Fired for Being African: Racism in Rhode Island August 6, 2007

From EastBayRI.com:

Meg Natale, owner of the House of Little People on Maple Avenue, didn’t mind that an agent from the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth & Families visited her childcare center last month to investigate a complaint made against one of her employees.What infuriated her was that it seemed as though the only thing the employee was guilty of was being black.

“I wouldn’t have a problem if they had a good reason,” she said. “But it was because he was African that they were concerned.”

Apparently the — of course, anonymous — complainant was worried that the employee, Musa Saine, a new bookkeeper and a native of Gambia, West Africa, did not have “proper documentation”.Mr. Saine has been living in America for 12 years, and has long held American citizenship.

This is not the first time Mr. Saine has been victimized by racism:

Though Mr. Saine said that he has had a “very nice experience” overall in Barrington, he is not unfamiliar with prejudice.While working at a bank prior to joining the House of Little People this summer, Mr. Saine recalled the time a southern white man questioned how he had even gotten his position as a black man.

“Right to my face,” he said. “It offends me, but I try to seize to the opportunity to educate more people.”

Mr. Saine said he made it a point to treat the customer nicely despite the insult, but even then the man would only concede that “he had more respect for people” because he was an African.

Oh you mean they let you people WORK HERE?And of course, Mr. Saine was “respectful” because he’s African…as opposed to African-American. (The sad thing is, were a pollster to ask this man after his exchange with Mr. Saine, “are you a racist?”, his answer would probably be a resounding “no”.)

One would be well-served to bear in mind that the entire “immigration debate” is not going on in a vacuum: the far majority of these self-styled good Samaritans (watching out for the “poor American worker”) are not raising the banners of nativism over the heads of Russians, Germans, or Canadians — but rather over the heads of non-white people with accents.