Afrikaner asylum seekers blindly dismissed by US academics

'We want out of SA' (via Western Voices)

A South African family is desperate to remain in the US, its members claiming they cannot return home because, as Afrikaners, they will be subject to racial discrimination...

The family, described by the law firm as "white Afrikaner farmers", is among dozens of South Africans who, over the past decade, have applied for asylum abroad for a range of reasons, including fear of persecution and violent crime. Some of the applications have been successful...

But Professor Mark Behr, of Rhodes College, in Memphis, Tennessee, and Dr Dennis Laumann, of the University of Memphis, have rejected requests that they help the family.

"I am not interested in assisting Afrikaners claiming discrimination in a non-racial, democratic, post-apartheid South Africa," wrote Laumann.

"In my scholarly opinion, there is absolutely no basis for their allegation - whatever evidence they may present."

Behr - who is an award-winning South African author - said he did not believe the law firm would find "any fair-minded scholar" to support the family.

"If the people your firm seeks to represent are in any way victims of racism, it is, sadly, only a racism of their own making, in their own minds...

Without knowing anything about these two academics, you'd have to think that only a demented liberal ideologue could reflexively dismiss an asylum claim, regardless of "whatever evidence they may present", as if South Africa was inherently some post-racial nirvana.


File under: absolutely no basis for their allegation.