people to see other mixed-race people marketed as the mixes they are and not being trapped in one box. This would enable people to also feel they do not have to ’pick a side’ and it is okay to identify as ’mixed-race’.”
“I realized that I didn’t need to fit into a tick box anymore; being part of two different cultures and now being married into many more is such a blessing in itself!”

, I have collated several counter stories from Mixedracefaces to offer a sense of home to any mixed-race readers seeking solidarity.

By examining mixed-race processes of identity construction, we expose the current state of racial politics in Britain, which is currently suffering from a real and growing far-right threat (Zambelli 2020; Lowles and Mulhall 2025). We can see critical counter stories to challenge monoracial power structures and histories of generations, struggles, resistance, love, and refusal, and dismantle binary, hierarchical systems of ‘race’.