The Aryan-Iran etymology is a recent invented racial fiction

Evidence

This chapter introduces a few of the underlying complexities of race and racism within Iranian American families. Within the immigrant home, the uncertain racial position of Iranian Americans is seemingly resolved through three major rhetorical themes: uncovering the “Aryan” roots of Iran, identifying the exceptionality of Persians in the Middle East, and reclaiming the glories of the Persian Empire. First, from a geographic point of view, by embedding Iran into a racist genealogy defined by Aryans and Semites, the pervasive Aryan myth airlifts the country out of Asia and into Europe. By asserting equivalence between the terms “Iran” and “Aryan,” twenty-five hundred years of internal complexity, shared borders, and cultural exchange with the broader Arab world are overlooked and ignored. More important, the nostalgic narrative of a pure Persian race and language that were forever compromised by the seventhand eighth-century “invasion of Islam” remains intoxicating even in diaspora for the way it salvages Iranian territorial losses to Arabs and others from within spurious “scientific” European racial thought. The common claim that “Iran” is synonymous with or comes from an ancient word “Aryan” is actually a racial fiction born in the last 150 years of Iranian history. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 558

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘Aryan myth airlifts Iran into Europe’ motif tracks Foucault’s racio/counter-history genealogy — race discourse imported from Europe reworked as Iranian self-understanding. Central to the reader’s Foucault-Spivak bridge. — connects to: South Asian claimants used Iranian ‘Aryan’ origin to argue their whiteness — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 151; The first generation inherited Aryan whiteness from Iranian state socialization — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 379; The Iran-Aryan etymological linkage is a recent racial invention. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 245 (+2 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the three rhetorical themes (Aryan roots, Persian exceptionality, imperial glory) by which the immigrant home ‘resolves’ Iranian Americans’ uncertain racial position.
• QUESTION: Spivak’s ‘strategic essentialism’ critique of colonial discourse applies: youth inherit an essentialist ‘Aryan’ self-conception that is itself a European racial import — a residence in someone else’s fiction.

Broader Connections

• The Iran-Aryan etymological linkage is a recent racial invention. #corroborates (1.00) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 245
• The Iranian Aryan myth survives despite scientific refutation and political regime change #corroborates (0.80) — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 178