My name is Nimmy March and I am a mixed raced, transracially adopted person.
That means that I am mixed race, half black south African and half English and I’m adopted into a white family. Now my adoption is an unusual one it is true because my mum and dad are now a duke and duchess and I was brought up a member of the British aristocracy. I’d like to say that despite and not because of that fact, I see my adoption as having been very successful because I’m a happy, strong self assured person who has become so because of the way my parents encouraged me to be just me. Now they didn’t have the advantage of knowing about my racial background but they wanted to know me as a person. They did teach me about Africa and African things. They encouraged me to be me and not to identify myself by the house I lived in, or the car my parents drove or by what other people would think of me, because I’m Nimmy. Consequently, I feel fortunate to be so comfortable regardless of what situation I am in.

My family consists of my mum and my dad and an older brother and sister who are my parents own children. Then there is another adopted sister and then me, we are both mixed race and then my parents had a fifth child who is again their blood child.

It was never really an issue as children at all, we are different colours. Yes there were difficulties at school and my parents were just really good at supporting me and encouraging me through those difficulties just as they would for their blood children who had other difficulties in their lives. People often wonder if it is possible for them to love and feel close to a child who doesn’t smell like them, who isn’t their blood child. My mum would say that it is absolutely possible. The weird thing is that she and I have a very psychic relationship. I guarantee that if I’m thinking of phoning mum, the phone will ring and she’ll have got their first and say ’hi nimmy I knew it was going to be you’. She’s not my blood mum ,

Of course as an adoptee in any family but particularly in a transracial adoption the important thing for any child is to have a sense of belonging in a family. That comes with the love and acceptance that you experience with the family you are adopted into. I was very fortunate because there was an abundance of love and never anything other than acceptance of who and how I was. I am very different the way that I behave; I have different cultural rhythms pulsing through my veins. My parents were always very keen to support me in my exploration of those cultural rhythms, going to find out about more about my cultural background, about how my family might have been like, we didn’t know for sure where in south Africa my family was from, but my parents were keen to help me encourage and support me in discovering more about myself. That was an important part of me then being able to embrace my differences and see them as being golden rather than being a thing that separated me from anybody. I know for sure that my brother and sisters would say that it was a benefit from having mixed raced children in what would otherwise have been a white family because they have a completely different cultural view as a result of the experience.

As a mixed race transracially adopted person I obviously have strong views and feelings about adoption and the placement of black and Asian children. I really recognise that there seems to be a stigma in the black and Asian communities, for some people not for all, around adoption because of what it says about fertility or non-fertility.  I think it is important for the wellbeing of future generations of black and Asian children who are unfortunate enough not be brought up by their birth parents. We should do the best we can to dispel and dissolve any stigma there is around adoption for black and Asian families. We are living in a society where race and cultural issues are more and more pertinent and prevalent and perhaps there is a greater need for a clear and more defined sense of cultural identity for young people generally for them to have a sense of belonging, which is always a challenge for people who are adopted regardless of if they are adopted into a same race family or not. I feel from experience and from observing others, that in order to come to understand ourselves as people from diverse cultural backgrounds it is necessary perhaps for us to be taught about our cultural backgrounds by people who know about them from firsthand, so from a black or asian parent or from a black or Asian child. Having been taught it may be that we choose to reject all that it is, but at least our lives are enriched by the knowledge of it and the understanding of it. We may just well choose to embrace culture where we stand. But there is definitely a value in experiencing and hearing our diverse cultures from someone  who knows what they are talking about.

Our race, our cultural heritage, our identity, our racial needs, all of these things are no doubt things that a white family adopting a mixed race or black child would want to embrace, encourage and support, but with the best will in the world they don’t have they don’t have the experience of it. It may sound strange coming from somebody who was adopted by a white family that did the most extraordinary job of helping me to identify me as myself but the world wasn’t in such racial and cultural turmoil when I was adopted as it is now. It seems to me that it has become more and more important for young people to be aware of their cultural and racial background and know where they stand with regard to it. Of course hopefully there will be transracial adoptions also they come with their own complications and complexities and their own challenges and the important thing is that people have open minds and hearts in addressing them.  Above all the most important thing with the placement of any child has to be that the best interest of the child, in terms of its long term experience is what is in the center of any decision that is made. It may well be that in some cases it is better for a mixed race, Asian or black child to go to a white family who have for some reason some connection with that culture.

For me as an adoptee one of the important things was that any differences that there was between me and my siblings, were celebrated. And that the differences were acknowledged. It was acknowledged that I was different. There wasn’t a sense of ‘Oh, you’re the same as the others’ because it was the difference that made me.

It is important for these children who are being adopted to feel truly valued for the person that they are and not actually despite of their cultural background and racial differences but because of them. In that being valued they begin to value it themselves and then when they are going through the hard times of puberty and adolescence they will be able to develop a much stronger sense of identity and self and not go off the rails. I really see there are so many opportunities for children across the board, regardless of whether they are brought up by birth families or adopted families, to go off the rails because of the way the world has changed. Anything we can do to encourage children, especially adoptees and children who are being fostered, to have a sense of self, has to be foremost in our minds.

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