Photo by Kidist Paulos Asrat

IN AN interesting post at her blog Reclaiming Beauty, from which the above photograph of daisies near Niagara Falls is taken, Kidist Paulos Asrat quotes a previous entry at VFR in which she explains her experience as an Ethiopian immigrant to Canada and how her relatives became leftists once they had emigrated:

I grew up mostly in England and France (that was the nature of the exile my family had to take to avoid the massacre of the Communist dictator). My best friends growing up were French and English (I have a great love for England—especially Kent, where I went to boarding school). I had very little to do with Ethiopians, except what we got at home. Very few Ethiopians went to England or France—most went to Canada or the U.S. Growing up there doesn’t necessarily make one a non-leftist, but I have an innate attachment to these countries, and of course the West (much more so than to Ethiopia.) My uniqueness was in our isolation (although I never felt isolated) from Ethiopian culture, something which those living in Canada or the U.S. never experienced.

So, now living in Canada, it is with great shock that I realized all my Ethiopian relatives (and there are many of them in Canada and in the U.S.) are decisively leftists, except maybe one. And that their attachment to Canada or the U.S. was purely opportunistic. And even their children who grew up here at some point will complain that this isn’t really their home, or that they are being discriminated against, or they believe in the leftist programs like subsidized housing (for all those poor immigrants), or they question the truth behind 9/11, or slide in the superiority of Muslim culture in discussions, or they have a lingering scorn for Western culture.

I said a few times, in quite large company, that the majority of Ethiopians should just go back, since they are so unhappy here and are basically recreating an “exiled Ethiopia” in the snow and the cold. It didn’t go very well. But it’s true, better in a country where you feel at home, even if it means a lower standard of life. Plus, just as these people suddenly picked up and came out West, some with nothing on their backs, how much easier is it to just pack up and go back now that many have prospered?

The big surprise is that the group that I was born into, the Amhara, were the leaders of Ethiopia throughout the centuries. Even now, although another group is running the country (a Tigre, also from the north), he has the Amhara running the government for him. So, the Amhara should instinctively know about leadership, and how countries are run by the strong and the able, and if a weak group comes along, how detrimental it is to the nation as a whole. In fact, the Amhara lived by this strict strategy for centuries. But a few in the 50s and 60s, after being “educated” and “liberalized” (mostly, ironically in the U.S.) decided that equality of tribes was the most important thing. Thus Ethiopian leftists were born. And then came the Communist dictator Mengistu Hailemariam in the 70s (himself an unknown hybrid).

You are right in that if such a strong and confident minority group cannot see through leftist groups, and in fact hides behind them and even joins them, then who will?

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