Book Review: Raceless: In Search of Family, Identity, and the Truth About Where I Belong by Georgina Lawton
Raceless: In Search of Family, Identity, and the Truth About Where I Belong by Georgina Lawton
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publication Date: February 23, 2021
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
From The Guardian’s Georgina Lawton, a moving examination of how racial identity is constructed—through the author’s own journey grappling with secrets and stereotypes, having been raised by white parents with no explanation as to why she looked black.
Raised in sleepy English suburbia, Georgina Lawton was no stranger to homogeneity. Her parents were white; her friends were white; there was no reason for her to think she was any different. But over time her brown skin and dark, kinky hair frequently made her a target of prejudice. In Georgina’s insistently color-blind household, with no acknowledgement of her difference or access to black culture, she lacked the coordinates to make sense of who she was.
It was only after her father’s death that Georgina began to unravel the truth about her parentage—and the racial identity that she had been denied. She fled from England and the turmoil of her home-life to live in black communities around the globe—the US, the UK, Nicaragua, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and Morocco—and to explore her identity and what it meant to live in and navigate the world as a black woman. She spoke with psychologists, sociologists, experts in genetic testing, and other individuals whose experiences of racial identity have been fraught or questioned in the hopes of understanding how, exactly, we identify ourselves.
Raceless is an exploration of a fundamental question: what constitutes our sense of self? Drawing on her personal experiences and the stories of others, Lawton grapples with difficult questions about love, shame, grief, and prejudice, and reveals the nuanced and emotional journey of forming one’s identity.
Raceless is Georgina Lawton’s memoir of growing up in England with white parents and being raised as if she were also white, even though she’s clearly not. She’s the result of her mother’s one-night stand with a Black man. When Georgina was born, the midwife, looking at her brown skin, instantly provided a cover story – her dark hair and skin were the result of a “throwback gene” somewhere in her ancestry. Everyone seemed to buy into this story, including Georgina’s mother’s husband. He never even hinted at the fact that Georgina wasn’t his biological daughter while he was alive.
Georgina believed she was white growing up because that’s what her parents told her. However, most of the outside world treated her as if she were Black, leaving her confused. She loved her father too much to ask many questions while he was still alive. After he died, she took a DNA test and had to face the reality that he was not her biological father. In fact, she was almost half Nigerian. Raceless chronicles her journey traveling the world to find her true identity and learn to navigate the world as a Black woman.
I could not stop thinking about this book after I read it. My daughter is Black (my husband and I are white) and I cannot fathom raising her as anything other than a Black child. One of my constant worries is that I’m not doing enough to help her embrace her Blackness and live in the world as a Black woman when she grows up. Georgina’s situation is baffling to me. I feel for her so much. I wish she could have talked to her father before he died but I understand why she didn’t. She didn’t want to taint their relationship in any way. I’m curious if he really bought the throwback gene theory or if he knew he wasn’t her father and decided that keeping the family together and harmonious was more important than confronting his wife about her infidelity.
Georgina has great insight into racial identity. Her book is well-researched but she writes with a conversational tone that made it a pleasure to read. Hers is a real-life example of why colorblindness is detrimental to everyone. Highly recommended.
