Community reflects on living in a 21st Century Britain

The UK celebrated its first Black History Month in 1987 and it is now celebrated every October.

Natasha Mulenga, 33, is an entertainment news producer and author from Witham who has written for a wide range of magazines including Teen Vogue and British Vogue.

She said black women like best-selling author Elaine Welteroth inspired her while growing up.

Welteroth was only 29 when she became the first black editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue in 2017, making it more of a political and diverse publication.

Miss Mulenga said diverse representation is really important because while growing up she remembers walking into a supermarket and not seeing anyone who looked like her being photographed in magazines.

She said: “Being a kid walking through the magazine section of any shopping centre, you’d look at magazine and don’t see anyone who looks like you. But you know you exist, you know that there’s people like you that exist.

“But when you walk past, you would see all these beautiful women that are meant to represent what the ultimate beauty is supposed to look like and none of them look like you.”

She said Edward Enninful, becoming the first black man to become the editor-in-chief of British Vogue, paved the way for “even more change.”

Enninful made headlines when he put Adwoa Aboah, a mixed heritage model and activist, on his first front cover and said: “Things are about to look very different.”

Miss Mulenga added: “Now seeing someone who looks like you, is not a fly-by thing, It’s like, OK, this is the norm. But I don’t think people understand how much media representation is so important because it informs the way that people think of you?”

Takondwa Maosa, 22, is the founder of a clothing brand and lives in Southend-on-Sea. He credits the opportunities he has been given in life to the sacrifices his grandparents and parents made in their lives.

He said: “My parents had to fight for it back then, for me to have all these opportunities right now.

“If they didn’t fight for us, I wouldn’t be able to sit here and have this opportunity and our conversation would probably be very different.”

But Mr Maosa said his mum was confused when she found out he wanted to start a clothing line because to her that career path “just didn’t make sense.”

He said for his parents’ generation starting a clothing brand was an alien concept because they did not have the opportunity.

Preen Chakadonha, 31, is a knowledge manager from Chelmsford and said she is most inspired with her mum, who migrated to England with three young children.

She said: “My mum, is the most amazing woman in the world.

“My parents, when I think of the things that they went through to migrate to a new country and to have this identity of black Britishness.

“It’s beautiful and complicated- but it’s just being able to push through and being able to want better for yourself.”