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Are you less concerned about the fraud then the possibility that people might be racist?
No. I think that the president's racism and the racism of most of his supporters is beyond a mere possibility at this point. I'm concerned that, guilty or not, in a free society we shouldn't be targeting criminal investigations based on race, especially when we've already shown a willingness to excuse the exact same behavior when it's done by someone we like.
I can see the discomfort around this particular case since it feels far enough out on a tree branch and blatant enough that it might actually move the Overton Window back to allowing for explicit judgement of immigrants on race/country of origin.
Also a decent chunk of the discomfort/reaction here seems to be along the lines of shock at how blatant, stupid and low-grade this fraud is. An organized sophisticated fraudster is one thing, but this feels like essentially willful ignorance in the favor of people who don't even present a real bull case for why they're in the country.
Something can be both racist and true.
There is a sub-population of white people in my country, called Travellers (other names were used in the past and, via the euphemism treadmill, are now considered slurs). They do have a worse life than settled people. They are victims of discrimination. They do have a reputation as criminals, scammers, and the likes. This is unfair because indeed not all Travellers, and judging someone solely on their ethnic/racial/outcast background means you can condemn someone who is not guilty.
But at the same time, it is true that Irish Travellers do engage in welfare fraud, theft, petty and large-scale crime, both here in Ireland and in countries where they've immigrated. Construction fraud is an old reliable (they'll turn up, often to the homes of the elderly, and through a mixture of persuasion and coercion get them to agree to unwanted home renovations, spend lots of money on this, and when they've got as much as they can squeeze out, then decamp leaving shoddy work and often need of proper rebuilding behind).
That latter scam happened to a family member of mine. I've got war stories from a job about Traveller scams.
At the same time, I have known since childhood respectable Travellers, many of them settled.
So yeah: it's unfair to judge all Somali-Americans as scammers and low-IQ thieves, but at the same time, scams and crime are likely to happen in the Somali-American communities. Any group which is set apart from the mainstream of society will develop a "them and us" mindset where 'we' are the only real people, and it's perfectly fine and indeed our right to pluck the pigeons among 'them' who we owe nothing to at all.
The key thing to understand is that it really can be any group. I went to a prestigious school and one of the biggest pieces of culture shock for me when I got there was just how endemic cheating, fraud, and petty theft were. If you weren't trying to game the system in innumerable little ways you were viewed as a rube or a mug. If you called out a fellow student for shoplifting from the corner store or rifling through an unattended bag you'd get a reputation as a scold. I was actually told once by a TA that I was "hurting myself" by trying to do my classwork honestly instead of taking advantage of available "opportunities".
In my experience "it's perfectly fine and indeed our right to pluck the pigeons among 'them' who we owe nothing to at all." describes the attitude our elite just as much as it does our underclass.
Shades of the Gibson's Bakery case? Where we got the full-blown "Dat's Rayciss!" response from some faculty members as well?
No, the students in question were overwhelmingly white and middle eastern, while the local population was substantially black.
Same general attitude, though? Local store is next to university and plagued by shoplifting because students think they have the right to free stuff, fight the man, it's a victimless crime, etc. etc. etc.
Ah, your previous comment had me primed towards the racial angle.
Yes it was pretty much the same attitude.
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