Reciprocated Perceptions: Americans and Iranians by Stephen Weiss

By Stephen Weiss

Late in the 20th century, the nation of Iran experienced a period of significant unrest and revolution. In 1979, an Islamic ruling regime was thrust into power, sparking tens of thousands of Iranians to leave their homeland and come to the United States. Since then, the Iranian population in the United States has grown to around an estimated one million, which is almost four percent of the total U.S. population- a huge number, but still a blatant minority. Among Iranians in the United States, as well as Iran, are ethnic sectors, but one in particular are called Azeris. In Iran, the group lives mainly in the northwest corner at the border of Azerbaijan, where many other Azeri people live. They speak a different language than the general population of Iran and have their own cultural customs, which has caused some inter-sector difficulty. Among the Iranians in the U.S., Azeris are a minority within their own minority group, which coupled with their already marginalized Iranian identity in today’s America can make their identity especially confusing to those ignorant to it, which I admittedly was until my interview with an Azeri Iranian-American named Sonay.

Sonay a student attending Rutgers University. When I asked her to describe her identity in terms of her Azeri background, she said:

Wherever I go I am sort of a minority. In Iran I am not part of the Persian Majority, I am Azeri, and that is about 20 percent of Iran right now. Then when I come here, I am not American either. So that sort of minority status follows me wherever I go. (Sonay)

Her parents, both from Iran, came to the United States for a combination of political, social, and cultural reasons, as many Iranians have. Her father left Iran before her mother, preceding the revolution of 1979. Sonay said her father’s family was often quite politically vocal against the then reigning Shah, which had brought them some difficulty. Due to marginalization under the Shah, a foresight that told him the future Islamic regime would be equally as oppressive to his ethnic group, and a yearning for a serious education in engineering, her father moved to France. Her mother, on the other hand, belonged to a more moderate and reserved Azeri family. She stayed in Iran through the revolution as well as the Iran-Iraq war and its aftermath, and decided that a warzone was no place to raise a family. After writing to one another for some time and meeting up sporadically in Turkey and occasionally Iran, Sonay’s mother moved to France and married her father, and they then finally immigrated to the United States.

Immigration was a recurring theme in this past election, with 70 percent of voters saying they believed it was a “very important” issue in their vote choice, according to Pew Research Center polls. The debate discussions seemed to have always involved the illegal immigration of South Americans, specifically those of Mexican heritage, but Middle Easterners stand marginalized even in terms of legal immigration. Those from the Middle East are often lumped together by Americans as one big, exotic group despite their varying cultural and religious differences. As many as 80 percent of voters ranked terrorism as one of the top issues that swayed their vote, and for most of them, the Middle East was the first place to come to mind when discussing that topic. Considering the current state of many nations in the Middle East as well as past and present U.S. relations with them, a certain degree of paranoid concern laid in the back of the minds of the average American voter. United States relations with Iran have been almost non existent since the early 80’s, when 52 American diplomats were held hostage at their embassy in Tehran. In addition, considering the current Iranian regime’s supposed aid to terrorist groups, the country’s people are watched by the American government with close eyes, often making it difficult for Iranian-Americans like Sonay to visit or even contact their families overseas. This feeling of paranoia toward Iranians by the American government cascades down to become a feeling that many Americans share as well.

President Elect Donald Trump has expressed his widely negative feelings regarding the Iranian government and last year’s Iran Nuclear Deal in detail. It has not been uncommon for past American politicians to express these same discontents with Iran’s regime, but in doing so they reinforce this unprecedented projection of fear, differentness, and demonization onto the general Iranian people. Sonay has been subject to multiple questions and comments regarding her Iranian background that blatantly display American ignorance and misconceptions as to the true nature of Iranians, such as questions about all Iranians being in support of nuclear weapons. Sonay said that for that reason, she often felt it necessary when growing up to hide her Iranian identity:

I sort of rejected my culture when I was younger, but at a certain point it became unavoidable to really tell people about it. My name says that I am not just an American person, my documents show that I am not. So it is not something that I want to hide from anymore, and I think it is actually really useful to have conversations with people about it. (Sonay)

Sonay hopes that she has made somewhat of an impact on the perception of Iranians in the minds of some American people she has spoken to. A person’s perception of an entire group of people can be effectively and significantly changed through simple face to face conversation.

In the minds of many Americans there lives an imagined reciprocated paranoia and hatred by all Iranians. This, for the majority of Iranian people, is far from actuality. While Iranians are cautious of the American government’s intentions, they often hold a keen interest in American culture. Sonay told me about Iranian versions of Starbucks and KFC, and in an NPR interview, Dr. Steven Kull, the director of WorldPublicOpinion.org, discussed a poll he took of Iranian people. When asked about Iranian feelings toward the U.S., he said that when an Iranian speaks to an American, “They do immediately express frustration with America, but you can feel underneath it a real longing to have better relations and an appreciation that you're there and listening to them. So, by the end, they are actually projecting a real sense of warmth,” (Kull).

This shows that relations between two political regimes are not one and the same with the relations and feelings between the people of those two nations. Without the influence and stigmas projected by governments, individuals from two very different regions of the world can find that they are, in reality, not so different after all.  

Works Cited

Azeri Genetics - DNA of Azerbaijan's Turkic people." Azeri Genetics - DNA of Azerbaijan's

Turkic people. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2016.

Fingerhut, Hannah. "4. Top voting issues in 2016 election." Pew Research Center for the People

and the Press. N.p., 2016. Web. 16 Dec. 2016.

Kull, Steven. “Poll: What Iranians Think of Americans.” National Public Radio. By Alex

Chadwick. Web.

"Who We Are: The Perplexity of Iranian-American Identity." N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2016.