If you’re Somali in St. Cloud Minnesota, some media outlets would have you believe that it’s the worst place in the USA to be. But my time there showed me otherwise.
Somalis have been singled out as a ‘dangerous’ group through a government-imposed travel ban which prevents new refugees (including family of those already in the country) from entering the USA. However, in spite of increasingly negative rhetoric, Somali Americans in St. Cloud are thriving and revitalizing the economic and social fabric of the community.
“Instead of (the public) hearing from the media, now we’re telling our own narrative. That helps the Somali communities and the communities that lived here before get to know each other better and accept each other”, local Abdi Daisane told me.
So what’s it really like to live as a Somali in St. Cloud? Are the insular days of ‘White Cloud’, as St. Cloud used to be known, gone?
