Metaphor: something used, or regarded as being used, to represent something else; emblem; symbol.
On September 19th, 2016 Donald Trump Jr. publicly used the candy Skittles to explain his view on the current Syrian refugee crisis, tweeting an graphic that said “If I had a bowl of skittles and I told you just three would kill you. Would you take a handful?” He defended his tweet later in the week by calling his image a “simple metaphor”.
Contrary to what he may believe, there are problems with comparing the crisis of a large group of civilians caught in the middle of a civil war to a bowl of candy.
To give an extremely brief breakdown, the buildup to this civil war started in 2011, when peaceful protesters spoke out against the Syrian government’s oppression of the Syrian people. When the government began to crack down on those protesters, anti-government regimes then formed, eventually creating the Free Syrian Army. 5 years, 6.6 million displaced people, and 301,781 - 470,000 deaths later we have the current Syrian war refugee crisis.
And skittles are candy.
The Syrian people did not ask for a civil war to break out; they simply wanted to voice their opinions to their government about reform. And many weren’t even fighting in the war efforts; they were civilians who got caught in the crossfire; violence is the very thing they’re trying to remove themselves from seeing or being a part of. Furthermore, don't be too quick to forget (or ignore) that this very nation was built because of an oppressed people wanting to escape persecution.
Yet again, skittles are candy.
Maybe I'm sympathetic for a people whose country is currently in turmoil because of social reform, due to me currently living in a country where social reform efforts are more relevant than I ever thought they'd be in my lifetime. Or maybe it's looking to a standard of political correctness we look to those in the public eye to have. Or both. Whatever it is, this tweet seems wrong.
Donald Trump Jr., you have a right to your opinion to want to prohibit the United States from accepting Syrian refugees. You even have the right to liken a candy to a people going through a civil war. But you really shouldn't exercise that particular right. Syrian refugees are people, and skittles are still candy.
