Armenia: Iranian-Armenians Struggle to Change Image as “Foreigners”

[Anonymouse]

Re: Armenia: Iranian-Armenians Struggle to Change Image as “Foreigners”

It's just interesting that there's such heavy divide between the two groups of Armenians. Though also predictable as 100 years of Soviet rule surely creates a lot of cultural differences.

Why are you surprised at this? My family's roots were in Western Armenia, which was part of the Ottoman empire, part of the Armenian population and culture which was uprooted from there. The remnants of these people settled in Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Egypt, etc. Post-WWII, when Armenia had its great repatriation movement, it called for its "brothers" and "sisters" abroad to return to the homeland. Many went, including my family. What met them was regrets, discontent and discrimination. That's just the way it goes. They were the objects of such wonderful terms of endearment in the vernacular, such as "akhbar" or "nor ekogh" versus the "teghatsi."

Every society likes to draw lines of demarcation between 'us' and 'them', insiders and outsiders, light and dark, etc. Even in Israel, no two types of Jews are necessarily alike and there is a bit of difference in treatment of Ashkenazi or Sephardic Jews, or those who are Jews from, say, Ethopia.

An even better example is modern day India where the emphasis of the caste system is still very present and alive in the affairs of its common folk.

More locally in the U.S., even reading literature among African-Americans, such as the Autobiography of Malcom-X or Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, you see black people distinguishing among themselves based on the lighter or darker types of skin.

I would venture to say this is a human, all too human problem that stems from self-awareness, i.e., ego.