'Is He Adopted?'
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IS HE ADOPTED
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Perspectives
Words By: Luc Hinson
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I was 14 years old at the time, a normal parents evening at school. Rushing from one teacher to another, hearing them reel off the same rehearsed spiel. Could be working harder, could concentrate more, holding himself back. As always, I attended parents evening with my father. My white, British father. Grey hair, glasses, my dad. What I didn’t know at the time was that this would be one of the first times in my life I became actively conscious of my identity. I noticed several heads turn and stare, at the time I thought nothing of it, I was with my Dad attending yet another painful parent evening.
It wasn’t until the next day in school where one of my closest friends told me his mother had asked if I was adopted that I started to think. Initially I just laughed it off, I didn’t pay it any attention and got on with my 14-year-old boring-ass day. But as the day went on my mind couldn’t help but wander. It bothered me, I didn’t know why, I couldn’t explain why exactly It did but it’s had a lasting effect on me. I knew my dad was my dad, but it made me think do I not look like his son. As a 14-year-old you don’t really define yourself as anything other than your parent’s child yet, in that one moment I felt like that one shred of identity I had a grasp on had disappeared overnight.
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This has touched my daily life to this very day, aged 22 I always second guess how I look when I’m out with my father. Jokes have been exchanged between the two of us if I look like his young boyfriend. The point remains the same, my identity, well my concept of identity changed that day. This is what we want to achieve through Between Borders, we want to open dialogues about identity. How do we define ourselves today? I would still describe myself as British. Just I have no real idea of what that means.
The rhetoric of the far right has always seemed to centre around the fear of otherness. And an imposition upon our values, our country, our beliefs, our very way of life that this otherness brings. The ‘Other’ is constructed as diametrically opposed to these ideas of Britishness. But what do these ideas actually mean? Over the next few articles, I will be attempting to examine and deconstruct each of these different slogans. Reading into them, and attempting to see if they have any concrete meaning, or if they are just empty signifiers waved around to stir rhetoric.
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“YOUR IDENTITY IS EXPLICITLY AND EXCLUSIVELY YOURS. NOW GO RECLAIM IT.”
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And that is my point, if they are just empty signifiers with no concrete meaning, then they are essentially contested concepts. And if so, why can’t we reclaim them, and ascribe our own meaning to them. Between Borders wants to provide a foothold of modern British identity, not only to understand it, but to celebrate it, celebrate what makes us well us. Not an us defined by the ruling political class, or whichever fascist group shouts the loudest. We deserve an Identity that describes us, one that is described BY us.
So, think of the 14-year-old me, feeling like he wasn’t his father’s son. I could have just as easily been told I didn’t look British. Don’t let anyone else tell you who you do or don’t belong to, who you ARE. Your identity is explicitly and exclusively yours. Now go reclaim it.
Peace
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