Listening to an Iranian official describe his region as “West Asia” got me wondering if the word “Middle East” is on the outs and why. I suspect Middle East is eurocentric for some reason, but West Asia also preserves Europe as a continent, which is Eurocentric in its own way because Europe is not a continent and never was. If we’re calling anything West Asia, it should be Spain and Portugal.
Iranians hold no grudge toward Greece, Rome or Alexander the Great.
Iranians do not identify as Persian first. Iran is home to multipld ethnicities including Fars, Arab, Azeri, Kurd, Turk, Lur, Baluch and more. Normally, members of these groups identify as Iranian first.
In the diaspora it is more common for Iranians to try to distance themselves from Iran, and that is why some tend to emphasize their ethnicity first. That’s would be a really weird thing to do in Iran. What if you met someone who said “I’m a New Yorker, not an American?”
It might be really weird, but it’s what my friends who live in Tehran do. There’s also this odd relationship with Afghani Persians and with non-Persian Iranians.
They’ll still claim Iran as their nation though. I’ve always found it odd, because with most other groups it’s what you’d find with the diaspora, although the Irish in Northern Ireland call themselves Itish, the Welsh call themselves Welsh, the Scottish call themselves Scottish, even though they’re all officially part of the UK — kind of a similar thing here. And like how someone from Georgia US or Kentucky identifies themselves by their state and not their nation first.
Hm, interesting. In my experience, it is much more common for the minority groups to emphasize their ethnicity. Which makes sense, because they speak another language and often have family or even a farm ‘back home’ in some specific region of the country. Persians rarely speak of themselves in those terms.
For Afghani I think the difference comes back to the nation split again - they may be Persian, but they’re not Iranian. (It doesn’t really make sense but that’s how I think a lot of people think about this issue.) They are very much the target of a lot of prejudice as well.