Rep. Omar hopes for “a reckoning” in how we talk about white vs. Black & brown refugees

Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar is one of the few Members of Congress in history to know what it means to be a refugee. From the ages of 8 to 12, Rep. Omar lived in a refugee camp in Kenya. “My heart is breaking for these children, for these families that have to make this unthinkable decision of leaving in the middle of the night,” she says. But there’s another heartbreaking aspect about this situation for her. There’s been reports that Africans and Asians fleeing Ukraine are being discriminated against at border crossings. “We haven’t seen the kind of care and compassion that is being used to talk about [Ukrainian] refugees” for refugees from other parts of the world.March 6, 2022