When I was a child,
I knew I had superpowers.

That's right.

I thought I was absolutely amazing
because I could understand

and relate to the feelings
of brown people, like my grandfather,

a conservative Muslim guy.

And also, I could understand
my Afghan mother, my Pakistani father,

not so religious but
laid-back, fairly liberal.

And of course, I could understand
and relate to the feelings of white people.

The white Norwegians of my country.
You know, white, brown, whatever,

I loved them all. I understood them all,

even if they didn't always
understand each other,

they were all my people.

My father, though,
was always really worried.

He kept saying that
even with the best education,

I was not going to get a fair shake.

I would still face discrimination,
according to him, and that they only way

to be accepted by white people
would be to become famous.

Now mind you, he had this conversation
with me when I was seven-years-old.

So while I'm seven-years-old,
he said, look,

so its either got to be sports,
or its got to be music.

He didn't know anything about sports --
bless him -- so it was music.

So when I was seven-years-old,
he gathered all my toys, all my dolls,

and he threw them all away.

In exchange, he gave me a crappy little
Casio keyboard and singing lessons.

He forced me, basically, to practice
for hours and hours every single day.

Very quickly, he also had me performing
for larger and larger audiences,

and bizarrely, I became almost
a kind of poster child

for Norwegian multi-culturalism.

I felt very proud, of course.

Even the newspapers were starting
to write nice things about brown people,

so I could feel that
my superpower was growing.

So when I was 12-years-old,
walking home from school,

I took a little detour
because I wanted to buy

my favorite sweets called Salty Feets.

I know they sound kind of awful,
but I absolutely love them.

They're basically these little salty
licorice bits in the shape of feet.

And now that I say it out loud,
I realize how terrible that sounds,

but be that as it may,
I absolutely love them.

So on my way into the store,
there was this grown white guy

in the doorway blocking my way.

So I tried to walk around him,
and as I did that, he stopped me

and he was staring at me,
and he spit in my face,

and he said, get out of my way
you little black bitch,

you little Paki bitch,
go back home where you came from.