folio

While I laughed last week at the amusing enquiries into my ethnicity, I have been reminded of the more serious side of the assumptions people make.

A dear Puerto Rican friend who has lived in the UK for the past twenty years with her English husband has recently decided to move back to the States due to the increasing racism she has faced in the job market over the past few years. One of her managers told her, ‘Go back home, Paki.’

Some people don’t even bother to ask, ‘Where you from?‘ before they jump to a conclusion and tell the person to go back there anyway. Case in point: the Hindu family who were victim of an apparently anti-Muslim attack last week, during which a mother had a pig’s trotter thrown in her face.

An elderly Armenian friend of ours was also the victim of an anti-Muslim assault on a London bus a few years ago. Her attacker showered her in hate-filled words about Muslims being the source of all the problems in the world as she repeatedly punched her in the head. Yet that friend of ours is an Armenian Christian, who fled persecution in Iran.

And then there was the circle for Muslim converts I attended several years ago during which a Sikh convert was made to feel decidedly unwelcome by some white sisters who made a point of insisting that this was an event for converts only. Our brothers and sisters of Hindu and Sikh origin¹ are too easily cast aside.²

So it’s really quite easy for me to laugh off my Palestinian-Bosnian roots when it has no real impact on the way I live my life. Were it to become an obstacle, however, I have a feeling I might not be quite so jolly.

Anyhow, a funny thing happened today. As I sat eating my lunch at work, which included some lovely North African cakes from a friend, my Director began probing my roots. Did I have Moorish ancestry, he asked, Spanish blood or a connection with the Middle East?

As you can imagine, I laughed just a little more, and thought to myself: if only he knew!