It’s weird when they think you need to be ashamed of it. To have people ask questions about who you are seems innocent. Normal. Desired in some circumstances. But when the people asking them are blind to their own thought process and judgment, the result can be traumatising. And they’re often hidden because they are just “simple cultural differences.”

Coming from a predominantly Muslim country, the questions I receive are more commonly along the lines of “Are your parents going arrange your marriage?” or “I bet you couldn’t act like this over there with all those Islamists, right?”

I used to ignore these remarks as just small blips of misinformation. They are not small blips of misinformation. They are the product of years of institutionalized Islamophobia.

People do not know the assortment of traditions and events that shaped the countries they feel like they’re experts on after a sixty second news clip.  They disregard the modernization that many cultures have experienced and instead believe that to keep one element means to keep the entirety of a mind-set that was relevant centuries ago.

The problem, however, doesn’t end with Islamophobia. It is not that specific to one type of people but rather a whole selection of nationalities. In practical terms, anyone that was not born as a citizen is an outsider.

Anna Pekal, 17, is from Poland. Aside from being called a “Polish pig” through primary school, a little further ahead in her education, she has some less-than-fond memories of citizenship lessons: “There was talk about immigration and there was stuff mentioned about how they only come here to take benefits and to take jobs.” She continues later on that the experience-and others like it- have caused her to feel singled out and unwanted. She has been living here since she was an infant.

Statistics from MigrationWatchUK state that in the year ending June 2017, 572000 immigrants have entered the UK. It is chilling to think that over half a million people will experience the day to day discrimination that will be presented to them as “simple cultural differences.”