The Iranian Aryan myth survives despite scientific refutation and political regime change

Evidence

Alongside the Eurocentric, Islamophobic, anti-Arab, and white supremacist beliefs that form its basis, the Aryan myth relies on the illusion that Iranians have remained ethnically pure and racially white across two millennia of cultural exchange and variable borders by sidestepping out-marriage and other reproductive encounters with non-Iranian populations. The idea that Iranians are racial Aryans remains pervasive in Iran and its diaspora, despite a century of successive revolutions, governments, and uprisings opposed to the very regimes that concretized the myth. Perhaps most disturbing to some second-generation Iranian Americans, the myth remains pervasive despite absolute refutation of the racial science on which it was constructed. — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness, 178

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why does the Aryan myth outlast the regimes that built it — what social functions keep it alive in diaspora?
• XREF: connects to: The 1953 coup institutionalized Aryan racial ideology in Iranian state education — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 174; The Aryan-Iran etymology is a recent invented racial fiction — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 558; Iranians’ inherited Aryan myth erases India and is inseparable from anti-Arab racism — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 1461

Related

• The Aryan-Iran etymology is a recent invented racial fiction (similarity 0.88)
• Iranians’ inherited Aryan myth erases India and is inseparable from anti-Arab racism (similarity 0.87)
• The 1953 coup institutionalized Aryan racial ideology in Iranian state education (similarity 0.86)
• The Iran-Aryan etymological linkage is a recent racial invention. (similarity 0.85)
• Iranian family racial talk repeatedly centers the Aryan myth and Persian exceptionalism (similarity 0.84)
• The first generation inherited Aryan whiteness from Iranian state socialization (similarity 0.83)
• Iranian internalized racism positions Iranians as Aryan and superior to Arabs, expunging India (similarity 0.82)
• Ethnicity, nationality, and religion cannot fully explain anti-Iranian bias (similarity 0.81)
• The Indo-European language tree gave Iran a scientific excuse to disavow Arab kinship (similarity 0.81)
• Iranians are legally white yet visibly raced in daily life (similarity 0.80)
• Iranian Americans arrived with legal whiteness and Aryan nationalist ideologies (similarity 0.80)
• Language difference between Persian and Arabic anchors Iranian claims to whiteness (similarity 0.79)
• First-generation Iranian parents teach their children that Iranians are Aryan whites (similarity 0.79)
• South Asian claimants used Iranian ‘Aryan’ origin to argue their whiteness (similarity 0.78)