Skip to main content

Discrimination is a word Parisa Shamaei-Zadeh uses often when describing her experience of being an Iranian-American in Eastern Kentucky.


Shamaei-Zadeh, a senior at Paintsville High School and a student at Johnson County / Paintsville Early College Academy at Big Sandy Community and Technical College, wrote about her struggles and received $42,000 for the William C. Parker Diversity Scholarship at the University of Kentucky.

“It’s quite a paradox, I believe, because I was born in America. I was born in Kentucky and I’m discriminated as a second-class citizen most of the time,” said Shamaei-Zadeh, 17.

She is a member of the University of Kentucky Iranian Association and is a cheerleader for PHS. When she graduates in the spring, she will have an Associate in Science degree from BSCTC. She would like to go on to study pre-medicine and wants to be a physician so she can work in undeserved areas. Her father, Dr. Ali Shamaei-Zadeh, is from Iran, and her mother, Patricia Nelson, is from Lawrence County. She makes annual trips to Iran for about five weeks to visit her family.

Growing up, Shamaei-Zadeh would experience name-calling from fellow classmates. In middle school, students would call her family “terrorists,” something she recalled crying about when returning home. Over the years, Shamaei-Zadeh became more outspoken against racism and discrimination. This has pushed negative comments away from her for the most part, but they still occur.

She remembers a time when a women commented on a Facebook photo of her wearing a head scarf telling her “to go back to my country and that I need to leave America.”

“It’s really hurtful because I was born in this country and I know people who are just like me, who are naturalized citizens ... but they’re being discriminated because of their heritage,” said Shamaei-Zadeh.

She blames this discrimination on how Middle Eastern individuals are portrayed in the media and how many in eastern Kentucky do not know anyone who is Middle Eastern.

“They just see the news, that’s their only outlet to the current events,” she said. “So when they see the news, they form this stigma around Middle Eastern people, but they don’t meet actual Middle Eastern people to know what their lives are like and what they go through, how the news affects them and how the recent laws affect them.”

Shamaei-Zadeh tries to use her own heritage to educate others on the issue by meeting and speaking to as many as she can. She said she tries to form relationships so that every time others see the news they can “think of me and my family and think of how it affects us and how we feel about it.”

Though Shamaei-Zadeh has experienced a lot of conflict because of her heritage, this discrimination has only fueled her beliefs for racial equality even more.

“I believe whole-heartedly that everyone should be a whole within America and should not be judged by their race.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The woman who allegedly opened fire at YouTube’s headquarters in a suburb of San Francisco, injuring three before killing herself, was apparently furious with the video website because it had stopped paying her for her clips. Police in California named the shooter as Nasim Najafi Aghdam. Aghdam was “upset with the policies and practices of YouTube”, San Bruno police chief Ed Barberini said at a press conference on Wednesday. “This appears to be the motive for this incident.” No evidence had been found linking her to any individuals at the company where she allegedly opened fire on Tuesday, he said. Police gave her age as 39 but her brother said she would have turned 38 on Wednesday. Two of the three shooting victims from the incident were released from the Zuckerberg San Francisco general hospital on Tuesday night. A third, a male in his 30s, is currently in “serious condition”, a hospital spokeswoman said Wednesday morning. A fourth victim had been injured, but not shot,...
Post a Comment
Read more
I saw him after the 1998 World Cup where he had called a controversial penalty kick against Brazil for Norway. This was a friendly at Foxboro on September 12, 1998 between the US and Mexico's women's team that the US won 9-0 although he wasn't the ref but rather was there for some kind of award. I shouted out to him as he walked by "اسی چاکریم!" but he either didn't hear me or chose not to respond. https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2019/...-builder-award Esfandiar "Esse" Baharmast, a former referee, player, coach and current instructor who has been involved in more than a dozen World Cup tournaments and Olympic Games, has been named the 2020 winner of U.S. Soccer's prestigious Werner Fricker Builder Award. The Iranian who officiated the first MLS match and first MLS Cup, and won the inaugural MLS Referee of the Year award in 1997, is the second referee to receive U.S. Soccer's highest honor after Gerhard Mengel in 2005. The Wern...
Post a Comment
Read more
Iranian migration has left a mark on Mexican culture and history that belies its sporadic nature. In recent decades, increasing numbers of Iranians have made their way here, making a home a world away in a country that many say reminds them of their homeland. The Iranian presence in Mexico dates back centuries to when Mexico City was a thriving capital in Spain's empire. Ships arrived regularly on Manila galleons from the Philippines, bringing luxury goods from Asia in return for Mexican silver. Thousands of people from across Asia crossed to Latin America on these boats. Among them was Don Pedro de Zarate, a merchant from Isfahan, Iran, who made his way to Mexico City in the 1720s. He was part of a small community of New Julfa Armenians living in the La Merced neighborhood. Accused of being a heretic by the Spanish Inquisition, we only know of their existence because of de Zarate's testimony to the inquisition in Mexico City in 1730. It is unclear if de Zarate...
Post a Comment
Read more