Discrimination

aisha, the post you made a few dates back makes me so sad. people are such jerks! and that was DEFINITE descrimination. too bad it's difficult to prove in court. it's shocking that that came from another "muslim" as well. good luck finding a job position! i'm so sorry that happened to you.

you know, even for me here in montréal, it was very difficult for me to get a job as an american.
first off, in this society, if you don't speak french and english it's almost impossible. i speak both luckily BUT the dialect they speak here is wayyyy different than what i learned in school (aka their french here is really bizarre and not standard international, aka no foreigner likes their "french"). secondly, if you don't already have connections, it's also pretty difficult to advance.

people usually don't like foreigners here and the minute i open my mouth they treat me differently.
even something as simple as going to the store or the bank can be very frustrating depending on who the clerk is. if you start speaking in english, they look at you with disgust as if you're trying to impose your language on them. but if you start out in french, the moment they hear you have an accent, they switch into english with an annoyed look on their face as if they want to prove they are superior to you and are bilingual and don't want to waste their time on someone with an accent.

RIDICULOUS!!!! it's so frustrating. And it's not even just the language thing. people literally say things like "go back to your own country" and are generally just rude and obnoxious..like bumping into you on the street w/out saying excuse me, never saying thank you for anything, basically just being all around obnoxious. that's not to say that SOME people aren't nice here but honestly, the majority of nice people i have met have all been immigrants.

luckily i have finally just come to terms with the fact that i don't care about anyone's opinion here or their huge obnoxious snotty attitudes. it took me a long time to finally just look past it and stop being self conscious.

i just speak in french to people here in stores, etc now and if they don't like the fact that i'm foreign, too bad! i act more confident when speaking now and people rarely switch into english with me, and if they ever do, i just continue in french to subtly point out that they're being rude speaking to me in another language when i clearly started talking to them in french.

of course, it depends on the circumstance...like if the person switches into english just to be polite or because they by some small chance happen to speak english better than french, then i have no problem speaking english w/ them...but like 95% of the time, they switch into the language with this haughty look on their face, so i have learned to just give them their snottiness right back to them on a nice silver platter and keep speaking french to them even after they rudely switch into (sometimes bad) english. lol whatever that means...i just wanted to use the words silver platter.

anyway, the point of this post is not to say that i can even imagine 1/2 of the descrimination hijabis face in north america since i do not wear hijab daily and that is definitely much more of a visual red flag attracting discrimination than just having an accent...but i just wanted to write this post basically just to relate on a smaller scale and to let people know they're not alone :).

like aisha was saying, i also think of my witty come backs too late since at first i'm always just shocked by people's rudeness...but now i've finally started to conjure up responses in my head (with the help of some people's advice) that help me respond on the spot.

for example, if someone asks you something rude like

"why are you wearing that?"

or "i'm Muslim too but I don't wear the Islamic head thing" (or whatever that dumb girl said to you, aisha)

or "hey, come here i want to talk to you (possible remark from sleezy guy)"...

a great response is a cold stare followed by "why?" or "why do you want to know?" or "why do you say that?"

it sends the "it's none of your business" message as clearly as a nice slap in the face, but ALSO at the same time it puts the other person on the spot and makes THEM a little nervous b/c then they have to answer a question instead of you. And really, there's no good explanation for their rude behavior so they have nothing to say and usually looked a little shocked and embarrassed. so you: +1 (cha-chiiing [fighting bell sound effect]), them: 0!

another great response is just the nice, simple cold hard stare in the eyes. People who make rude remarks to you usually don't expect you to be bold enough to look them in the eyes, so you can kind of turn the tables and make THEM shy.

finally, something I have found that works a lot is the guilting-them-out-with-politeness-but-not-really
method. It works somewhat like this:
stupid racist girl: "you know i'm Muslim too blah blah but I don't wear the head thing, blah.."

you: "sometimes I go to interviews where the person is really ignorant, but it's so nice to know that your company's employees are so open-minded and intelligent. thanks for giving me a good representation"

and then just turning around and walking away. OHHH! burrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnn!

hahaha ok maybe all of those responses are lame but maybe they COULD work at some point at some time in the future.

good luck again finding a job and take care everyone. salaams :)

-cathy