The Afghan workers taunting a diaspora teen briefly inverted racial power hierarchies

Evidence

Noncitizen Afghan workers, who must pay off migration debts from a rapidly depreciating Iranian rial, possess radically different lives from those of the advantaged diasporic Iranian American teenagers who visit during breaks from school. Farhad’s cultural breach offered an opportunity to upend the conventional power dynamics that placed the “dumb American” tourist—and the one in possession of American and Iranian citizenship—above the precariously employed, undocumented Afghan laborer. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 406

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: The image of the most disenfranchised Afghans shaming a privileged Iranian-American tourist could seed a story about reversed power dynamics and belonging within a single street encounter.