Transcriber: Melody D Reviewer: Taher Koja
The first image that comes to my head when someone mentions the word
paramedic, is a big, burly white male,
usually with massive muscles to lift heavy patients and break through doors.
So, when I introduce myself as the paramedic on scene,
standing there as a five-foot-one, that one inch counts, by the way,
brown-skinned, Muslim girl, I tend to doubt myself, amongst many others.
But let me go back a bit before this moment
to explain how I got to where I am now.
So my parents are from East Africa and my heritage spans across that
area, as well as India and Iran.
I was raised and practiced as a Muslim and have been wearing
a hijab proudly since I was around 11 years of age.
I grew up here in Birmingham.
actually, not too far from where we are right now and went to school here too.
All these aspects, my heritage where I went to school,
the environment I grew up in all form a part of my own culture.
And will continue to change and develop as I grow as a person.
The environment you're in,
the people that you meets and the circumstances that you come across.
All form a parts of your own cultural construction.
This idea of cultural construction can be attributed to many things.
The very first example I gave you of what we think of when we imagine
a paramedic is a cultural construction formed by may be something that we saw
on TV or a personal experience.
The way that we pre-disposition baby girls to be dressed in pink
and baby boys to be dressed in blue is a cultural construct.
And the way that almost everyone outside of the UK knows,
Albert's obsession with a cuppa is a cultural construct.
Essentially, they are joint understandings of the world based
on shared assumptions of reality.
Each nation, community, and group of people will form these ideas
in coordination with one another.
and they can influence our own identity and our own meanings of culture.
Whilst, most of these are harmless and in fact help us value
the essence of diversity in society.
Many of these can become toxic and help limit the growth of
a person to be their true selves.
That's an interesting theory by Charles Cooley,
who suggests that the way that we form our identities,
these cultural constructions, is based upon societal perception.
In other words, the way that we form our likes
and dislikes, our personalities, is based upon what we think society thinks of us.
He calls this The Looking-Glass Self.
This persona that we form is built up with three main steps.
Imagining how you or your actions appear to others
then considering how others will judge you based on these acts and actions,
and finally forming a feeling or response based upon these judgments.
It wasn’t until I really came into para- medicine and had the experiences that
I had that I realized how much my looking-glass self had built me up to this
role, yet, broke me down twice as much.
Growing up, I was really, really proud of my heritage.
My Dad to come to this country as a refugee
and not long later married my Mum,
both of whom had copious stories to tell me about their lives.
One thing I noticed that resonated in all of their stories was how appreciative
they were of now living in the UK. And how things could have been
If circumstances didn’t turn out in the way that they did.
I was always reminded of the us and them situation.
That I shouldn’t really rise or speak out when I wasn’t getting treated in
the same way as my white counterparts were.
In Birmingham, this didn't really affect me as much.
We're lucky to have such a multicultural population in which
I was easily able to find friends and colleagues to share
an experiences with. I spend a lot of time in my community center,
my local mosque as well.
which is full of people with mine or my parents backgrounds.
It's easy for me to find people to match in my community center in terms of
different milestones in life, education, or profession.
Our community is quite tight knit and just as I might find comfort
in being able to share an experience with someone else in the community,
the community tends to care for one another by being able to learn
and grow from past experiences.
For example, if my friends wanted to buy a house in a certain area,
she'll probably get some advice from someone in
the community which will push forward her decision.
Or if my cousin wanted to go into a specific profession,
he'll be more inclined to go towards a profession that someone in
the community has already done because he’ll have someone as a guide, as a mentor
I didn't realize how much my culture depended on the experiences of my family
and these interactions I had with my community until
I really started coming into this role of a paramedic.
I still remember my very first lecture,
on my very first day that would introduce me into this world of para-medicine
and how out of place I felt. Amongst a room full of students,
the very few of us who are of ethnic minorities,
of which there are only around four were placed into the far corner of the room.
That experience sort of set the tone for how it would be.
Being in a profession where there’s already such a lack of ethnic minorities.
But I'm not really here to talk about the racist abuse I had from patients
or colleagues who didn't understand my religion,
my background, or why I do things in a certain way.
Nor am I here to talk about how I suddenly became the representation
for all people of my skin tone or my religion in my area of work,
which meant that I became the subject of many questions or comments,
offensive or not.
What I do want to talk about,
though I do want to focus on is how I initially reacted to that treatment.
And the truth is, I didn’t react, at all.
I was scared, partly because that same mindset was going through my head that
I was lucky to be here and partly because of the fact that
I wasn’t seen as another person amongst my colleagues,
but rather that person who looked like she didn't belong.
I found myself making excuses for their comments,
relying on past experiences.
Like that time that my family didn’t get served at a restaurant, despite requesting
it multiple times.
and wondering whether it had anything to do with the fact
that we were the only ethnic minorities there.
Yet my parents saying we don’t want to make a fuss,
we don’t want to cause unnecessary attention because of fear,
or because we didn’t want someone to question our experience, our presence
there in the first place.
I never really had felt so alone. I decided to maybe talk to someone.
