Rusty Penny
https://www.instagram.com/rustypenny_/
A collaboration called “Spaces” a short documentary campaign visually exploring how definitive experiences in our lives allow us to find access to a wider mixed-race community. The series focuses on the different environments mixed-race people exist within and how through these differences, we can still obtain a strong sense of community.
Jamaican | British
Growing up a mixed-race boy in London was a mental battle I fear many people still experience to this day. Constantly trying to decipher where I fit in, who it’s ok to hang out with, what box to tick on an application form. Having a mixed-race family yet one Jamaican heritage left me with more questions than there were answers for. My peers debated whether I was ‘Black’ enough, whilst my White Grandmother spoke in fluent Patois most of them probably couldn’t understand. My search for acceptance left me lonely, angry and self conscious, making me follow the herd in order to feel like I was a part of something. However, I realised it wasn’t my race that was the issue, but the culture built around it in western society.
I was in touch with my Black side more so as a child, it felt normal to pick a side and stick with it. You could see with other mixed people too, it’s either you’re aligned with one side or the other and that’s how you were seen. I feel like the fear of not fitting in led people to make decisions in order to appease others expectations of what they should be as opposed to what they were. For me, it never felt like I was neglecting a part of me because my mixed heritage originates from the same background, but the visual differences did not go unnoticed.
My words of wisdom for the next generation of mixed-race people would be this: There are a variety of mixed-race experiences, it’s ok to be different and that being vulnerable and open can heal emotional wounds we don’t realise are being placed on us by a system that was built to put us against each other. To stop the self hate, the suffering, we have to love one another otherwise the cycle will continue. But, we cannot do that without loving ourselves first. So my advice is you’ll never fully know yourself and you shouldn’t want to, because we are constantly changing and that’s ok. So love yourself. Unconditionally. Even if you don’t quite know who that is yet.