Too Much To Dream

Do they not have editors at the New York Times?

Glenn Reynolds finds a hilarious instance of nonsensical self-contradiction in this article about African refugees who are being brought to America. The article first describes the plight of the Somali Bantu, who were enslaved two hundred years ago -- by Arab slavers by the way, whose role by the way in the African slave trade is centuries old but generally downplayed in favor of concentrating on the relatively brief American slave trade -- and who have lived as poverty-stricken pariahs courtesy of those wonderful and hospitable folks, the Somalis, who despised their darker skin and wide noses (but -- but the Africans can't be racist on the basis of skin color!), stuffed them in barren refugee camps, and often attacked them -- the actual physical violence kind of attack, not merely with words. Then the writer of the article, one Rachel L. Swarns, goes on later to say on the next page:

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.

(Bolds mine.) Oh, yeah, they don't know a thing about real poverty and racism, the special kind that only we in America can produce, the kind that will probably seem like heaven compared to what they have gone through. "Mother! Guess what! A girl at school looked at me funny and called me a nasty name and then her friends didn't chase me and try to beat me up! Nothing else happened! Americans are so nice, even their mean people are nicer!" "Father -- look! We have a bathroom inside the house! Is America like paradise?"

Yeah, it's gonna be tough adjusting to the racism and poverty in America, but I think they'll manage just fine.