The Somalization of a Minnesota Town
“Faribault has become our city,” a Somali interviewed by the Minnesota Post bragged. Faribault, Minnesota, is a small city about an hour’s drive from Minneapolis. On paper it should have the smaller crime rate of the alphabetically similar Farmington which is nearly the same size and only a half hour away. Instead, Faribault has more than twice as much violent crime, aggravated assaults, burglaries and car thefts, 30% more rapes, and 8 times as many robberies. Farmington has no arsons, but Faribault has the most arsons of any city outside major strongholds like Minneapolis, St. Paul or Duluth. But Faribault has something Farmington doesn’t: diversity. Especially from its Somalis. The city of over 20,000 used to be much less diverse. In 1990, it was even 98% white. Or as the Minnesota Post described it, with a shudder, “an almost entirely homogeneous white community, not much different from many towns across Minnesota.” But Faribault was an hour away from Minneapolis at a time when it w...