WEBVTT

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

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That's right.

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I thought I was absolutely amazing
because I could understand

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

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a conservative Muslim guy.

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

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not so religious but
laid-back, fairly liberal.

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

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

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I loved them all. I understood them all,

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even if they didn't always
understand each other,

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they were all my people.

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My father, though,
was always really worried.

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He kept saying that
even with the best education,

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I was not going to get a fair shake.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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and he threw them all away.

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

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

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

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and bizarrely, I became almost
a kind of poster child

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for Norwegian multi-culturalism.

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I felt very proud, of course.

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

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so I could feel that
my superpower was growing.

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

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I took a little detour
because I wanted to buy

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my favorite sweets called Salty Feets.

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

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

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

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

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

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in the doorway blocking my way.

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

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

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

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