Iman says her first experience of racism was pay gap when she moved to US Priya Elan Supermodel Iman has said that her first experience of racism was witnessing the racial pay gap in fashion at the beginning of her career when she moved to America. The model, who grew up in Somalia and came to New York in 1975, said that it was the industry norm to pay white models a higher rate than their black counterparts. “My first experience [of racism] was seeing the discrepancies in pay between white models and black models,” she said on Naomi Campbell’s Unfiltered show. “My rate was different to white girls – it was an unspoken rule.”