Analysis Of Funny In Farsi By Firoozeh Dumas

Holding prejudiced views against people and believing in stereotypes are seen as unpleasant qualities for someone to behold, though there is a study by “The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience” that shows that the human brain naturally classifies people, especially when the people correlate with negative views, like people of others ethnicities that have prejudiced views towards them. Immigrants are usually ridiculed for their differences because they can be picked on for either “stealing jobs” or being segregated because they are not “American.” Firoozeh Dumas was ridiculed and segregated for being an Iranian immigrant. In the memoir, Funny In Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas, the poem, “Legal Alien” by Pat Mora, and political cartoon, “Great American

Firoozeh Dumas and her family were invited to Washington D.C. by Jimmy Carter –the President of the United States at the time of the visit in 1977—to welcome the Shah and his wife. When they arrived at the White House, anti-Iranian protestors in masks horribly greeted them, “The demonstrators had crossed the road. They were stampeding toward us waving sticks with nails driven into them. People were running and screaming. Instead of Iranian flags, the lawn was suddenly covered with bloody and injured Iranians” (Dumas 113). These anti-Iranian protestors thought that Iranians were horrible people, so they attacked them, causing violence and hatred when the Iranian people were invited to the White House to welcome the Shah and they weren’t even protected. If they had been protected, or if there hadn’t been any racist people there, the violent attack would have never happened. Racist people feel the need to say that “these people did this and this” and they resort to violence. But, if they say the Iranian people are bad, and they attack them, are they not worse? If everyone was not racist and more accepting of people, then these violent attacks and naming calling would never happen in America, though it does because of ignorance and intolerance. Pat Mora writes of the way that a Mexican American would be treating and how they were viewed and explains how they are seen, “viewed by Anglos as perhaps exotic, perhaps inferior, definitely different” (Mora 10-11). Immigrants are viewed as different and inferior, which causes violence. If people did not see immigrants as inferior and differently and everyone was viewed as human