When I was in my previous job, a leader at the organization came said, you could totally pass for So could you just put some braid in your hair and go do that?

And I was like, yeah, no, uh, no Okay, so I'm just going to ask you a few uncomfortable question You ready?

I am both terrified and very excited about this process.

I think it's a fine place to be.

Do you remember your first Minnesota microaggression?

Oh, yeah.

One of my first classes in high school, the teacher stumbled ove my name and then said to the who class, um, you know, I don't kno he'll do well here because I'm n experienced in teaching minoriti And so that was my introduction to Minnesota.

Okay.

So you're not from Minnesota.

Where are you from originally?

I was born in Ohio, which is a question I get all the time of w I'm from and how great my Englis I just got it the other day agai which is so funny because there' so many microaggressions, 1 0 1 things like don't say that.

So it's really amazing to me tha that still happens all the time.

Okay.

So what happened?

Can you tell me this story?

So it's the worst possible situa I was at a hospital getting a bi Oh no!

Everything is fine.

Maybe that's the most important part of the story.

Everything's fine.

Um, but you have to be awake for and they stick a needle in your So I was nervous.

Anyway, the radiologist who's going to do the biopsy.

He came in and he said, that's a funny name.

And at first, it honestly didn't register for me.

I was like, what the name of a t Or what are we talking about?

And he said, yeah, your, your name it's, it's really funny.

Where's that from?

And I said, oh, I'm I'm, Middle- my family's from Lebanon.

And he said, oh, but you don't have an accent.

It's really good.

The way you speak is really good And I said, Yep, because I'm thi he's about to put a needle in my So you like, go ahead, man.

Be as racist as possible, just p Just please do your job.

And so the nurse that was there, after he left, she said, I'm so That shouldn't have happened.

He's not the most sensitive guy.

And then she said, and I want yo to know that my name is Karen.

So tell all your friends that not all Karens are bad.

I was like, again, I don't give a squak about any of this stuff.

I just want to get a biopsy and I want to get out of here.

Okay.

So would you go back there and g by the same guy for another biop Oh, totally because he was really good at it.

I had a botched biopsy and that' why I had to go to this person because he was so good at them.

So totally.

I'd go to microaggression land o more time, because these are the of choices that we make all the Right?

Okay.

So props to Karen for standing u herself and maybe trying to expl what happened, but, um, you know curious being a mom, do you feel Having gone through these experiences gives you a little bit of, of a heads up of how to coach your kids in dealing with We did to an extent, but it was to watch those things to happen in a way that I wasn't fully pre My son's name is Mohammad and he made fun of his whole life, call terrorists, had things thrown at teachers be really terrible to h Um, it's interesting watching my daughter because people are just feel sorry for her.

And I think that he's terrible.

It really follows those tropes around Muslim men and women.

Being Arab, being Muslim and living all over the country, you just see so many different forms of racism and Islamophobia And I'm from a group that's not counted in a lot of things.

So you get all the downsides, bu the benefits of having data on h doing or scholarships, or you're not even counted as a person of um, for middle Eastern populatio What?

What category you fit into?

They put us in white shoot.

Really?

Yeah.

So for 30 years there's been a huge lobby to change the census to have us have our own category It's been shot down multiple tim And so what organizations do is they just make it its own catego and count it as people of color, because that is our experience.

Um, but technically we don't cou When stuff like that happens to I sometimes try to explain it aw and almost excuse the agressor.

I mean, I think that I tolerate Do I think that that specific do is going to change his way of be He told me he was also the best doctor in Minnesota.

So I think that there are other issues there.

I think he really, really liked himself, but he was very good at doing biopsys, I'll give him tha