THE BOATS NEVER GO THE OTHER WAY DO THEY?

In the U.S., Africa's Bantu see a reversal of fortune (Rick Hampson, 8/03/03, USA TODAY)

They may be the world's closest thing to a truly stateless people: abducted 200 years ago into slavery, relegated in our time to near serfdom, and driven finally into exile by civil war.

Until recently, most had never flushed a toilet, flicked a light switch, climbed a flight of stairs or watched a TV. They had never talked on a telephone, cooked on a stove or ridden in a car, never held a pen or used a fork. Many have never crossed a paved road.

Now, they're coming to America.

They are the Bantus of Somalia, long the least fortunate people in one of the least fortunate nations on the least fortunate continent.

But suddenly, all Africa is talking about the luck of the Bantus.

Their identity, once a curse, has become their passport. The U.S. government has judged their future so hopeless that it has agreed to resettle about 13,000 from refugee camps in Kenya, where they fled in the early '90s to escape the Somali civil war. [...]

"We can't afford to have a concentration of people who don't speak English, who don't know our culture, and who need handouts," says John Lombardo, a block association president. "Buffalo is having tough times as it is."

The few Americans who know the Bantus, however, complain that they are being inaccurately portrayed as 21st-century cave men. "They're sub-Saharan subsistence farmers," says Kenneth Menkhaus, a Davidson College political scientist who has worked in Somalia. "They're not from the moon."

He says the Bantus are remarkable for their industry, adaptability and resilience; having survived so much, they'll have no trouble learning to use a can opener or brush their teeth.

But it's clear their resettlement will require the most ambitious and complex effort since the Hmong people of Laos arrived a quarter century ago, after losing their U.S.-supported fight against communist forces.

Three thoughts occur:

(1) That the luck of the Bantus lies wholly in getting to become Americans speaks volumes about the Left's anti-American idiocies.

(2) One hundred years ago some John Smith was saying the same thing as John Lombardo says here, but he was saying it about Italians.

(3) If the Bantus are anything like the Hmong, we're damned lucky to have them. And one wouldn't be wise to bet against it. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 5, 2003 9:49 PM