(April 14, 2022 at 12:13 pm)Aegon Wrote: The world being immediately ready to accept refugees from Ukraine but not Syria, Afghanistan, etc. absolutely has to do with race. It's pretty clear to me. Especially in the US, we have the highest approval rating of accepting refugees since Yugoslavian conflicts in the 90s. I wonder why Americans are okay with accepting Ukranian and Yugoslavian refugees, while hating Central American migrants and Muslim refugees? I'm sure it's purely a matter of geopolitics and race has no role, right?
Didn't the UK literally leave the EU because they were being compelled to accept brown refugees? And now the UK is literally matching refugees with citizens and housing them with UK residents.
It also has to do with media framing. I saw a story about a child that trekked over 2,000 miles to get away from Ukraine. Do you know how many Central Americans, Syrians, and Afghan children have the same story? They don't get equal coverage. At the end of the day they are all human beings in a similar struggle. You can pretend the world not giving two shits about brown people compared to white-passing people is a coincidence, but I would strongly disagree.
Lots of countries took Syrian refugees (though it definitely caused a political backlash in Europe, bolstering far right nationalism). The U.S. is notable in not accepting them.
Canada happily took a fair number, though not as many as European countries. Everyone I know was happy to let them in, and almost every church was involved in sponsoring them.
In general, people don't want to suddenly have to live people that "aren't like them". Yes, that's racist, xeonophobic, bigotted, etc. But, that's the way people are. To an extent they are right -- it can cause problems. In other ways they are wrong, and they would find that those "different" people are actually future friends if they could look beyond their narrow lens of fear.
