http://www.mixed2010.be

Thanks to Meticreole[Kahlil] for posting this here.

I met Meticreole through this project, started in Belgium, in preparation for the Summer of 2010 when mixed-race people born of Belgian/Congolese-Rwandese-Burundese parents shall eagerly tell their story from where it started until today.

Congo/Rwanda & Burundi were former Belgian colonies. The first ‘mulatto’ children (+/- 100 years ago) born of a white ‘colon’ father and a black ‘housewife’ mother were considered as “children of evil”; (and) marriages between the two races were prohibited at that time and most of the children, not recognized by the father, were taken away from their mothers and gathered in kinds of boarding schools as the Belgian colonial administration thought that they could not be risen as the black natives (as they had white blood) but they were not ‘white’ enough to be integrated in the white ‘superior’ community.

In Congo, our parents grew up in these boarding schools, held by missionaries, but were able to keep in touch with their mothers; for what concerns Rwanda & Burundi, most of the ‘mulatto’ children were brought to Belgium when the countries claimed their independence (+/- 1960) and grew up like orphans in boarding schools of foster parents. Until today it’s still difficult for those children to have access to the colonial archives to know who decided about their lives. The MIXED:2010 project started with one of those children, fighting to learn more about their story.

I am a child of the post colonial era (born in 1962) - child of a white Belgian father and a mulatto mother (father from Cabo Verde (emigrated from Portugal) and a Congolese mother). I joined the project because I felt the need for myself and a lot of other ‘metis’ to speak and tell who we are today and how the Belgian colonial politics have still influenced our parents' marriages and our lives and integration in both our communities, European or African ones; to tell how we feel as people of mixed heritages and to claim this mixed heritage; to claim our being Belgian with mixed roots; to tell people that it is possible to be able to deal with both our heritages and be ‘whole’ and ‘normal’; to speak about the prejudices still linked to being black nowadays.

There is so much to talk about, but most of all I want to share this with you and know about your stories and experiences and come one day to a worldwide network of ‘mixed-race’ people.

Hope to hear of you soon

PS: Thanks to Meticreole[Kahlil] for his great support and collaboration on the project: informing us, connecting us, creating the facebook group, and much more!

mixed 2010 = a film/documentary ‘colour bar’, books about the ‘Children of the colony” & “Moi, métis” (post colonial mixed-race people’s testimonies), an art exposition, a song made for the event by a Belgian artist, ….

Martine
Communications mixed 2010 vzw