They had an article (straight news, not opinion) in 2003 about 20,000 Somali Bantus who were being brought to the USA to escape persecution. First part of the article describes (among other things) the motivation for why they want to leave Somalia:
They are members of Africa's lost tribe, the Somali Bantu, who were stolen from the shores of Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania and carried on Arab slave ships to Somalia two centuries ago. They were enslaved and persecuted until Somalia's civil war scattered them to refugee camps in the 1990's.
and...
The Bantu, who were often denied access to education and jobs in Somalia, are mostly illiterate and almost completely untouched by modern life. They measure time by watching the sun rise and fall over their green fields and mud huts.
and...
But most have never turned on a light switch, flushed a toilet or held a lease.
and...
In America, the refugees tell each other, the Bantu will be considered human beings, not slaves, for the first time.
and...
In Somalia, the lighter-skinned majority rejected the Bantu, for their slave origins and dark skin and wide features. Even after they were freed from bondage, the Bantu were denied meaningful political representation and rights to land ownership. During the Somali civil war, they were disproportionately victims of rapes and killings.
The discrimination and violence continues in the barren camps today -- even here -- where the Bantu are often attacked and dismissed as Mushungulis, which means slave people.
and...
''I don't think Somalia is my country because we Somali Bantus have seen our people treated like donkeys there,'' said Fatuma Abdekadir, 20, who was waiting for her class to start. ''I think my country is where I am going.
''There, there is peace. Nobody can treat you badly. Nobody can come into your house and beat you.''
So now they're coming to the US, and how does reporter Rachel Swarns pivot to the challenges they will face here?
The refugees watch snippets of American life on videos in class, and they marvel at the images of supermarkets filled with peppers and tomatoes and of tall buildings that reach for the clouds. But they know little about racism, poverty, the bone-chilling cold or the cities that will be chosen for them by refugee resettlement agencies.
(emphasis mine)
Right Rachel... these folks don't know much about racism or poverty. Life in America is really going to smack them in the face, isn't it?
