The story begins with some background on the problem:

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.

Wow - that sounds crappy, right? But wait, there's good news!

Over the next two years, nearly all of the Somali Bantu refugees in Kenya -- about 12,000 people -- are to be flown to the United States. This is one of the largest refugee groups to receive blanket permission for resettlement since the mid-1990's, State Department officials say.

But let's hear more about their plight:

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.

...

In America, the refugees tell each other, the Bantu will be considered human beings, not slaves, for the first time.

...

After centuries of suffering, they are praying that America will be the place where they will finally belong. The United Nations has been trying to find a home for the Bantu for more than a decade because it is painfully clear they cannot return to Somalia.

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 now, New York Times reporter Rachel L. Swarns (and later the author of American Tapestry, a book about Michelle Obama's ancestry) drops this on us:

But they know little about racism, poverty, the bone-chilling cold or the cities that will be chosen for them by refugee resettlement agencies.

..wut? Really, Rachel? These African refugees who, according to your article, are persecuted for their skin color, features, and ancestry, are forbidden ownership of land, education, and jobs are going to have to come to America to learn about racism and poverty? Doesn't your entire article basically refute the editorial comment you've inserted here?

This article was the beginning of the end of my esteem for the New York Times.