#nachgefragt with Saphira Wing, Actress

We asked (#nachgefragt) Saphira Wing, actress:

Which stories and cultures of remembrance have been passed down in your family?

What experiences have you had in Austria as a Black and Jewish person?

What experiences have you had in Black communities outside Austria?

Can experiences of exclusion be compared?

What can each individual person do to challenge racism and antisemitism?

Drawing on her personal history as the child of a Jewish mother from England and a Muslim father from Ghana, Saphira Wing shares insights into her experiences with racism, antisemitism, and diversity in Vienna, London, and the United States. Her family history brings together different cultures of remembrance relating to National Socialism and colonialism. Her stories invite reflection and discussion on the process of remembering within the context of a complex, globalized understanding of history.

Saphira Wing was born in 2003 and grew up in Vienna with an English Jewish mother and a father from Ghana. At the age of seven, she became the youngest member of the Vienna Children’s Choir and had the opportunity to perform alongside Robbie Williams and Zucchero Fornaciari. Saphira Wing attended the music program at BRG Boerhaavegasse and is currently studying acting in London.

One of the things that we all need to do is firstly kind of check what things we’re disadvantaged in and what things we have privileges in, and then also really understand every space that we go into, whether that's a physical space or a cultural space to understand what our position is in that space and give the people whose voices maybe aren't heard as much a voice to speak.

Well, my name is Saphira Wing, and I grew up in Vienna with a Jewish mum and a Ghanian dad, and I went to music school in Vienna, and then I moved to America for a little bit. And then to the UK where I'm studying acting at the moment.

What stories and cultures of remembrance were passed on in your family?

Given like the trauma of the Holocaust that we had in the family, I think there's like almost a generation of people that kind of skip the storytelling, which would be the generation of my grandmother. I think it got a little bit lost when my great grandmother had to flee to the UK. She kind of, I think, stopped talking a lot about her culture and her history to her own children. So my grandmother never learned to speak German, but then my mother moved to Austria when she was 20 to find out more about our family history. She kind of picked back up the stories and the missing pieces of our family.

And with my dad, he's from Ghana and he's a Muslim. From him I also have a lot of different stories that are also very dissected because he's someone that always tends to look into the future or stay in the present. From what I'm aware, his journey was almost that resembling of a refugee, so he had to walk many, many journeys and go through quite horrible experiences to get into this country. And then also his experience as a black man in Austria.

What experiences have you had in Austria with being Black and Jewish?

To me, my blackness was always like very visible and it's a visible part of my identity, whereas being Jewish is more something that I always knew and was made very aware to me by my mum and the fact that she wanted to remember the fact that we're Jewish and because she felt that that got a little bit lost in her childhood. But I think for me I always felt the influences of my Jewish heritage kind of in the cobwebs of our family and kind of embedded in how we carry ourselves, our story, how we've ended up, where we've ended up.

And then in terms of being black on my mom's side of the family, I'm like, me and my sister are the first black members of that family and the black women of that family. So that added a whole new layer of identity. And I think in Austria, growing up black was a very like niche experience. The community of black people in Austria at the time when I was young wasn't very big. So I experienced actually a lot of like xenophobia as well as racism kind of hand in hand. Whereas now I feel like the racism that I experience is much more based on the colour of my skin rather than kind of the level of my German or where my parents are from.

What experiences have you had in Black Communities outside of Austria?

When I first moved to America, firstly there was a much larger community of black people. I think that was the first moment that I realised that, you know, being black is so versatile and that there's so many communities that you may share experiences with and that experiences that may be completely different to your own. And then when I moved to the UK, I think, it was really refreshing to me to have a larger community of black people around me. And also, this understanding of that there's it is a thing to be European and black. So for example, my dad is, you know, an African black man, whereas I'm a Western black woman. And I think I always struggled to really kind of sit in the fact that firstly that I'm biracial and that there's like two sides to my identity, I guess, but also what it means for me to be like a European black person. 

Can experiences of exclusion be compared?

I think as someone who has such a rich identity with so many labels and titles and different things like being a black Jewish woman having grown up with a muslim dad as well, and that being a clash, I think many conversations even that I've had with my own mum, where it's about trying to compare issues, but also keeping them separate is really complicated and complex sometimes because I think all social issues weave into each other in some ways but also need to be looked at in their own respect 

What can each individual do to counter racism and anti-Semitism?

One of the things that we all need to do is firstly kind of check what things we’re disadvantaged in and what things we have privileges in, and then also really understand every space that we go into, whether that's a physical space or a cultural space to understand what our position is in that space and give the people whose voices maybe aren't heard as much a voice to speak. And I think that's so much easier said than done. But I think small things that we can do is to educate ourselves individually and privately.

In the things where I felt, my voice wasn't heard, I think you either take a step back and you feel like you can't speak, or you have to be really almost forceful to have your voice be heard. So it's so refreshing when you have people around you that are generous with the space that they give you and their platform to speak.