Recently, in Minnesota, some Somali Americans were charged with ripping off welfare programs to the extent of hundreds of millions of dollars. If so, they should be punished. The president, however, has used this alleged criminal behavior to demean and disparage the entire Somali community.
But it is not only our leaders on the right who work to divide us. Those on the left belittle and mock MAGA folks as being unschooled, ignorant and intolerant.
Perhaps we should start focusing on what unites us, rather than what divides us. We are indeed one tribe and one race, the human race.
And I learned little about that while living in Somalia as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s. I left a mostly Caucasian, Christian, working-class milieu for a place where almost everyone I encountered was Black, including those for whom I worked. Almost all Somalis were Muslim. And they were no different than the folks I left back in the states. They had dreams, ambitions; they loved and hated; they were devoted to family and religion, and like many folks back home, perhaps a bit too much so.
Mogadishu is a couple of degrees north of the equator and always hot. When I lived there, air conditioning was nonexistent outside of a very few wealthy enclaves. From about 12:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., government and businesses shuttered. It was absolutely necessary because the equatorial midday sun made effort intolerable. One day, during the siesta, I was sitting on the small balcony of our flat and reading Erich Fromm’s “The Art of Loving.”
The wailing of a child caused me to notice a woman, who looked old and beaten down — though she probably was not much older than I was — barefoot, dressed in rags, limping down the street. Her eyes were expressionless, her head bowed. I discerned neither grief nor hope in her demeanor. Stumbling along with her was a boy of 10 or 11, also barefoot and in rags. He was carrying a little girl of 2 or 3 on his back. She was screaming over what clearly was an uncomfortable ride on her brother’s shoulders.
Finally, the woman took the baby, fastened a harness over her shoulder and slipped the child in. She clasped the boy’s hand and the trio ambled on.
I put my book aside. What I had been reading attempted to describe love intellectually. What I just witnessed was love. Selflessness. No adjectives needed.
Could I emulate her, I wondered? I still do.
Patrick T. Murphy, Cook County Circuit judge, Child Protection Division
A mother’s nightmare
I cried when I read the recent story that appeared in the Sun-Times headlined “A Cicero woman’s baby was in the NICU. She was in ICE detention.”
My daughter was born premature 28 years ago, and while she is healthy now, I still carry the pain of the 75 days she spent in the neonatal intensive care unit when she arrived early, weighing less than a pound. After the birth, I could not hold her, and the machines keeping her alive were beeping all the time. I can’t imagine being in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention while my baby was in the NICU. I applaud the reporting on this tragedy, along with the horrors of the so-called “crackdown” on immigration. It is inhumane and contrary to the faith those in this administration pretend to have. This is not protecting life.
Karen Costello, Northbrook