Why are so many well-known Black British actresses biracial?

[baileydash]

Sophie Okonedo, Thandie Newton, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Carmen Ejogo are probably the best known and most bankable on this side of the Atlantic and they are all biracial.

I can think of only Naomie Harris and Marianne John-Baptiste as steady working actresses who are"just" black.

I ask because British society is frequently presented as being less racially hung-up than American society, yet I sometimes fear that there is a caste system within the the Black British acting community that subtley implies that any woman who isn't mixed race need apply.


The same thing seems to be true for female black British pop stars.

Discuss.

[Neurochick]

Interesting observation. Are there more interracial marriages in the UK than the USA? If so maybe that's the reason?

[chonies]

I also find it interesting that many of these actors are first or second-generation African immigrants. I'm grasping vaguely, but I wonder if this is similar to the way that so many black actors in Hollywood in the 1960s were from the Caribbean, and not from the US.

I'm interested in this topic, and I wonder if it has a better chance in the General Pop Culture thread--there are a few threads about race and ethnicity there.

[baileydash]

I don't know if interracial marriage is more common in the UK but I do know it must be pretty common for higly educated and/or affluent blacks.

I remember reading an article about mixed couples in the UK. One of the black women who was interviewed for the article worked for a high-powered London law firm. It was so common to find affluent blacks married to non-blacks in London, that people were actually shocked when this woman brought her black husband to an office X-mas party. Everyone had assumed she was married to a white man.

She says the occurance of mixed marriages among affluent blacks is so common that she's sometimes treated as if her choice of a mate is strange. It's like, "Why don't you have a white husband?" Like a white mate is some kind of prize she's earned by being successful. She says other very affluent black people who happen to have black mates have expressed the same feelings.

Would anyone wonder why a white person is married to another white person?

[americanchai]

Dec 19, 2014 10:00:33 GMT -4 Neurochick said:

Interesting observation. Are there more interracial marriages in the UK than the USA? If so maybe that's the reason?

I found this article but "mixed marriage" also means non-native-born people so not just interracial. My short answer would be "empire". There are a lot of Africans and Afro-Caribbean (sp?) people who can travel to England easily due to colonial ties. As far as relationships, we need some Brits to chime in!

From my own personal experience as an Asian-American, all of my cousins on the East Coast have married white people and all of my cousins on the West Coast have married other Asians. My cousins and I are all third-generation Chinese (we all have 100% Chinese parents). Could I explain this? No idea....

[Mugsy]

Could it be partly because there are more Asians on the West Coast? (That's certainly true in Canada) Thus, more "selection", for lack of a better word.

[baileydash]

I know one thing for sure. Many folks in the African American community would be highly pissed off if most of the African American movie stars were biracial.

That can of course be seen as ridiculous racial hypersensitivity OR as acknowledgement of a history in this country of an acceptable, "watered down" form of blackness that is supposedly more acceptable to the masses.

[Mugsy]

I remember reading somewhere that "they" predicted that by such-and-such a year, maybe 2500, most of the world's population would be the same mid-race caramel colour due to interracial mixing. (I don't want to say breeding, ugh) Sort of an entire world populated by people the colour of J.Lo or Halle Berry. This also was part of the thought process that natural redheads and blonds would become extinct.

So we're on the cusp of a new normal.

[gremlin45]

According to the 2011 UK census (BBC website), only 3.3% of the population is black. I should think that the vast majority of potential marriage/relationship partners black people meet will be white as white people make up 86% of the population. So, no, it's no surprise to me that there are so many mixed race relationships.

I'm British, btw.

[mementomori]

I have noticed this phenomenon and was quite curious about it as well. I also feel that the biracial Brit actresses (you can add Antonia Thomas and Ashley Madekwe into the mix a well) are perceived ( by film makers)as more suitable romantic interest for white men then other black British actresses. Conversely I feel we see far more David Oyelewo, Idris Elba, Lennie James in lead roles than someone like Alfred Enoch? Why is that? Why do "the rules" seem different for actors than actresses?