ABDUL MOHAMMED
Sunday, August 23, 2009
The Aug. 14 Dispatch Forum column "Some cultures are too different for their people to live together," by Georgie Anne Geyer, was in a language reminiscent of a throwback United States of America. As a proud American of Somali descent, I was offended greatly by this. I am certain many other decent Americans were offended by it, too.
Alas, the headline alone smells of something close to the racist language of the past, when segregationist-based social and cultural prognostications were fashionable.
Geyer gave as proof 20 Somali-American youngsters who were brainwashed to enlist in the jihadist cause. Nowhere did she mention the hundreds of thousands of Somali immigrants in the United States, tens of thousands of whom live here in Columbus, who are law-abiding citizens of this nation. Nor are the Somali "young saps" (her term) the only Americans subjected or persuaded by Islamic extremists' recruitments in the U.S., as news headlines show now and then.
New immigrants of any background do not choose to settle in their own "ghettos" either, as Geyer erroneously claimed about the Somalis. I imagine the same was said about Italian, Irish, Jewish and other new immigrants then. Wrong then, wrong now.
If anything, the Somalis have shown an entrepreneurial spirit of opening their own businesses. By and large, Somali immigrants strive to do better in and by the United States, their adopted nation.
Another silly jab by Geyer was induced by a visit she made to Somalia in 1980. She wrote: "In the endlessly dusty streets, the only shining things were the ivory tusks, and they were a cruel reminder of how destructive Africans are to their environment."
Aside from poor-African realities of meager means, what a shocker. The local environmental destruction by all the Africans is peanuts compared with the facts now of global warming done in the name of progress by the First World.
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