Minnesota boy tells president that he’s wrong on Africa

Published 8:13 am Tuesday, January 23, 2018

By Mukhtar M. Ibrahim

Minnesota Public Radio

For 14-year-old Yusuf Dayur, hearing news of vulgar comments about Africa uttered by President Trump bothered him enough that he had a tough time focusing on studying for his upcoming chemistry exam.

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“Mom, do you know what our president said about Africa?” the ninth-grader from Richfield, Minnesota, asked his mother Shukri Abukar.

Yusuf wanted to say something about Trump’s dismissal of Haiti and nations in Africa as “s***hole countries.” That was on Jan. 11 and the president’s comments had sparked a wave of shock and outrage around the world.

That day, his mom told Yusuf to focus on his chemistry homework. He had exams to prepare for the following week.

But Yusuf did not want to remain silent.

“How could he say such a thing about Africa when the house he lives in was made by Africans who were enslaved,” he said of the president. “Africa is where people came from. Africa is what America was built on. Africa is the world.”

“I think it was very arrogant and very uneducated of him to say that about African nations,” he said.

If he didn’t respond to the president’s comments, he told his mother, “it will bother me for the rest of my life.”

Two days later, he found some down time after he came back from a weekend Quranic school.

“Hooyo,” he said, using the Somali word for mom, “grab the phone. I’m recording a video.”

Trump has since offered a partial public denial, while privately defending his language.

In the two-minute long video that’s received 11,000 Facebook views, Yusuf admonished the president for disparaging black nations.

“I do not think calling other people’s countries s-hole nations, I don’t think that is what America stands for,” Yusuf said. “America stands for liberty and justice for all. America stands for people coming from all over the world to help contribute to our nation’s great success.”

Yusuf had recorded many videos in the past in response to events in the news. His first, in 2015, was a response to then-presidential candidate Ben Carson who had said he doesn’t believe that Islam was consistent with the U.S. Constitution.

He was 12 at the time and said he would prove Carson wrong. In September 2015, he proclaimed that he would be the first Muslim president.

His YouTube channel is called Yusuf Response. The description of the channel says it was “made because of all the injustices and islamophobia facing the Muslim community!”