Guyanese | Gibraltarian
In collaboration with Loughborough University
I was born and grew up in Gibraltar so I have a much closer understanding of that side, however, I'm very visibly Brown so was never truly accepted by many as authentically Gibraltarian. I found balance by having many conversations with my Mum about this, especially as she experiences being othered too. In my adulthood I began to educate myself more about my Indo-Caribbean heritage. Growing up somewhere predominantly White, my understanding of my own identity was negatively shaped by comments and ignorance of others. This changed dramatically when I moved to London as an adult and began to embrace and understand my identity a lot more. It's only really in my late 20s that I had a much stronger sense of identity.
A lot of my childhood felt like this. Being able to talk to other mixed-race and Brown people (mostly my Mum) helped, as did seeing representation of Black and Brown people in the media around me. When I feel any isolation now I have close friends who are people of colour that I can have conversations with.
One of the biggest challenges was understanding what my identity is. I was racialised as Black by children growing up, and even today people find me racially ambiguous and make assumptions. It's made me confused about myself, and sometimes it's made me feel unsafe. Once in middle school I came back to class after lunch where there was a lunchtime club and someone wrote the words ‘Black girl’ on my bag. It frightened me because I suddenly felt like an isolated target. I was 11 so instead of telling anyone I just crossed it off and kept it to myself, never sharing that until I was an adult.
Only a few people I meet understand my heritage, and there haven’t been many on my campus. I'm inspired by mixed- race researchers, especially my friend who is vocal about representation of the mixed-race experience. That's about it though, and as I'm racially ambiguous I found I had to explain the context of my background to my supervisors during an early meeting as my work focuses on racial identity.
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