St. Cloud gets the New York Times treatment... for its anti-Somali racism [View all]

There are a few ways to get your hometown splashed across the pages of the New York Times. Its Thursday morning portrait of a fearful, refugee-hating St. Cloud is probably not the most coveted one.

The piece includes a string of baffling vignettes, each one portraying white residents airing their distrust and even disgust with the couple thousand Somali refugees that have settled in town over the past decade or so.

There were accounts of people who viewed Somalis as “innately less intelligent than the ‘typical’ American citizen,” a looming menace threatening to “replace” all white people, and most sinisterly, “not from Norway.” One unnamed woman “bemoaned” sections of the city where Somali immigrants had supposedly taken over, and where white people were simply too uncomfortable to return.

“‘They were just—’ she said, searching for the words to describe the offending behavior of the Somali Americans. ‘They were just walking around.’”

Read more: http://www.citypages.com/news/st-cloud-gets-the-new-york-times-treatment-for-its-anti-somali-racism/511580851