Bigotry against black people poisons the Arab world, too
Protests in America have shone a new light on an old problem
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.
This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “Maids for sale”
From the July 25th 2020 edition
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