Thursday
January 11, 2001
On discrimination & race
In response to Ali Noshirvani's letter ["Time
to take responsibility"] in which he justified discrimination
against Iranians due to events such as the U.S. embassy hostage taking
and "support for terrorism": I would like to point out that I
as an individual had no role in any of that, so I as an individual am quite
justified in blaming and condemning discrminatory conduct based on my ethnicity.
What you're espousing is guilt-by-ethnic or historical-asssociation.
If the same standard were followed consistently, then every American should
undergo a thorough body cavity search before he or she is allowed on board
an airplane anywhere in the world, thanks to the various historical misdeeds
by the US government such as U.S. support for Saddam Hussein and General
Pinochet, napalming innocent civilians in Vietnam, and shooting down civilian
airliners in the Persian Gulf, and mining harbors in Nicaragua.
Iranians in the U.S. are entitled to the full protection of the laws,
as is anyone else, and should be absolutely adamant in asserting their
rights.
As for the issue of inter-racial marriages ["Iran
has seen worse..."]: while having pride in one's heritage is certainly
commendable, remember that the KKK too denies being "racist"
and instead claims to be merely in favor of "protecting ethnic identity."
Such assertions are nothing more than blatant racism as well as a sign
of extreme insecurity.
Iran is not an ethnically or racially "pure" nation and it
never was. All those people who tout their "Aryan" or even "Persian"
origins had better remember the Arabs, the Greeks, the Mongols, Indians,
all of the conquerers and all the conquered, who intermixed in Iran over
the course of five millenia, as well as the various groups which have resided
within Iran. Much of those carvings in Persepolis, for example, where made
by Greeks.
The truth is that Iran has shared in the world's heritage. Iran's strength
is in its cosmopolitan, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic nature, not in
some mythical "purist" state. Hopefully this will be the last
word on these two issues which seem to have dominated The Iranian.
John Mohammadi
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