OPINION

The Republican Party Has a Racism Problem

What attacks on Somali people really mean

6 min read

Just now

It’s not exactly a secret: the Republican Party in the US has been making special efforts to go on the attack against the Somali community in the US. For the last several months, Republicans have really been going scorched earth in their attacks on Somali people, especially in the state of Minnesota, governed by former Democratic nominee for Vice President, Tim Walz.

Accusations of welfare fraud have been heating up as of late. The right in the US is really zoning in on trying to paint the Somali community in Minnesota as a bunch of lazy frauds mooching off of the system. This all culminated with an “investigation” by right-wing activist Nick Shirley in which he attempted to prove Somali-run daycare centers were committing fraud based on his own lack of understanding of how these centers work.

Part of his pseudo-investigation was him going to daycare centers with a camera crew and asking to sign up a child there. As has been explained, this is not the appropriate way in which you go about signing up a child for daycare. If someone turns up to daycare or a nursery with a camera crew and starts acting like Nick and his crew did, people are naturally going to be suspicious, and this is what we saw with Shirley. Daycare…