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What we don't know about Europe's Muslim kids

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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.
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    I was absolutely horrified.
    I was staring at him.
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    I was too afraid to wipe
    the spit off my face,
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    even as it was mixing with my tears.
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    I remember looking around,
    hoping that any minute now,
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    a grown-up is going to come
    and make this guy stop.
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    But instead, people kept hurrying past me
    and pretended not to see me.
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    I was very confused
    because I was thinking,
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    well, my white people, come on!
    Where are they? What's going on?
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    How come they're not
    coming and rescuing me?
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    So, needless to say,
    I didn't buy the sweets.
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    I just ran home as fast as I could.
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    Things were still okay, though, I thought.
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    As time went on, the more successful
    I became, I eventually started attracting
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    harassment from brown people.
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    Some men in my
Title:
What we don't know about Europe's Muslim kids
Speaker:
Deeyah Khan
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
20:11

English subtitles

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