Before you read this, ask yourself if you’ve ever felt that you had to really be aware of how people looked at you. I don’t mean by combing your hair or ironing your clothes, but how people might perceive you based on something that obviously stands out – like skin colour or religious attire.
If the answer is yes, then I’m just preaching to the choir. If the answer is no, then consider the rest of this blog.
It would be wrong of me if I didn’t clarify my personal position. I have benefited a lot from privilege. I grew up in Toronto and went to pretty diverse schools. I never really felt that out of place, and none of my teachers ever made me feel like less. I speak without a foreign accent, and have benefitted from the way I dress, act, and with the career I’ve had in media. I was able to hide behind the letters “CTV” before people had any second thought to me as a person, which worked in my favour. I’ve never personally had any negative encounters with the police or random incidents of violence.
So why am I talking about the difficulty of being a minority? Clearly I just explained I don’t face many issues, right?
Well, there is work that goes into it. I’m not unaware of the things that make me visibly different from my peers. Growing up, I always felt, in the back of my mind, that I represent my race and religion, even though I don’t want to. Why would I? That’s just the burden that falls on you as a minority.
I mostly choose to stay quiet about myself a lot of the time. I don’t tell people I’m Muslim. I always distinguish that I’m from Toronto originally, and that my parents are from East Africa. I’ve always tried to make sure my hair is cut regularly and in some sort of order, my face is relatively clean shaven, and that my personal style isn’t loud in an upsetting way. Ironically, even when I was a member of the media, and being in the public spotlight, I’ve tried blending in and keeping a low profile. I do what I can to not draw attention to those details about myself, so that when people see me, they don’t see me as different.
I can understand if it seems like I’m actively trying to distance myself from other minorities and the stereotypes about them. But I’m not. I’m trying to exemplify through my actions that people who look like me are no different from you. We’re also just people. Furthermore, people within minorities are not monolithic. I always hope all my interactions leaves people with a positive experience, and something to think about with the next person they interact with.
It’s makes me so angry when I see people who look like me brought up in the news for acting out otherwise. Here I am, working to counter a narrative, and they do something thing to mess it all up. It sets all of us back so much.
So when I hear a Canadian Muslim family in London, ON, were targeted by a 20 year-old, and four of five of them are dead, I’m heartbroken. I’m devastated. I’m tired. I’m just so sad.
This family went out for a walk as a family, the same as many of us do, and became victims because their faith, something privately practiced and absolutely no one else’s business, somehow painted a target on their back.
If this was the other way around, and the suspect was identified by their faith as a Muslim person who harmed a family that wasn’t, I would have to then write about how this is sad, not representative of Islam, and that the person responsible is a horrible human being who deserves no sympathy.
I ask again, have you felt you had to really be aware of how people looked at you? Are you working to counter negative portrayals of you? For the things which paints you, and everyone else who looks like you, in a certain light?
Because that’s the representative role minorities don’t have the luxury of detaching themselves from. Privileged or not.
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