It’s sad to even contemplate that racism is still rife, and I’m noticing it now more than ever.

Living in the countryside, I understood the compromise I was going to have to make everyday; 90% of the citizens in my town are over the age of 40 and definitely not accustomed to seeing brown faces, let’s say. The pushing past me on the roads, pushing in front of me on public transport and the weird looks every single day is something I’ve just had to ignore if I wanted a peaceful life. To a variable extent, I have ignored it and made the most of my wonderful new home and the great views on my doorstep. Every now and then I’ll get a little sassy if someone is explicitly racist but so far, I haven’t had a showdown.

Recently, and interestingly more so after the Paris Attacks of 2015, racism has suddenly escalated to a frighteningly all time high; threats of violence, Trump’s Nazi-like approach to Muslims living in the USA, attacks on the Muslim community etc are never front page news but viral on the internet with people doing nothing about it other than re-posting and sharing the articles. We’re treated like third class citizens primarily due to the ideologies of less than 1% of the Muslim population, because a large majority of ignorant people in the world choose pick what they believe to be true rather than looking at facts and statistics. In other words, they’re blinded by their own racist views to even contemplate the possibility that, hey would you look at that, maybe every single brown person on this planet isn’t a terrorist.

The most frustrating aspect of this is how much I’ve noticed these discriminatory attitudes and been a victim of them at work. I thought working in London would be a walk in the park, with cultural and educated people coming into the store each day but annoyingly, it’s quite the opposite. Customers literally throw clothes at me if they don’t want or need them, even someone I work with racially insulted me and my grandparents, simply because of my skin colour, claiming we’re “stealing all [their] jobs.” It appalls me that these attitudes still exist and are something Muslims must grow accustomed to. No matter how much I have accomplished and achieved in my 19 years on this planet, one look at my skin colour has me judged as inferior to an ignorant and uneducated citizen.

I think it’s high time Muslims, and other ethnic minorities targeted by racism, should stand their ground against discrimination. There’s no excuse for it, and there never was; it was blindly ignored as no one wanted to be the minority standing up against the majority.

This is our country as much as yours. Yes, some of us are not the same colour as you. Yes, some of us are more educated and successful than you.

Get over it.

A x