Yassmin’s Story

by Yassmin Abdel-Magied

  My maternal grandmother would tell me that I was the right weight for a woman and that I should watch my figure, because that was important in marriage. ‘Look at some of the women in this country who get old and let themselves go! Your mum is good, though, she stays slim. Be like your mum,’ she’d say and I’d look down at my thighs and vow to myself that I wouldn’t put on any more weight. Although I would like to think it didn’t matter to me, I did 100 push-ups a day on my dusty bedroom floor for the whole trip, finding any way I could to stay trim. Even back in the gym in Australia I would occasionally think of those moments. ‘Don’t let yourself go, Yassmina; don’t be one of “those people”.’ How uncharitable.

  Days were spent lazily that summer, waking up and having tea, playing with the cousins, watching TV. It was one of the last summers that I would have without obligations; I had yet to begin university, yet to start Youth Without Borders, yet to step up to the plate. A simpler time, enjoying a childhood that would be over before I knew it.

  Chapter 13:

  Check Your Bias

  I’ve never been one to blame my race or gender, an attitude which is largely a product of my parents’ mindset. Work hard and you will get the result you deserve was their mantra. We were privileged enough for that to be true, a privilege that is not always bestowed on those who migrate.

  Let’s unpack the concept of privilege. Reminding myself (and others) to ‘check my privilege’ is such a normal part of my vocabulary that sometimes I forget it’s not so familiar to everyone.

  Privilege is, by definition, ‘a special right or advantage granted or available only to a particular person or group’. What privilege means in life, is, as the blogger Franchesca Ramsey so eloquently put it, ‘things you will not experience or ever have to think about just because of who you are’.

  Because of the way power is structured in the West, there are many things people belonging to the white and male groups don’t have to think about. Male privilege allows men to go through life never having to consider their safety when walking home alone at night, never needing to prove their legitimacy as a leader due to their gender, and choosing what they wear without others making a moral judgement about them.

  Those who benefit from white privilege are never asked to speak for all the people of their racial group, can buy toys and magazines and watch TV shows featuring people who look like them and can buy ‘skin tone’ beauty products or stockings that actually match their complexion. They can turn up late to a meeting and not have it be attributed to their race, be pulled over by the police and not worry about their ethnic background working against them, never have to think about racism affecting them at all.

  There are many different types of privilege and they are not all equal. There is able-bodied privilege (not having a physical disability, which means not thinking about how to physically access a space), cisgendered privilege (pertaining to my identification as a straight, heterosexual female), the privilege of education in a world that respects Western institutions, the privilege of having a stable job, the privilege of wealth that allows me to access technology, food and media freely, the privilege of a stable childhood. All of us reading this book benefit from a level of privilege – at the very least, we all share the privilege of literacy. Discussions about privilege are about a system of oppression rather than about the individual people within that system. For anything to change we should all be a part of dismantling the structural inequality that exists, which we can do by recognising its existence and becoming effective allies to those with lesser privilege than ourselves.

  It was due to the privilege of education and our Western accents that my brother and I were able to access spaces in Australia without too much friction. My parents instilled in us that we were capable of going wherever we wanted to go, so I was forever optimistic and often forgot about my visible difference. I acknowledged the problems that people like myself from visible minorities faced, I just felt like they didn’t apply to me. I didn’t feel any different to my classmates, so why would anyone see or treat me differently? This changed as I began to understand the distinction between self-perception and actual perception. However, this was not until grade twelve, when my self-perception was challenged by my mother, no less, at a Lions Youth of the Year competition.

  I had made it through the local and district levels and was now at the regional finals in a small country town in rural Queensland.

  The competition consisted of an interview then a public speaking element. The interview took into account your previous leadership accomplishments and you were asked five questions about global current affairs. The public speaking was quite demanding: two impromptu speeches and a longer prepared speech. The impromptu sessions were designed to test your on-the-spot thinking. You would stand at the podium and be given a topic that could be as specific or abstract as the judges chose; one year the topic was simply ‘circles’. Another year, it was on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the two-state solution. You were then immediately required to speak for two minutes, in a coherent manner, on that topic. The longer speech was a five-minute monologue on your subject of choice.

  I was so ready for this. I didn’t usually prepare speeches much in advance, but this time I had written my monologue (about the future of society) and had begun practising and memorising it days before. During the three-hour drive with my mother and Chandni I repeated sections of the speech, over and over out loud, watching the dry countryside slide by. Memorising speeches in a short amount of time was something that I had become known for in the debating team at middle school. I would receive the speeches from the first and second speakers in the team on the Thursday before or sometimes even the Friday morning of the debate and memorise them by the afternoon. I would print out a copy of the speech and repeat it over and over, sitting on the bag racks in front of the classroom, legs swinging, muttering the words under my breath.

