Tuesday’s Teleconference
Nov 6th, 2008 by Sams
Before any interview I always try to find out as much as I can about the interviewee so as to ask more intelligent, informed questions so I was a little nervous going into Tuesday’s teleconference. I know very little about Iran so I knew I wouldn’t be able to ask any informed questions. It was strange that the Iranian students are taking a class to learn about our country and I know virtually nothing about theirs, or what it means to be Iranian in the 21st Century.
I was surprised by the relative comfort with which the conference took place. Given the tense relations between our countries I expected it to be awkward with neither party willing to ask any provocative questions for fear of insulting the other party. Perhaps that prevented my classmates and I from asking any of the real questions on our mind but the Iranian students seemed much more comfortable putting it out there and asking anything such as, ‘how is it rational, after the past eight years, to vote for a republican?’ I thought that was a great question, one which, no matter how many times I hear an answer I never understand but that is what partisan politics is all about.
The other thing that sticks out in my mind was the student who asked why we consider Obama black, only for her teacher to later clarify that he thought she was talking about more than skin color. Perhaps it was a misunderstanding, but I found that to be really offensive. Defining characteristics or attributes as white or black is extremely racist. That is to say, anyone who says the president elect isn’t really black because of his education or his personality reason needs to reevaluate why they unfairly assume those attributes to belong predominantly to white people. Like I said, maybe I misunderstood what the teacher was getting at or maybe the students and their teacher misunderstand that race is more than anything a construct.
Thanks to the election, and this class, I have started keeping up on news on more of a regular basis and this is something I hope to continue. I agree with the professor who said that we should all try to learn more about Iran lest we rely solely on the picture our government and media portrays.