The hardest thing about being mixed race for me has been navigating society after being raised in a home environment in which my mixed-race identity was entrenched. Let’s get one thing straight: on a personal level, I do not see myself as black or as white – because I am not. I am both. Both my parents are British: my mum is ethnically English, and my dad is ethnically Jamaican. Some may think that this pedantic, but let me elaborate.

At home, it was not only my and my brother’s ethnicity that was mixed, but it was also our environment. I grew up listening to ABBA one moment, and then Jamaican dancehall the next. Some Sundays my family and I would tuck into a carvery at the local pub, and other Sundays would consist of huge family get-togethers, with everyone eagerly awaiting my aunts emerging carrying pots of curry goat and trays of jerk chicken. The cultural exchange that I remember from my childhood was huge, and the language we spoke at home was a melting-pot of Jamaican and English.

This is not about me not being proud of being black, or being white – but more about being confused at how the world sees me. If I see my mixed heritage as an intrinsic part of my personhood, but seen to be a particular race by the rest of the world, can I be anything else?

The photos of my cousin’s son, with alabaster skin and red hair, sitting on his great-grandfather’s lap, a Jamaican man, were amazing to behold and encapsulated my home environment’s attitude to skin: it is a spectrum. Before I started school, I saw everyone in my family as a spectrum of colour. But outside of the comfort of family, and as I get older, I realise how uncomfortable society makes me by trying to place me into a box that I do not fit into.

On my street at home, there was gossip and confusion about ‘that black girl with the afro living with the blonde woman across the street’ – referring to my mother and me. My identity was inconceivable to them. But I am proud of my identity. My existence is a testament to my parent’s resilience to the racial pejoratives regarding their interracial relationship that they received in the late 80s and 90s in Birmingham. I am continually thankful to my mum for all her strength in putting up with being so mocked and ridiculed for having two children of mixed heritage.

Starting the ‘Mixed Race and Mixed Heritage’ forum on Facebook, in some respects, was a culmination of many moments: my white grandfather and I having an argument about immigration, and him defending why he chose to vote UKIP; my white mother telling me to celebrate my mixed heritage, but my black father reminding me that the world sees me as black.

Then, during the ‘Match4Lara’ campaign, I realised that the mixed-race struggle runs deeper than appearances. Even biologically we can be at a huge disadvantage, as only three per cent of people on the stem cell and bone marrow registry are mixed race.

After that, I realised that a space needed to exist for people like me – for mixed-race and mixed-heritage people who have these unique identities, and unique struggles. A place for people who are frequently met with the classic ‘What are you?’ or ‘You’re a half-breed, haha!’ in a world in which you already feel like you don’t have a space.

In making the ‘Mixed Race and Mixed Heritage’ forum, I hoped to create a space in which people can share their experiences in an environment free from judgement or misunderstanding. It is a space to promote solidarity. Of course, not all mixed-race people are the same. The socially constructed dichotomy of people of colour versus white people is eroded by the existence of mixed-race people.

As time goes on, our erasure will become more and more difficult. Mixed-race people are the fastest-growing minority in the UK. In future years, it’s going to be increasingly difficult to try and put mixed-race people into one category or the other, be it on paper on poorly worded forms asking about ethnicity, or in society more generally. This is about celebrating and understanding the unique identity and life experiences I, and many other people, have as a result of our ethnic background.