  For me to write the speech over a week in advance and practise it for days meant that every single word was analysed, scrutinised and mulled over. It meant every hand gesture was deliberate. I rarely write my speeches these days. I usually plot out a framework in my mind about what I want to talk about, using the same structure I was trained in as a child:

  Anecdote

  Signpost (tell the audience what you are going to talk about, like an agenda)

  Deliver the body of the speech or argument, try to keep it to three main points if it’s technical, or a story arc that’s easy to follow

  Share three lessons learnt

  Recap main points

  Finish with a strong conclusion.

  It is a structure that’s worked well for me over the years and I recommend it to others, although my main tip is to find whatever format works for you.

  When we arrived at the competition, we knew we looked different. It was a small enough country town that two Muslim women and an Indian girl wouldn’t go unnoticed. I was used to being a visible minority, though, and took it in my stride. They’re just staring because of our great beauty! I thought, half-believing my own story. I don’t know how or why I started thinking like that. It definitely wasn’t due to the influence of my family, as we never discussed looks. I think it came from retaining the sense of worth I had as a child, simply believing that I could do anything. There was also a common narrative in the media that told me pretty people were often stared at, so I put two and two together and ran with it.

  The interview process for the competition was strange. I was accustomed to being able to connect with people when I met them; cracking a joke to set them at ease, making eye contact and sharing a warm smile. It had worked with all the previous panels, but this time I kept hitting a brick wall. The panelists were constantly looking away when I attempted to make eye contact; they didn’t seem to appreciate my sense of humour and didn’t seem impressed with any of my answers. Hmm, I thought. This is going to be a challenge. I answered the questions the same as always and left the room knowing I had given
it a pretty good shot. I never did quite find out why they acted the way they did and it might not be fair to speculate. All I know is I wasn’t able to establish my usual rapport and the demographics of the panel members were the same as always – older Anglo-Australians. The only obvious difference was geography, which plays a part in limiting people’s exposure to different cultures and faith groups.

  Even in retelling this story I am reluctant to imply that the judges had some sort of bias or prejudice based on colour, ethnicity or religion. My every fibre is rebelling against making an accusation, and I am trying to find ways to couch my language in soft, inoffensive tones. Such is the power of the years of avoiding racially charged conversations for fear of being ostracised – a manifestation of an internalised migrant postcolonial identity.

  The speaking and judging event was on that evening, in a local restaurant. As my mother, best friend and I walked in we commanded the attention of all in the room, some fifty or sixty attendees. Were they judgemental? I paid no attention. Embrace it! I thought to myself as I took my seat. Hijabied head high, shoulders back, game on.

  The impromptu questions were first, and their abstract topics could have been tricky, but I sailed through on the advice of a speaking mentor: ‘Break it into threes,’ she had told me. ‘Use a structure, like Past, Present, Future, or Local, National, International. If you have a simple structure in mind, your talk will always make sense.’ I recommend this structure to people who are starting out in public speaking, particularly if you’re ever expected to provide an articulate and sensible answer on the spot.

  I nailed the impromptu speeches that night, and an hour and two courses later, it was time to deliver the monologues.

  As I stood at the lectern, I surveyed the faces of the crowd. All here to listen to me, I thought. What an amazing moment. The crowd was full of older, mostly white faces. This wasn’t my community in the traditional sense of the word – we weren’t born in the same country, didn’t share the same history, faith or upbringing – yet they were willing to hear me, to listen to what I had to say. It was a world away from my first speech in a public forum at the Socialist Alliance. This was no fringe group – the Lions Clubs were truly an institution. Had I made it with the group my father had defined as the ‘right people’?

  The room was silent as I moved away from the lectern. I wanted nothing between myself and the crowd, I wanted to be able to connect directly as I shared my story. Microphone in hand, I began.

  Five minutes later, I put the mic down to thundering applause. I was in the zone; it couldn’t have gone any better. I had perfected my hand gestures, planned pauses so pregnant they were almost rushed to the emergency room, and altered my tone to bring people in and send them out. I’d taken everyone in that room on a journey they hadn’t realised they had tickets for.

  I sat down with relief as the response of the crowd continued to swell around me. Mum looked at me, beaming. ‘Mashallah, habibti. Good work!’ She rubbed my back. The others seated with me nodded and yelled their congratulations across the table, over the applause that just kept going.

  ‘You took that out! That was the winner for sure!’

  I grinned, pleased.

  The lad up next was decent, I thought, but nothing spectacular. He was mild-mannered, articulated his points and smiled charmingly at the judges. ‘Not bad,’ I thought, unruffled by the competition.

  As I got up in between speeches to head to the loo, people stopped me on the short walk across the room to offer their support.

  ‘What a great speech! You had me spellbound.’

  ‘You did so well, and look at you, you walk so tall!’

  Men, women … even a kid greeted me and I smiled. Whatever happened with the overall prize, it seemed like I had the speaker’s prize in the bag.

