Trump criticized for post targeting Somali kindergarteners in Twin Cities, sparking claims he put children at risk
Outrage is mounting in Minnesota’s Twin Cities after community members said a surge in anti-Somali and anti-Muslim rhetoric has reached a dangerous new pitch.
The backlash follows a social media post earlier this week by President Trump that shared video of Somali American children celebrating a kindergarten graduation at a K-8 school in St. Paul, Minnesota. WCCO has blurred the children’s faces in the attached video.
Mr. Trump reposted a caption from another account that read, “Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
On Wednesday morning, faith and community leaders — including members of the Somali community — convened at Minneapolis’s Karmel Mall to denounce what they described as the politicization and public targeting of Somali students.
“The highest level of our government is attacking children. Imagine that,” said Imam Yusuf Abdulle, executive director of the Islamic Association of North America.
Speakers said they are exhausted by repeated incidents in which Muslims are vilified — from threatening voicemails to a school bus set ablaze in May following a federal raid of daycares and autism resource centers suspected of fraud — warning that together they signal a worsening climate of hostility.
“We are here not because of one incident, but a pattern,” said Malika Dahir, executive director of Reviving Sisterhood. “We have stood at podiums like this before. Just a couple of months ago, we stood right here after a school bus was set on fire, yet here we are again because this has become a pattern, a pattern that should trouble every one of us.”
Minnesota’s chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said the president endangered lives by posting the image on a global platform, arguing it painted a target on the students and their school.
Dahir urged people across the political spectrum to stand together and affirm that children deserve protection.
Also this week, Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher asserted that a small number of Somali youths involved in gangs are responsible for more than a dozen homicides in the metro area. Abdisalam Adam, principal of East African Elementary Magnet School in St. Paul, cautioned against conflating ethnicity and culture with crime.
“Lumping the Somali community together and naming everything Somali is a big problem that we need to call out,” Adam said.
On Tuesday, Minneapolis City Council Vice President Jamal Osman also criticized Fletcher’s remarks, calling them disappointing.
“Somali youth deserve investment, dignity, opportunity, and respect — not public officials using their platform to stereotype them,” Osman said.
Source: CBS News
