Bigotry against black people poisons the Arab world, too

DAY AFTER day, week after week, the cars pulled up outside the Ethiopian embassy in Beirut and ejected their passengers: tired-looking black women, their modest possessions stuffed into cheap suitcases (pictured). With the economy in free fall, many Lebanese families could no longer afford to pay their domestic workers. Nor could they easily send them home. The price of repatriation flights had surged because of covid-19. So their solution was to dump the women outside their embassy. Dozens were left to fend for themselves.The protests in America over racism and police brutality have drawn much interest in the Middle East. Some people reacted with shock, some with . For others, though, America’s unrest was an opportunity to discuss the problems with race in their own countries.