The first story is from Clara Searle, a Guyanese and Gibraltarian Loughborough University London student. She discusses her relationship with her mixed identity, highlighting the differences between how she self-identifies versus how others identify her.
The release dates of the stories are as follows:
- 7 May: Clara - Guyanese and Gibraltarian
- 9 May: Carmen - Japanese and Brazilian
- 14 May: David - English and Egyptian
- 16 May: Tanika - Indian and Jamaican
- 21 May: Naomi - Jamaican and English
- 23 May: Elizabeth - English, Irish, and Guyanese
- 28 May: Rhianna - Chinese and English
All of the stories will be available to view on the Mixedracefaces website as well as on their social media channels.
Mixedracefaces is an organisation that captures portraits and stories of people with mixed heritage. They challenge the definition of the term mixed-race; it’s not so ‘Black and White’. Similar campaigns have been run at the UK Parliament, the University of Oxford and the Institute of Cancer Research.
Understanding the mixed heritage experience
The project aims to progress the commitments of the University’s Race Equality Charter (REC) as it showcases Loughborough’s intersectional identities and facilitates conversations around challenging the homogenisation of minority ethnic groups.
The Mixedracefaces collaboration is one of the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Services funded projects to support the ambitions of the EDI strategy at Loughborough University.
The project has been coordinated by Rhianna Garrett, a mixed heritage Doctoral Researcher investigating the underrepresentation of racialised minority staff in UK higher education.
Her previous work in mixed heritage identities has discussed the complexities of mixed identities and how categorising identities that do not fit neatly into boxes pushes out the nuances of the individual and their lived experience. This can be seen in her paper “I’m not white”: counter-stories from “mixed race” women navigating PhDs.
Rhianna commented: “I am a firm believer that a ‘mixed race’ lens to liminal identities can change the ways we approach equity in higher education. The stories showcase a collective tapestry of mixedness, highlighting the impossibility of confining their identities into a box. Rather than forcing ‘mixed race’ identities to squeeze and potentially erase their identities to fit, the box must be widened, or eradicated. We must move away from this monoracial understanding of things like university census data and how we conduct research, into the multiracial futures UK universities are increasingly moving towards.”
EDI Manager of the University Denise Coles added: “It’s exciting to see Rhianna’s mixed-race project coming to fruition. EDI Services happily funded the project as we recognise mixed race stories deserve greater prominence in our institutional thinking. According to government statistics, 1.7 million people are from mixed race backgrounds. That means there are stories, lived experiences and identities that deserve better recognition and in Rhianna’s project we are hopeful this marks a cultural shift in how mixed-race lives are thought about and embedded into our processes. We wish Rhianna the very best of luck with this project.”