It’s still mostly 50-something white guys in the N.J. Legislature, but there is more diversity – NJ.com

Assemblywoman Shama Haider

State Assemblywoman Shama Haider, D-Bergen, is pictured in the halls of the New Jersey Statehouse in Trenton.Michael Mancuso | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Forty years ago, Shama Haider didn’t expect to have the job she does now.

An immigrant of Pakistan, Haider recalls how hers was one of the few non-white families in town as she raised her kids in Tenafly in the early 1980s. She remembers joining the local parent-teachers association to make sure her children “didn’t feel like outsiders.”