This journal entry is a catch up of the entry that was supposed to be uploaded for the latter part of January. During the third week of January, some unfortunate incidents related to racism took place that caused an uneasy feeling among many students of color and international students. Due to my involvement in leading an open-mic discussion to bring attention to the weight of those actions and give students a platform to share their concerns with the university, I was not able to attend one of the scheduled language classes. However, my language partner and I were able to reschedule another time to meet for class.
My language partner took the time to hear about the incidents on campus and the activism that students showed in response. Our conversation was in Dari/Farsi. Upon hearing the background story behind everything, Zari and I discussed the root of such issues and why some people may engage in certain racist actions. Additionally, we connected this conversation to the ongoing injustices that are taking place in countries like Afghanistan and Iran. Minority groups in Afghanistan too become the target of hate crimes due to their religion, identity or physical appearance. Additionally, immigrants, especially those who are from Afghanistan get treated very poorly by the Iranian government. During the time that my family were refugees in Iran, they recall seeing a sign on the entrance of a park that said “No Dog or Afghan Allowed”. We discussed how experiences like this shape the people that we are and how we will go about standing up to racism and discrimination. This is similar to my experience and why I saw the need to speak up. I shared with Zari that most students who did speak during the Open-Mic were international students who came from countries that are associated with stereotypes. For example, my own country of Afghanistan is associated with terrorism and 9/11. While most Afghan people are not responsible for any of these acts, we have been criticized so much that we have started internalizing the feeling of being the enemy or “other”.
Additionally, we discussed the pressure on immigrants to learn the language or the dialect of the host country in order not to be the target of discrimination. I am a big fan of people diving into the society of a host country to learn the language and the culture of that country, however, when the pressure is put on through racism, it’s never a great feeling for immigrants. The example that Zari shared was about the Afghan refugees living in Iran who are forced to speak in the Farsi dialect or they will get poor treatment for the government and most of the people. She said that sometimes even Afghan refugees get called names and curse words for speaking their own dialect. This reminded me of how different our dialects are seen in our native cultures compared to outsiders. While in the eyes of the world both Iran and Afghanistan speak Farsi, there is a great divide among these two groups. Afghan people would not agree with speaking the Farsi dialect while the Iranian would claim that they speak the “original” way of Persian.
Overall, the strategies that we used during this week were mainly through conversation in addressing tough situations related to one’s identity and even language. I hope to get back into the learning plan next week.
Comments