The person I have interviewed is one of my friends, he and is family are Azerbaijanis that have lived the Northwestern territory of Iran. I will refer to my friend as John to keep him anonymous, but anyway we held this interview at his college campus in an Architecture studio so there was a little noise in the background, but we managed to have a clear and concise interview. The angle I choose when proceeding with this interview is how do immigrants from completely different ethnic background such has those from eastern culture fare in western countries such as The US and Europe since western values tend to focus more on individualism rather than community. Since my friend and his family has lived in the US for some time, I wanted to see how they continued with their culture and values in the US while also seeing if they faced any discrimination at any point of their time in the US. In summary of the interview, my friend in his family kept their values and culture with John mentioning the following traditions such as I quote, “Um like, we still celebrate no ruse, which is our, like, spring New Year, and this is, it’s, um, originally, is our Ashura holiday. Um we do, there’s this tradition where, if someone is like, leaving and it’s like a kind of a permanent leave, um, then you like, splash water as they’re walking away, or we’re driving away.”
John has also mentioned that his family has not faced any discrimination in the US with John saying that since him and his family looked white passing and did not have a middle eastern accent, those attributed to his family not being discriminated against. John has mentioned that those from Iran who immigrated to the US during the Iranian hostage crisis were mostly discriminated against in California. Another useful piece of info John provided is that even though immigrants in the US face a considerable amount of discrimination, it does not compare to how Europe treats people of different ethnic background in which John mentioned that the Turkish minority that live in Germany are discriminated against heavily with Germans being very nonchalant about how much they despise the Turkish minority living in Germany. In a YouTube video by DW news explains exactly how bad the racism is with a black model from Germany not being successful due to his color with people in the industry telling him to try his luck in the US. John happened to not mention though how much Turkish Hip Hop has influenced the Hip Hop scene in Germany as mentioned by Unicomb in his article in which Turkish people has brought innovation to their Hip Hop scene yet are being discriminated against.
In summary though I have managed to learn that those who come from eastern cultures hold onto their values from John’s perspective while also learning about the rampant discrimination towards Turkish people in countries such as Germany. It was also nice to learn more about my friend’s culture because I never actually went that in depth with him about what he and his family do for traditions and compare it to how my family go on with our traditions.
Works-cited
(2023). YouTube. Retrieved December 17, 2023, from https://youtu.be/brAoihWbTxw?si=rbxSqZhKQu4U63VE.
Unicomb, M. (n.d.). Yallah, Brudi: How arabic and Turkish took over German hip-hop. Middle East Eye. https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/germany-arabic-turkish-took-over-hip-hop-how
