On(e's) Cultural Identity

I have so many different minority statuses that sometimes I feel often it’s not worth going into them just because it takes so much time. I have been reflecting on histories lately. As more and more people of my parents generation are dying, I am reminded of how a period of cultural history from particularly my father’s generation is so easily going to be forgotten. My dad migrated to the UK along with many other African-Indians, they left in the context of Afrocentric cultural and economic oppression. It’s something that isn’t talked about by their generation, and it has made me aware of how many other people in contexts of oppression have chosen to bury parts of their history.

I am starting to find it particularly disconcerting in the sense that there’s even less information and oral history in further generations before my father. However the accepted narrative is essentially subjugation: before the African political climate turned against my dad’s generation, our ethnic community were British subjects, and before then, Portugese, and before then, British again.

With my father’s generation of those African-Indian migrants who moved around Europe and the Americas. They are in their cultural sensibilities and their accents, African. However the exile has also effectively denied their claim as African. A generation or two before my dad, many Indians migrated to African states such as Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania or Malawi. So my paternal grandparents migrated from a Portugese (and former British) colony to a British colony. Culturally speaking I can’t tell whether I’m from a first generation migrant background or second-generation.

This has led me to think about my own cultural identity and what I identify with.