Deeba Syed is an activist, campaigner and sexual harassment lawyer. She has an Italian mum and a Pakistani dad, but she was brought up in London.
Deeba believes it’s vitally important that immigrants, like her parents, are afforded the opportunity to come to this country.
‘I think of myself as White/Asian – but I’m aware that this is an arbitrary box that I’ve been given, and I have come to identify myself using it,’ Deeba tells Metro.co.uk.
‘But it is important to me that I can identify as mixed. I’m quite light skinned and I have a Muslim name – I think it confuses people.’
Deeba hated her name when she was a child. She says it ‘othered’ her in a way that was hard to cope with while she was still coming to terms with who she was. But now, she says she’s incredibly proud of the name her parents chose for her.
‘If I didn’t have my name, people might not know that I was raised Muslim,’ she explains. ‘And that would be like a whole part of my life, a part of who I am, that would essentially be being erased. It is who I am.
‘I would never get rid of my name now. Even if I were to get married. It’s such an important way for me to celebrate my upbringing and my heritage.
‘I was brought up Muslim, and that’s really important to me – I want people to be able to recognise that immediately.’
But having a Muslim name has dealt Deeba a significant amount of discrimination too.
‘When I was trying to become a lawyer, I found it very difficult and I didn’t know why,’ she says. ‘I felt that there was a pressure to go back and get extra qualifications and get higher grades to compensate for that.
‘I would meet people in the industry who had similar academic backgrounds to me, but just seemed to be finding it so much easier.
‘It was hard to accept that I’m always just going to have this additional barrier because I have a Muslim name, and that conjures up… god-knows-what in people’s minds.’
Deeba feels that she has had to jump through more hoops than other people in order to progress at the same rate. She says it’s a common feeling for first generation kids.
‘I think all children of immigrants have it drilled into their heads that they have to work really, really hard, and that you should always feel so grateful for everything you’ve been given,’ she says.
‘Having a profession is something that I think all immigrant parents want for their kids. It’s this real symbol that you’ve made it, that you’ve become a “useful” part of this society.’
Deeba’s mum came to the UK from Italy when she was in her early 20s, she got a job working in a shop before meeting Deeba’s dad and starting a family.
‘I’m so proud of the amazing journey my parents went on to come to this country – to build a life and start in a family in a country where they didn’t even speak the language.
‘They had this fresh start at a completely new life, and this interracial marriage, which must have been so difficult for them back then. And then raising children from two completely different outlooks and backgrounds.’
Deeba’s mum is Catholic, and while bringing her kids up as a different religion to her must have been tough at times, Deeba says it was the language that was the hardest thing. She speaks Italian, while Deeba only speaks English.
‘I can’t imagine having children and speaking to them in another language,’ she tells us. ‘My mother tongue is not my mother’s tongue. I just can’t imagine it.
‘When you’re immigrants, I think you kind of expect that there is going to be a sacrifice, in order to give your kids a better life. Maybe some of your heritage is going to be lost for the sake of giving your kids something that you never had. That must’ve been really hard for both of them.
‘My parents came here when they were really young – with just a hope and a dream. It makes me so upset that the immigration rules now are changing so much that people like my parents might not get the same chance.’
Deeba says the current political landscape is a direct threat to families like hers, and she thinks the damage that could be caused by tougher immigration restrictions aren’t being acknowledged.
‘If Priti Patel gets her way, we will have a system where my dad and mum would never be able to make it into this country,’ says Deeba. ‘Which means that mixed-race kids like me won’t have a chance to contribute to this society. We can be just as valuable, and we won’t have the chance to prove that.’
Deeba says the hostility in the UK towards people from different backgrounds feels palpable at the moment. She says straddling the cross-section of being European and Muslim gives her an insight into the depth of these emotions.
‘The whole of the UK feels like it’s against my heritage right now. There is so much anti-Muslim sentiment everywhere. It’s on the news, we have people who wants to ban mosques, Muslim women in burqas are ‘letter boxes’ and ‘bank robbers’ – and that’s the Prime Minister saying that.
‘You can’t help but feel this sentiment is fed down from the absolute top. Islamophobia has become a very accepted kind of bigotry – it feels so normalised, and like it has been completely sanctioned.
‘I feel that all the time. These aren’t microaggressions for me; this is very overt, open aggression. When I was a kid I got the message that somehow being Muslim was not a good thing, and I feel it even more now in the wake of the Brexit referendum.’
Brexit has provided another layer of complicated hostility for Deeba to navigate. Now, not only is she facing Islamophobia, she also feels as though the UK is turning its back on her European roots.
‘Now, as a country, we’re also rejecting Europe. Where my mother is from,’ she says. ‘When the referendum result came in, I started crying. It felt like the country I lived in was telling the entire world that we don’t want anybody else. And that’s who I am. Being European is in my blood.
‘My mum came to this country 40 years ago, when you were able to come because of freedom of movement. Now, so many people won’t get that chance.
‘You can’t just send all those people back or pull up the drawbridge and close the door. There are kids like me who are a product of that freedom of movement who are now integrated into society so completely.’
Deeba can’t understand the idea that anyone would hate another person simply because they come from somewhere else. She looks at her parents and the incredible life they have created for themselves and can’t stand the idea that other families could be denied that opportunity.
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‘My mum’s alright, my dad’s alright, and they are hardworking people who just wanted a good life,’ says Deeba. ‘I don’t see anything wrong with that.
‘This idea that immigrants are sponging off other people is just ridiculous. These are the people who have worked the hardest.’
But she is still hopeful for the future. She thinks we have the potential to heal the damage caused by divisive politics, and she thinks it has to start with acceptance.
‘Stories like mine are a symbol of hope,’ she explains. ‘I can show people that they have nothing to fear from immigrants who want to come to this country and add to it.
‘This anti-Muslim rhetoric is so often about Muslims wanting to come here and build their own separate communities and have Sharia Law. There’s an idea that they don’t want to be part of this country – but that’s complete nonsense.
‘Now, the first generation kids of these immigrants – they are such an integral part of this country. Muslim children are a huge part of British culture now; that Desi British culture. We have added to it, we have made this country better.’
Mixed Up
Mixed Up is our weekly series that gets to the heart of what it means to be mixed-race in the UK today.
Going beyond discussions of divided identity, this series takes a look at the unique joys, privileges and complexities that come with being mixed-race - across of variety of different contexts.
The mixed-race population is the UK's fastest-growing ethnic group, and yet there is still so much more to understand about the varied lived experiences of individuals within this hugely heterogenous group.
Each week we speak to the people who know exactly how it feels to navigate this inbetween space.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/27/mixed-up-the-aggressive-islamophobia-i-face-in-this-country-has-been-sanctioned-by-the-prime-minister-11220382/
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