In defrauding taxpayers of over $1 billion from a program set up to feed school children, Somalis in Minneapolis participated in a time-honored American tradition that has its roots in the black civil rights movement. I say that because fraud accompanied almost every program that emerged from that movement. A strikingly similar scam to the recent Somali one was run by Jesse Jackson with his Rainbow PUSH coalition. It came around to bite him in 2002 when his fellow PUSH associates were convicted of stealing millions of dollars and Jackson himself only narrowly avoided being criminally indicted by publicly admitting to receiving improper payments and repaying about $200,000 of it.

Scams like these only work when public officials can be cowed with accusations of being racist. Somalis providing fake meals for the Feeding our Future program, like their predecessors in the Rainbow PUSH coalition, needed guilt-ridden Minnesotans as pigeons to perpetrate such a fraud. Just imagine if they tried to fleece an Islamic charity associated with Al-Shabab in their ancestral homeland what would happen to them. They would not go to jail; they would just have their hands amputated.

Ilhan Omar is a big defender of her Somali constituents and is the first to level charges of racism at anyone who looks too closely at the community’s shady dealings. She succeeds because she appeals to a wider audience of guilty white liberals. Like Gandhi, she only thrives under a liberal establishment that will give weight to her humbug. However, except for her dress, she is not an exotic. Like I have said about Zohran Mamdani, she is as American as apple pie and knows how to work the system and push all the buttons. Despite her lip service praising Somaliland, I would have a better chance of surviving there than she would. Within hours of arriving, she would find herself locked up in some warlord’s harem with duct tape across her mouth.

America has a lot of traditions. We don’t celebrate all of them, but it is foolish to deny their existence. Scamming the white man and screaming racist when caught is just one of them, so is anyone really surprised when the Somali community embraces it?

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