This TED Talk features music producer and film director Dia Kahn, recorded live at TEDx Exeter, 2016.

When I was a child, I knew I had superpowers.

That's right.

I thought I was absolutely amazing

because I could understand and relate to the feelings of brown people,

like my grandfather, a conservative Muslim guy,

and also I could understand my Afghan mother, my Pakistani

father, not so religious, but laid back fairly liberal. And of course, I could understand

and relate to the feelings of white people, the white Norwegians of my country. You know,

white, brown, whatever, I love them all.

I understood them all, even if they didn't always understand each other.

They were all my people.

My father, though, was always really worried.

He kept saying that even with the best education,

I was not going to get a fair shake. I would still face

discrimination, according to him, and that the only way to be accepted by white people would be

to become famous. Now, mind you, he had this conversation with me when I was seven years old.

So while I'm seven years old, he said, look, so it's either got to be sports or it's got

to be music.

He didn't know anything about sports, bless him.

So it was music.

So when I was seven years old, he gathered all my toys, all my dolls, and he threw

...