For Iranian-Americans, the focus is on America

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While the Iranian community takes some of the blame for the generally uneducated views that Americans show toward them, they also blame simplistic depictions of Iran by both politicians and the media.

Hossein Derakhshan, the best known of the thousands of webloggers who have defied Iranian authorities and posted pro-democracy views on their websites, sees some of the images that Americans hold of Iranians as the result of careless accusations.

Derakhshan is currently in Iran exploiting “a window of opportunity” connected to the elections -- a time when he feels the regime won’t risk arresting dissidents like him.

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“How can you say Iranians are the primary state sponsor of terrorism while not even a single Iranian has been involved in any act of terrorism after 9/11?,” he asked in a blog entry after President Bush's State of the Union address in January. “And how dare he talks about the reform in Saudi Arabia while almost all Islamic terrorist groups around the world are funded by rich Saudis, many of them with strong ties to the Royal family?”

Close to home
Most Iranian-Americans, like most people of any group, regard the debates over American foreign policy and Middle East politics as fairly distant from the day-to-day realities of life. There are about 1 million Iranian-Americans in the U.S., with concentrations in Los Angeles, New York, New Jersey, Seattle and Houston. The 2000 U.S. Census found 72,000 in Los Angeles County alone. Given the size of the community, many say that it is wrong to depict them as being on the edges of their seats awaiting the results of an election in a far off land that many of have never visited.

There is much to crow about, too. According to the 2000 Census, Iranian-Americans are the most highly educated ethnic group in the United States, with 27 percent of their children attaining a graduate degree by the age of 25. Twenty percent of Iranian-Americans, according to the Census, reported living in houses valued at over $500,000.

“We are one of the most highly educated ethnic groups in America, and one of the wealthiest," says Fassihian, "and we still can’t keep our grandmothers from being harassed at the airport." So since 9/11, he said, there’s been an enormous push to get Iranian culture and heritage understood by the wider American public. "That parade in New York was a part of that effort," Fassihian said. “We decided it is just not acceptable that we be invisible."

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