Share some insight on what is going through,
usually falling back on someone within the community, however,
instantly pushed that thought aside due to previous judgments that they did.
I'm the only person in my mosque to currently pursue this role of becoming
a paramedic, and this was met with a few raised eyebrows and comments.
Some people in my community thought that it wasn't appropriate that women of
my culture should be going into this role, especially being a Muslim on top of this.
Even my own family have their judgments and concerns
and constantly did question this choice of mine coming into this role.
I was scared about their judgments,
and I constantly did question whether I should leave
because I deemed by my self assumption of their judgments
as this being something not of benefit to me.
Instead of accepting the person that I am,
I decided to depend on other people's judgments.
Despite being known as a bit of a talker, I decided that the less I speak,
the less people would have to say about me.
In Cooley’s theory of this looking-glass self,
he portrays that the human being themselves is completely reliant
on other people's perceptions of them.
However, I don't really think this is the case.
I think that we only use our looking-glass self when it’s of importance to us.
Therefore, it didn't matter to me when I was the only ethnic minority in
a group of people before.
But now, when I knew that their opinions mattered to me that their opinions
would shape how others would see me as a clinician.
That’s when I started to use and manipulate my looking-glass self more.
Before I was really confident and proud to talk about my religion
or why I do things in a certain way,
something my parents had already instilled in me since I was little.
But now I found I was holding this back in the fear of fitting in.
Even when we’d go to a family that practiced in a different way.
Maybe a way that was similar to mine.
I didn’t offer reasoning or explanation when comments were made
because I just hope to go with the crowd.
In both ways, I found I was coming to a stalemate.
The culture that I built with my family and community fought at me from one end,
and this new culture in which diversity and acceptance of new voices
wasn’t a norm, was that the other.
This built up on me for months, and months, and months
until finally I decided I’ve come to two choices. Either I quit the profession
and save myself from the constant mental battle I was undergoing,
or I shed some light on my journey in the hope of finding others like me.
I turned to social media, and within a few days I was met with a flurry of messages.
People from all over in similar experience, having similar
experiences such as myself held back by their cultural constructs.
One individual who was so inspired by watching paramedics
on TV she really wanted to do this role.
Yeah, her father telling her that this wouldn't be a potential opportunity
for you because of the potential of being sat in an ambulance with a male colleague
for 12, 13, 14 hours.
One individual who said I’m not comfortable in dealing
with mental health patients
and therefore I can’t really see myself progressing in this career because
he grew up in a society that didn’t want to talk about mental health issues.
They didn’t want to acknowledge them
that thought it was a taboo if they do talk about them.
One individual who went to a family who was religious and were faced with
a sudden death and they wanted to do multiple rituals,
and he didn't really know what to do at that point.
And when we really talked about this, he said,
actually, the environment of surrounded myself in hardly even speaks of religion.
At this point, I realized I was trying so hard to be someone else,
a different self with my family, with my community, with my workplace.
That I didn’t realize that both of these areas had issues and problems
and not because of me. This I was worried about the judgments that my family
and community would have, but I didn't realize or stop for
a moment to think that maybe this is a new idea going against
the cultural construct.
Similarly, with my place of work, I was a new idea going against
the cultural constructions that they had built.
And when I realized that other people were being affected,
that other people were being stopped from progressing into a career of their dreams.
That’s when I realized the power of shattering through my looking-glass self
of deconstructing my cultural constructs.
So I started to speak out more,
raise my voice when I thought that things were going wrong.
And my voice was heard and my voice was amplified in a way that
I couldn’t even believe, I got in touch with the equality, diversity,
and inclusion teams within the NHS.
And even though there’s some part of me that’s saying this is wrong,
I shouldn’t be doing this. This is going against I’m, I’m lucky to be here.
I shouldn't be doing this.
I carried on with the motivation that maybe others wouldn't have
the same profession, the same experiences such as me.
But it isn't just my profession, though. It's not just professions.
It's every society, every community, every workplace that requires diversity,
a mix of backgrounds and heritages and cultures.
Cultural constructions are something that needs to be celebrated,
as it's what makes all of us unique.
And the more that we realize
the differences that we have in between each other by coming out of our bubble,
the more we can recognize what we need in order to grow as a person.
For me, maybe I wouldn’t have had the experiences that I did if I had
a workforce around me that was diverse
that I could lean and share experiences with someone else on.
But now having an a workforce around me that is diverse,
that celebrates people from all backgrounds and new voices,
now I can start recognizing my true self.
Whether it be, sitting with a new group of people over lunch
or attending an event that you thought wasn’t for your type of people
or watching a movie that’s completely out of your norm
we need to take that first step.
Come out of the cultural constructions that may be holding you back
and recognizing when they do, to break them down.
Integrating by recognizing the value that we have for different things is pivotal.
And using those materials that we that we built with those other constructions
that were previously holding you back by building them up to make these new
constructions constructions that are inclusive constructions that are diverse.
It's how we can start contributing to a more diverse and inclusive society,
not just for ourselves, but for the future of us.
My name is Mahdiyah, and it’s been a pleasure.