By Rubik Atamian
As originally published by Texas Border Business newsprint edition August 2018
This is not a unique or unusual story but one certainly worth telling. I vow repeating it till my last day on this planet. Undoubtedly, many have had similar or more rewarding experiences, but this is the tale I have personally experienced.
I am an unlikely candidate to have such a story to tell, but for me to negate personally experienced accuracies will be tantamount to invalidating my own reality hence triggering my decadence as a spiritual being.
I am a 66 years old American who immigrated to this country from Iran in 1975 as a foreign student at The University of Texas at Austin where I earned an M.B.A. and a doctorate in Accounting.
In Austin, I had embarked upon accounting, a professional field dominated by white males on both academic and practice sides. The Big-Eight national accounting firms dominated by giants the likes of Arthur Andersen and Price Waterhouse were staffed primarily by white males with trifling congregations of females and minorities. In the Accounting Department where I was enrolled as a foreign student, there was one female faculty but no minorities or foreign born in the group. I was a 23-year old graduate of an Iranian institute with no knowledge of English and no money to speak of. My father worked as a typesetter his entire working years earning barely enough to feed his family going paycheck to paycheck for as long as I can remember. The point I am attempting to make is that I did not come to this country relying on my father’s international connections. Any knowledge or understanding of me by those in the new atmosphere I had entered was strictly limited to what they could observe through their limited interactions with me as a foreign student from Iran.
Whatever opulence and freedom I enjoy today were bestowed upon me by the Western Civilization, but particularly by white Christian men in the capital of the red state of Texas. Some of their names that, to this date, elicit continued amazement in me include Michael, Edward, Gary, Paul, Charles, Kermit, and Robert. Unfortunately, some of these great personalities may have passed on by now, but their legacy remains as fresh in my mind as ever. They were my window to this great nation as no one outside of their circle knew that I even existed.
As a foreign student, I received nothing but kindness and generosity from the white man. It wasn’t the sexually fluid or the Black or the Hispanic who watched for my welfare; it was the white man. Literally, everything I enjoy today was afforded me by the generous white men in Texas, because without their assistance I could go nowhere academically, personally, or professionally. I have often stated that even if the Shah of Iran had personally appealed to the then Governor of Texas, Honorable Bill Clements, to treat me well, that I could have received a better treatment. My wife and I could not have survived and accomplished what we did without my receiving virtually free education and ample financial assistance in the form of scholarships and fellowship granted me by the grace of these same men whose kind is being publicly and shamelessly vilified. As far as debating who built this country that affords us commanding a lifestyle enviable by kings and queens of a century ago, all that was needed was to read about Hoover Dam and watch related documentaries on YouTube.
I could write pages about my fortunes in health and standard of living, but this is not the time or place. I cannot sing enough praises about the white Christian male in the United States regardless of declarations to the contrary. I strongly believe that all people of the world regardless of creed, gender, color, or ethnicity must aspire to save the Western Civilization, its laws, culture, and traditions at all cost for the sake of our future generations. After all, most of the comforts we enjoy today are unequivocally the fruits of the hard work and sacrifices by the members of this civilization.
Rubik Atamian
Guest Writer
