TheState.com - Columbia and Cayce to share Bantu families

This is an update to yesterday's post - and this article makes our happy little hamlet of Cayce look even more assinine and classless. Columbia has agreed to help with the resettlement of Bantu Muslims, taking some of the *burden* from Cayce, where most of our citizens appear to not want anything to do with them. I think it's summed up best by comparing a couple of quotes:

• "We have people here who are in need of help," said Vince Ford, Richland 1 school board chairman [where some of the Bantu families will be re-located]. "If you have a child who's hungry or sick or has given up hope, what does a test score matter? We will do all that we can to assist these families and provide them with a quality education. We're excited to have them."
  
• "I still feel that 60 is way, way too many," Cayce Mayor Avery Wilkerson said, noting Columbia is 10 times the size of Cayce.
  
• Columbia City Councilwoman Tameika Isaac said the capital city "definitely embraces diversity" and will do whatever it can to welcome the Bantu. She said educating the public will be necessary. "We need to let them know this is not going to put a strain on our resources," she said.
  
• As for Lexington 2, [District Superintendent Barry] Bolen emphasized the district has never been opposed to educating the Bantu students. "This resettlement was something that no one had any experience with and we had few details on who was going to assist us with providing the services to them," Bolen said, noting the district first heard about the resettlement in June. "We had already set our budget and we got very few details on when we would get the first families and how many."

I understand that there would be a strain on resources, but the right response would've been how can we make this work - instead of being so fast to cry foul and say we've been puit into a bind. These folks have been kicked out of their homeland, with many children never knowing what that homeland looked like. They've lived as refugees in a land that doesn't want them, and they're coming to a city that doesn't want them either. But this community had better get off it's self-righteous derriere and welcome them as neighbors, or we'll stay backwoods and redneck for even more generations to come.



- posted by Rick @ 15:19