Anita Rani says people have mocked an Indian accent in front of her.
The 42-year-old television presenter has faced issues with racism over her British Asian heritage, but never expected someone to ridicule her background directly to her face.
Speaking to Good Housekeeping magazine, she revealed: "First of all, it feels great to have worked so hard and achieved something like that; smashing glass ceilings is a pretty great feeling. But it’s important to me to speak out about the struggles I’ve had, too.
"Ridiculous things all the time, such as people thinking it’s okay to imitate an Indian accent in front of me. And things have happened at work, too."
Anita has suffered at the hand of racism her whole life after being subject to stereotypes, but she is determined to break out of her "box".
She explained: "The perception of Asian women has always been very binary; people think we’re quite square and clever and that we don’t have sex until we’re married (of course, Mother, I didn’t have sex until I got married!). But that’s just not the case. I’ve hated being put into boxes my whole life."
Despite her frustration, the ‘Countryfile’ host has used people’s intolerance to prove her worth and has built a successful career.
She added: "Ask any ethnic, black or Asian person who works in any big industry – we just know we have to work a bit harder. I’ve had to prove myself a lot more than others and it’s frustrating, but it’s not just about race. All women feel it, don’t they? We just have to keep ploughing away."
What’s more, Anita previously believed she could never be a role model for young women of colour until she "broke barriers" as a brown-skinned woman on television.
She said: "As a non-white person you are always aware your experience is different to everyone else’s – that you have to work twice as hard and be twice as good as a white person to be successful. All our parents have told us that.
"So, although I never used to like being thought of as a role model, because I always thought of myself as being on my own trajectory, the more people say to me, ‘You’ve broken so many barriers as a brown-skinned woman on TV’, the more I think, ‘OK, I’ll accept that.’ "
Anita Rani: People mock Indian accent in front of me