  Shortly after the last contestant spoke, it was time for the announcement of the winners. We were called towards the podium to stand in a line behind the lectern.

  ‘The winner of the Regional Lions Youth of the Year for 2007 is …’

  The name was not mine. The young lad who had spoken after me moved forward to claim his prize.

  I pursed my lips and looked at my mother. ‘It’s okay,’ she mouthed from across the room. She motioned for me to wait.

  Then came the second presentation, the one for the best speech. ‘The public speaking award goes to …!’

  Again, it was the young man who had spoken after me. I felt a pang of disappointment. Really? Him? I checked myself. Yassmina, you gave it your best shot and it wasn’t enough, so this is what Allah must want. With that sorted, I grinned and shook the winner’s hand. He must have worked hard too, I thought. He deserved it. Good on him.

  As I rejoined my table, the support was resounding. The chorus of ‘We definitely thought you would win!’, ‘Oh, but you did so well,’ and ‘I’m proud of you anyway!’ all served to soothe the soul further, and I had made my peace with the result. ‘Onwards and upwards!’ I said, smiling. ‘It’s okay, his speech wasn’t too bad.’

  It wasn’t until my mother and I were walking out of the restaurant that she said something that blew me away: ‘You were never going to win it because you are a brown Muslim woman and he is a white male. There is no way the judges would have let someone like you represent their region.’

  ‘Mama, you can’t be serious!’ I recoiled at the suggestion. It was the first time in my life she had blamed racism for anything. This was not how we rolled – we were beyond that.

  ‘Of course I am, Yassmina. Some people in towns like this are still racist, whether they realise it or not. It simply wouldn’t have happened.’

  I was completely taken aback. It felt like such a cop-out, like something ‘other people’ in the community would say – people who spent their time being victims rather than taking control of their narrative, people who were not proactive in trying to change how Muslims were perceived. We were supposed to be the family that believed hard work could overcome all barriers, not one that blamed external factors.

  I almost instantly dismissed the possibility racism had affected the result; it didn’t fit with my world view and it challenged my belief that hard work would prevail. If my best effort wasn’t enough, what else could I do? I disregarded it because it made me feel powerless.

  It was only years afterwards, when I began to reflect on later experiences that were occasions of blatant racism, that I considered the possibility that my colour, race or religion played a part. Even now, I doubt the judges’ bias was conscious – or I would like to believe that it wasn’t. I prefer to think that people are better than that.

  This reflection came as I began to understand structural inequality, institutional racism and unconscious bias. As I read more, I started to comprehend how the systems in which we are brought up take away our power as individuals. It is frightening to realise that you may have to work harder in life, just because of who you are, in order to overcome the prejudice of people around you. The reality is life is deeply unfair and we need to do all we can to level that playing field a little and make it less of an uphill battle for those coming after us.

  Unconscious bias has popped up in various forms throughout my life. One memorable moment was the announcement of my year’s high school captains. I was in the running, but I was the first hijabied Muslim girl who had attended the school and I wasn’t sure they would let someone like me lead.

  Prefects voted for who they thought should be captain and, although the actual process was always kept secret, the understanding was the boy and girl with the most votes became school captains, those with the second-most votes became vice captains and so on. Even though it was a vote, the school principal and board always had a say.

  I knew I was in with a pretty good shot at one of the top spots, based on my speaking skills, academic marks and general willingness to get involved. People in my classes were amping me up, telling me they thought I had a real chance and it made me a little nervous; I didn’t want t
o raise my own expectations just to have them smashed. I kept my mind modest, and responded with warm thanks for all the support.

  On the morning of the announcement, my home room teacher made a curious comment, saying, ‘You’ve got great potential for school captain, everyone thinks that. It will depend on how the board sees it, though, and they might not want someone like you as the face of the school.’

  I would like to say I was shocked by her words, but they rang true. ‘It probably won’t happen, will it?’

  My teacher shrugged, but her meaning was clear. I wondered how many other teachers thought the same thing: that I had the skills, but not the right look for the school.

  That morning, I prayed to not become school captain because I didn’t want to be involved in the politics. It was the same feeling that I would later have in the Lions Youth of the Year competition – an unwillingness to bring my colour, race or religion into the conversation and make others uncomfortable by saying ‘Has this been a factor in your decision making?’ What would be the point of making waves? I thought. Up until that time I had always minimised my differences and didn’t want to be seen as that person from a marginalised group who talked about it all the time. How that has changed!

  That was 2007. These days, Muslims and people of colour are in more positions of influence. The school now has a multicultural leadership team, but at the time appointing me to the position would have been seen as something of a statement. Remember, JPC is a Christian ecumenical school. To have a covered Muslim girl as the school captain would need to have been justified to the religious community – I can’t imagine a Christian girl being the school captain of a Muslim school. I did not want this battle.