Mehreen Shahid – Ethnicity

In your job, do you think your ethnicity was a help or hindrance, or did it make no difference?

For me my ethnicity never made a difference. It was a bit more engaging for people – they were curious, they were always curious and they would always want to know more about where I was from.

Most people guess that I’m Italian, someone said, “your eyes, your eye colour looks like you’re Italian” and someone said, “your skin colour makes you look like you’re Italian” but then they would hear my name and that would confuse them because my name is Persian. So they would say, “oh, are you from Iran then?” then I would say, “no, I’m from one door over in Pakistan” and that would strike a little bit of a familiarity with them, and they would talk to me about it.

So it wasn’t a hindrance at all. I don’t think it made a difference in terms of that they would give me more information or less information, they were just curious to find out more.