American football player Tyler Adams was asked by an Iranian journalist ahead of a match between United States and Iran at the FIFA World Cup 2022 whether he was comfortable, being an African-American to represent the US. In the conference ahead of the match, Press TV’s Milad Javanmardi pointed out how Tyler Adams says the name of Iran wrong.
“First of all, you say you support the Iranian people, but you’re pronouncing our country’s name wrong,” Milad Javanmardi said.
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“Our country is named ur·aan, not eye·ran. Please, once and for all, let’s get this clear.” Milad Javanmardi added questioning whether or not Tyler Adams, a 23-year-old African-American man, was comfortable representing “a country that has so much discrimination against black people in his own borders.”
“We saw the Black Lives Matter movement over the past few years. Are you OK to be representing the U.S., meanwhile, there’s so much discrimination happening against Black people in America,” Milad Javanmardi said.
Tyler Adams, a midfielder for the United States, calmly addressed the pronunciation and discrimination question.
“You know, there’s discrimination everywhere you go. One thing that I’ve learned, especially from living abroad in the past few years and having to fit in in different cultures and kind of assimilate into different cultures is that in the U.S., we’re continuing to make progress every single day,” Tyler Adams said.
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“You know, growing up for me, I grew up in a white family with obviously an African American heritage and background as well. So, I had a little bit of different cultures and I was a very, very easily able to assimilate in different cultures. So, you know, not everyone has that, that ease and the ability to do that. And obviously it takes longer to understand and through education, I think it’s super important. Like you just educated me now on the pronunciation of your country,” he added.
