‘You’re Basically White’
©Labyrinthave
The older I get the more I reflect on my race, religious beliefs, and identity, so here is an essay on my experience as a British Pakistani woman in an increasingly more right-wing UK - dare I say fascist country- and my experiences with various forms of racism, how I felt about the incidents at the time and how I feel about them now.
Let’s take it right back to the beginning, the first memory I have of experiencing racism and othering, which was somewhere between the ages of 9-11. I had stayed the weekend at my cousin’s, in the southeast area of Manchester. I would say it is a fairly inner city area, a largely Muslim and South Asian suburb. Two of my older cousins took me to their local gym as there was some class on, I would say the oldest was in her 20s and the other probably GCSE age. Both of them wore the hijab and as we were approaching, two young white male teenagers shouted ‘terrorists’ at us and probably some other things, but that is the word I remember the most. I do remember my oldest cousin shouting back, I can’t say what because it was so long ago but I do remember her speaking up for herself.
I, then, went through high school with no experiences of racism or religious prejudice, because I ended up going to a high school and sixth form college, which was majority Muslim, and then Pakistani being the dominant race I remember at the time. This is a fairly privileged position to be in, having access to a school where as an ethnic minority in this country, in the formative years of my schooling I was surrounded by peers that looked like me and grew up in similar households. Yet, at the time I was in school, the teaching staff did not reflect that, of which were majority white. I was taught by one non-white member of staff, who was my IT teacher from years 7-11, we did have a science teacher in the first year but she left, and then another science teacher left at another point in time.
But for the vast majority of my time there, I was taught mainly by white staff and this trickled on into my university days where for a course which was History and American Studies the teaching staff again was overwhelmingly white, and I have never been taught by a black member of staff in my entire education from secondary to masters level. It’s something that I do think about from time to time, even during my master’s which was International Journalism, we had one non-white member of the main teaching staff, not to say there were no others available, but in terms of who delivered the learning that says a lot in itself and discussion worth having in its own right about minority representation in education.
This brings me to the time I was told Manchester was ‘exotic.’ It was in 2019, during the first week of my masters degree. Each module starts with the generic, name, where are you from and what did you study before the masters. This particular class was for home students only and I happened to be the only non-white person in the room. It gets to my turn and of course, I say I am from Manchester [for those that know me, yes I was born in Northampton, but lived the most formative 10 years of my life in Manchester] to be met with the response ‘that’s exotic.’
At that time, I just responded with ‘No it’s not,’ because it isn’t I was at a Liverpool university, Manchester is an hour on the train, and it is far from exotic. I remember the lecturer being a bit taken aback by it and then carrying on with the rounds. I did not think much of it back then, or know really how to deal with it so it just became a memory. Something that still sits with me today and something I won’t forget about that person. Especially when other people in the room, other white classmates, listed other areas of the UK, I, the one woman of colour, as a Pakistani, was met with exotic for saying a major city in the UK.
Taking it back a few years, it wasn’t until I was studying at the undergraduate level and living on my own, out of the parental home that my race was seen as something different. I went from being part of the norm to being the minority again, studying on an overwhelmingly white course, with the only non-white students I remember being mostly women, and that being Asian women, at least in my classes anyway. I also went through a period where I wasn’t a practicing Muslim, in the way that a lot of people celebrate Christmas but don’t go to church vibe, you could say culturally Muslim, and then ended up leaving the faith in 2018.
I remember having conversations about how it would be incredibly difficult to tell my parents I would want to move out after university, and a white housemate could not comprehend the difficulty, and that I could not ‘just do it.’ It was the first time I had to explain my faith and cultural background to other people because the people I grew up with either had that same faith or were surrounded by enough Muslims and South Asians to just know about it. It was also an eye-opening experience for me because it was the first time I met someone who was Pakistani and Christian, which from my experience and most of the Western world’s experience of Pakistanis, being Pakistani has become synonymous with being Muslim, which I learned is not the case and after leaving faith I learned more about Pakistan’s religious and non-religious minorities.
The reason why I bring up how being Muslim and Pakistani is perceived as synonymous is because when I became less religious and practicing, it was as if my Pakistani ethnicity was erased. I never wore the hijab or prayed five times a day, apart from a brief stint in year seven and praying during Ramadan, I don’t wear traditional clothing unless its Eid or a wedding and I am not dark-skinned, so it is easy to become ‘whitewashed’ or for white people to not see my race. As I have been told ‘You’re basically white,’ or ‘I don’t see colour,’ when my race has come up during early adulthood. At the time, I laughed it off. In part, because of not being as politically involved as I began to in my early-mid 20s, feeling lost in my Pakistani identity of having no faith, and that being a concept I was new to even being a possibility and figuring out who I am again. I simply did not have the words for it at the time.
Now, it sits badly with me because those statements are not true, in the most obvious sense but in the way the world perceives people like me, the way the world perceives Pakistanis, Muslims, and brown people. I mean any time there is a terrorist attack that is carried out, all my life, my family and I hope it is not a Muslim because of the hatred we receive in the media, which can translate onto the streets. Then racists on the streets see any brown person in that bracket, we know this from the amount of Sikh men that become targets post-Al Qaeda/ISIS attacks.
