Irish | Pakistani
My Mum was fully Irish Catholic, she passed away when I was young. My Dad is a Pakistani Muslim. They were shunned by their families but they loved each other so managed to make things work regardless. Having grown up in care I lived with families of all different cultures and being someone of a fairly rare mix I did not know how to identify myself. A positive effect of my mixed background is that I’ve used my experience of not fitting in with my youth work. I’m a youth worker working in youth clubs in estates trying to get young people engaged in positive activities. I also work for an organisation that supports young people in semi-independent housing, supporting them in bettering their lives and preparing them for independence and adulthood. I’m also working on my own business, and in the future hope to create my own charity something that helps young people here while helping others abroad in more deprived countries. I’ve lived in both Pakistan and Ireland, in one country I was the Whitest and in the other I was the darkest. Based on this I have felt like an outsider in both my native countries. Living in a rural part of Ireland was quite difficult being that I was the darkest person for miles. I attended school there for a year where though the majority were some of the nicest people I’d ever met, sometimes due to a few ignorant individuals I would get into fights due to racist comments. It was a blatant type of racism I’d never experienced in London, having been back since thankfully the part of Ireland I lived has become a lot more multicultural and less ignorant of other races etc. In Pakistan I equally if not more experienced feeling like an outsider, being the Whitest person in the area I had experiences of ignorance and comments. But having experienced similar In Ireland when I was in Pakistan, I tried to teach people more about my background and British culture etc while learning theirs which was so different to anything I’d experienced. If I had the opportunity to be reborn I wouldn’t change a thing. Through my hardships I have learnt so much, I wouldn’t take that back.
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