English | Jamaican
My dad was born in Kingston, Jamaica. My mum was born in a village in Cambridgeshire. My dad was a fireman in the Royal Air Force and was stationed nearby. I grew up in various places in the UK as our family moved from one RAF camp to another. When I was too young to remember, we were stationed in Changi, Singapore. My mum says I was treated like a princess by the locals who were fascinated by my tight curly, sun-bleached, blonde hair. Eventually, my parents decided to send me and my siblings to Boarding school. My friends came from all corners of the globe and at last I was not the only ‘Brown’ girl. It was my first experience of multiculturalism and I found it liberating. My best friend was mixed-race though I wouldn’t have labelled her that. She is half-Dutch, half-Japanese and lived in Bangkok. I would spend some holidays in Thailand and She would stay with my family in Norfolk. There is still bias and prejudice towards mixed-race people. As long as the human race exits there will always be prejudice towards minorities. I don’t feel defined or confined by race. I like to think of myself as a free spirit hovering around the edges and getting a taste of the best of all cultures. And I definitely feel it has made me hyper sensitive to anything I perceive as being unfair. I fight for the underdog, tackle injustice and get easily enraged by prejudice. If I were to be born again, how would I want to return? I would like to be exactly as I am but with more confidence. This has nothing to do with my ethnicity. It’s just me. Mixed-race IS the future. Diversity is changing communities for the better. Interestingly, being part of this project has sparked a lot of conversation in my family. I encountered minimal prejudice growing up and for that I am grateful. I believe what this project will show is that, yes, we (mixed-race people) are a unique group, belong to our own ‘tribe’, but as people we are just so different. We must all fight prejudice. Injustice. Inequality. We must strive to live peaceably in this world where everyone must accept and embrace everyone for who they are not what they look like.
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