It sits badly with me, when I start to feel unsafe and unwelcome in the area I live in. Two instances this has happened, the first was during covid, I was taking a walk with my dad and my sister in our local area and we walked past where the old madrasa [Islamic after-school class] that my sister and I went to as kids for many years, when a group of kids/pre-teens, shouted something about Pakis. The second was last year, walking home from my local Aldi, a literal five-minute walk, and having two white teenage boys shout something at me in a racist South Asian accent, I didn’t hear exactly what because I had my headphones on but I was aware enough to hear the accent and feel uncomfortable. It takes a while to shake that off and even now I feel a bit anxious being out on my own in the dark, but I get on with it because how else am I supposed to live?
It sits badly with me as I see the extreme dehumanisation of Palestinians and Muslims in the media, as the genocide began to unfold. To my local, white, MP not being able to write back to me about the claims the Labour Party can ‘afford to lose the Muslim vote’ or address the vitriol her colleague Zarah Sultana faces as a Pakistani Muslim politician in an interview with Novara Media, which I highly recommend watching to understand the deep Islamophobia that is rampant in British Labour.
It’s having to consider who I will date, will this person be a racist, an Islamophobe, or both? For example, I matched with a guy on Hinge, with few things in common, enough for me to be comfortable meeting for a drink. There were some things that I could only vet in person, which was him being white and previously studying History at Durham, easily a line between leftie or racist. I guess you can tell where this is going…
I was 21 at the time, angry at the injustices in the world that I had become aware of, particularly that of blasphemy laws and various women’s rights movements across the Middle East and South Asia, which was informing and did inform a lot of my masters research. So, naturally, we ended up talking about that, and the guy chuckled and I said ‘What?’
He said ‘I thought of a joke but I shouldn’t say it.’ I then felt the annoyance hit because I could tell it was going to be something racist, so I pushed him to tell me, to which he proceeded to say ‘That wouldn’t happen if we [the British] were still in charge.’ And it was after that I left. The perils and risks of going on a date with a white man. I would also like to note blasphemy laws in Pakistan were inherited from colonial-era India’s penal code, so when ‘they’ were in charge.
It’s also having to consider the political situation of the country before choosing a holiday destination. It requires research into how racist and how safe the country is for Muslims because my personal lack of belief doesn’t stop a bigot from not assuming my religion from my brown skin. It’s looking at which areas in a city are safer than others, and which areas I should avoid. Even then there is so much I can do to prepare.
November last year I was in Berlin, and the trip went fine, apart from seeing visibly supportive Israel flags, government ads, and a few ‘feminist zionist’ stickers, which affected how I felt in certain parts of the city. The majority of people I met were lovely, and in part that helps eating at mostly vegan establishments.
On the way back, outside of the airport an older white German woman, probably in her 50s-60s, stopped me and said ‘Are you going to India?’ because I am a brown woman I must be going to India. I didn’t say anything because knowing how the German police, especially in Berlin at that time had been reported on being extra aggressive towards minorities, I did not fancy that for myself especially as I was a few hours from being home. She then saw my white partner and proceeded to say ‘Oh no’ and something else I forgot because being with a white man means something else.
It is this type of racism that I find myself experiencing and honestly, in the grand scheme of things it is fine. There are way worse ways and I have the privilege of being a lighter-skinned Pakistani, and because I am not religious and haven’t chosen to wear the hijab in that aspect, my identity is blurred and can be easily picked up on by racists who see non-white skin as a problem and then ignored by others. It is being whitewashed by white people that wouldn’t call you Paki, or whatever racial slur applies to other groups, but equally are not actively anti-racist. It’s seeing conversations online about US liberals, mainly white liberals, saying minorities should still vote for the Democrats to keep Trump out and in the UK to vote Labour to keep the Tories out, when they are both the same but in different colours and at least with the far-right they are honest about their bigotry, but the centre-left are sneakier about it.
All of this stuff weighs on the mind and there is a general level of anxiety the BIPOC people live with every day and if you add being a woman on top of that, and then if you’re part of the LGBTQ+ community and/or religious there are a lot of daily stressors and anxieties to be living on top of any other personal issues and especially now when the world is in turmoil.
I feel angry a lot more, politically lost, and sometimes hopeless. I have begun to re-engage in my culture through cooking, reading and learning about other avenues of faith, such as Sufism, which have been interesting but I am not sure it is for me. Spending more time talking and spending more time with my brown friends about these issues because it is so important to be around people who look like you, especially when so often you are the only non-white person in the room. Writing this very piece is cathartic in itself, allowing me to put words to screen about a lot of the things I have tried to journal about. I do believe things will get better, I have to otherwise it is a bleak way to live, and we are undergoing radical change and there is a lot to be hopeful for even if it seems dire right now because that type of change takes time, something which we are not used living in a 24/7 next-day/same-day delivery world.
I would like to end by talking about the photo chosen by Bangladeshi artist Mohuya, who I have followed on Instagram for a while. She talks about reconnecting with her Bangladeshi culture as a young adult. You can see her artwork and clothing designs on her website, Labyrinthave, which celebrates her Bangladeshi heritage and South Asian cultures.
