English/Polish | Irish/Guyanese
My Mum has a European background (English & Polish), whilst my Dad’s parents are from Ireland and Guyana. I think at Catholic School I was forced to become aware of my background because of being the ‘other’. The way people referred to me, and the questions I was asked were often racially stimulated. I see some of those people on social media nowadays and can’t help wondering if they know how uncomfortable they made me. I’ll never forget one of the boys telling me I couldn’t call myself mixed-race because I wasn’t dark enough. The awareness of how light my skin is has always weighed heavy in my mind when describing myself as a BAME person, because it comes with a lot of privileges, and I think comments like that are where those feelings of not belonging and unworthiness began.
I think a challenge most mixed people experience is how unaware our world is of what a mixed person can be. Because it’s not so Black-and-White, because there are so many mixes, I think for people who don’t often think about race the spectrum is too big of a concept to grasp. And this confusion isn’t just reserved for single-heritage households
Also, my career path is very much at the forefront of diversity debates right now. Training as an actor, I know how much of a safe bubble I’ve been in for the past 3 years. I know from other mixed actors how much judgement and prejudice is about to come my way. When I was younger, going to weekly acting classes back in Nottingham, I was told so often that I was ‘just so unusual. I don’t know what roles to put you up for!’. It’s taken me a while to realise that those comments were mostly racially stimulated. A lot of agents and Casting Directors are still uncomfortable and uneducated in the mixed-race lexicon, and fair enough. But I think just by being present in the acting World, and keeping my voice present in the race discussion, I’ll be able to instil change. If I had the opportunity to be reborn I would want to return exactly the same. But maybe with a better recorded family tree, because it’s hard to trace a family that spans 4 continents!
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