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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