Jade Thirlwall on Her Arabic Heritage and Microsoft Confusing Her for Fellow Band-Member Leigh-Anne Pennock
By Malak Khaled
The 27-year-old singer spoke about her Arabic heritage, having a Yemeni grandfather who married an Egyptian woman after moving to the United Kingdom.
The singer spoke to the BBC about how her grandfather had a huge impact on her life saying that growing up in an Arab community was interesting for her. The singer expressed this by saying “My granddad really wanted me to be Muslim, bless him! My mom made me go to church on Sunday, but I went to Muslim school on Saturdays – it was next to the local mosque where my grandfather went.” She also said she enjoyed it but she’s “not religious,” wishing that she had stuck at it, saying “I’m trying to re-learn Arabic.”
Thirlwall spoke about the “horrific” bullying she experiences she faced during her adolescence which triggered feelings of shame and insecurity saying “I think because I was bullied quite badly in school because of the color of my skin and for being Arab, I wasn’t very proud of who I was.” Although her father was British she struggled to fit in and faced emotional and physical abuse due to being “one of three people of color in school”
She tells of one of the experiences she had, saying “I remember one time I got pinned down in the toilets and they put a bindi spot on my forehead, it was horrific.”
Due to being bullied as a child, when Jade auditioned and joined the girl-group in ‘X Factor’ back in 2011, she says “[she] subconsciously didn’t want to talk about [her] heritage or what [her] background was in fear of not being as popular.” She further expressed how “awful” it sounds to be ashamed of who she is but explained saying “I was only 18 years old and through years of being ashamed of who I was I found it quite hard to talk about it.”
However, the Brit Award winner did not blame the people but the “lack of education,” saying, “I think it was through a lack of education as well, even now I am constantly learning what the right things are to say and I would hate to talk about my race and my heritage and not say the right things.”
Jade slammed MSN this week due to the “Microsoft AI editor” mixing up between her and her fellow band-member Leigh-Anne Pennock, by using a picture of Pennock in an article about Thirlwall.
She took to her Instagram story to express her disappointment writing “MSN if you’re going to copy and paste articles from other accurate media outlets, you might want to make sure you’re using an image of the correct mixed-race member of the group.”
She went on saying “This [happens] to @leighannepinnock and I ALL THE TIME that it’s become a running joke. It offends me that you couldn’t differentiate the two women of color out of four members of a group … DO BETTER!”
After the backlash, Microsoft’s spokesperson spoke to the publication about the cause of the error, saying: “Whilst removing bias and improving accuracy remains an area of focus for AI research, this mistake was not a result of these issues.” He continues saying “In testing a new feature to select an alternate image, rather than defaulting to the first photo, a different image on the page of the original article was paired with the headline of the piece. This made it erroneously appear as though the headline was a caption for the picture.” He then added, “as soon as [they] became aware of this issue, [they] immediately took action to resolve it, replaced the incorrect image, and turned off this new feature.”
