British | Jamaican
I identify as a mixed-race Black, queer, woman. My Dad was born in St Thomas, Jamaica and moved to England in the 60s to join his parents who moved some years before. My Mum is White British and was born in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. My parents were together for 8 years before they had me.
I’ve projected a lot onto my parent’s relationship, wondering how cultural differences never came up, negatively or positively, and wondering how they didn’t have conversations about things like this, especially knowing they wanted to have children together. Race feels like such a big thing in my life that I can’t imagine being in a relationship and it not being something that was present or spoken about. Both my parents are adamant that they just loved each other, “no issues” and that was that.
My view on interracial relationships is complicated. I believe in following your heart; if you’re right for each other and you’re happy then race shouldn’t come into it. But I do feel frustrated that we rarely get to see positive relationships depicted of Black couples in mainstream media. Especially within LGBT communities in the UK, we rarely see couples of the same ethnicity; interracial relationships are regarded as more palatable or seen as more ‘progressive’. There is a lot of colourism and internalised racism within our communities too. For these reasons, I’m definitely politically pro-Black love.
I hadn’t consciously deeped or properly acknowledged what the impact of not having mixed-race role models in my world has had on me until my reflections for this project. I didn’t have emotionally intimate or more conscious relationships with Black and mixed-race Black people until my late teens and early twenties. It definitely negatively impacted on how I saw myself and my own self love and acceptance. I wish I’d have had more elder mixed-race people around me as a child; people who could have represented possibilities of who we can be, the diversity of how we look and identify ourselves...how to do our hair! Seeking out mixed-race narratives and visibility I’ve found really healing and validating.
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