Young Somalis seeking dialogue :Assimilation, stereotypes are forum topics

While media attention on Somalia seldom strays from terrorism, piracy, and a 20-year-old civil war, those problems are among the least pressing for young Somali-Americans, according to participants in a weekend conference in Boston.The issues most relevant to them, they said, don’t make headlines: the strain between Americanized youths and their Somali parents, the barriers of access to American society, and the stereotypes that plague them as black Muslims.“The goal is to get the Somali youth galvanized and get them to take a hold of their futures,’’ said Abdinasser Egal, 32, of Cambridge, who helped bring the Somalia Diaspora Youth Conference to the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center in Roxbury this weekend.“We’re trying to identify the next group of leaders that come out of Somalia because it’s obvious the older ones have failed,’’ he said, referring to the 1991 civil war that continues to ravage the country.The conference is being broadcast over the Internet today. It includes topics ranging from learning from the past to breakdowns in intergenerational communications.
Shadiyo Hussain, 18, of Portland, Maine, said such discussions are rare and welcome.
“Where I’m from, Maine, we don’t have an organization or a community where we have interaction between the old generation and the new generation,’’ she said.
Hussain said she wants to start a chapter of the Somali Diaspora Youth in Maine to spark a dialogue.
The sponsor of the gathering, Somalia Diaspora Youth, is a loose association of community activists based in Virginia, Ohio, and Ottawa, the Canadian capital. They seek to maintain ties among Somalis living abroad, scattered as refugees.About 6,000 Somalis live in the Boston area, Egal estimated.“We have a joke that wherever you go, you won’t need a hotel,’’ said Egal, whose sister moved to Canada while he fled to America.The far-flung population, fearful of losing traditions, has tried to raise children as Somalis, but young Somali-Americans yesterday said keeping a solely African identity is not so simple.“The older generation likes to stay together, but my generation likes to assimilate,’’ said Huda Yusuf, 31, a chemist at Boston Scientific Corp. who lives in Shrewsbury.Having arrived in Canada at age 11, knowing almost no English and having more or less formed her Somali identity, Yusuf said she straddles both generations, insisting that “you have to be respectful of both.’’Amal Ahmed, 18, is firmly in the new generation. She never used to wear a hijab, the traditional Muslim women’s head scarf, because in high school in South Boston, wearing it was too great a risk, she said.Now, as a second-year education and medicine student at Northeastern University, she wears it proudly. baston