From: khademi@cajal.usc.edu (Peyvand Khademi)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.bahai
Subject: Response to racism
Date: 27 Aug 92 16:23:01 GMT
Organization: <none>

I sent this article to soc.culture.iranian (SCI) in support of an
article that called for a stop to racism evident in an on-going thread
re: Iranians/Arabs on SCI.  Since my feelings and ideas on the topic
come from my Baha'i beliefs, I thought it would be appropriate to
cross-post on SRB.
----------------------------------------
In article <l9np9pINN5lh@cajal.usc.edu>, khademi@cajal.usc.edu
(Peyvand Khademi) writes:

It's refreshing and heartening to hear the voice of reason and
enlightened principle rise amid the litany of rhetoric on this Iranian/
Arab thread.

In <jamshid.714849354@cgl.ucsf.edu>, Jamshid Naghizadeh writes:

> SCI is not the school yard where people can throw around ethnic or 
> racist jokes  for laughs or enjoyment. This is a powerful medium 
> with over 20000 subcribers many of them non-Iranains. These jokes 
> and racist remarks create ill feeling between us and our Arab 
> neighbors.

Jamshid, you make a very good point.  Your analogy of the school yard
is particularly poignant:  ethnic bias, resentment and hatred are
childish.  A child imitates behavior. A mature adult investigates,
reasons, ponders.  For centuries, even millennia, Iranians have
hated Arabs, the English have hated the French, the Chinese have hated
the Japanese, and everyone has hated the Jews.  Each generation learns
the hate from the previous.  Each child is burdened with the festering
hate brought on by attachment to perceived historical injustices.
This is caveman behavior.  Time to grow up.  Time to look into each
others eyes and see not ethnicity, but humanity.  After taking that
critical, first step, time to set about the difficult, perhaps even
torturous task of disentangling our psyches from the hatred and
learning to love.  How many of us Iranians have ever come into contact
with an Arab, approached him or her with openness and allowed his or
her humanity to touch our hearts?  Far too few.  If we are honest with
ourselves, the likely after-thought from the most civil of such
encounters is a snide, "Nice guy.  Too bad he's an Arab."  Who among us
is not repulsed by the vileness of the KKK, or the Neo-Nazi movement?
And if we reflect for a minute we'll discover that what really offends
our inner sensibilities even more so than the dreadful actions they
perpetrate is the reeking, naked hatred that emanates from them.  Yet
we sit smugly at our terminals arms folded, and say, "that's ugly; I'm
sure glad _I_ am not like that."  And in an instant, we are stretching
our fingers, flames at the ready, full of righteousness, about to
revisit "history's dark hall of fame."

Prejudice is prejudice, bigotry is bigotry and hate is hate.  Not that
history is not full of injustice, but to concentrate on that is to
perpetuate the cycle of hate.  Whether an Iranian child learns to hate
Arabs, or an Arab child learns to resent and despise Jews, whether a
Turkish child is poisoned with hatred for Armenians, or vice-versa is
purely circumstancial to where the child is born.  Dreadful as it may
be, all socities have developed the knack to pass down the hatred;
that's the one universal constant.  The challenge of the new world
order is for our loyalties to expand from provincial to global, our
sense of self from nationality to humanity, and our focus of attention
from addressing the injustices of the past to meeting the challenges
of our joint future.  The key, IMHO, is to stop pointing the finger at
others and to look within.

Regards
Peyv&
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peyvand Mark Khademi
Department of Computer Science         khademi@cajal.usc.edu
University of Southern California      Los Angeles
Xref: sparky soc.religion.bahai:270 soc.rights.human:3213 alt.activism:15524 talk.politics.theory:3889