When Western tribalism/racism is more endemic than ours

When Western tribalism/racism is more endemic than ours

By Opoka Christopher Arop

Today I am poised to let you the reader into what it takes for a writer to come up with something that either grows into a transformative idea when put on paper or dulls on its path to the latrines as toilet paper. Not everyone that writes is a good writer and indeed very few grow to become great writers of their time. I need not remind you, as I assume that you have by now read a great many low level writers, especially the ones with huge words, the ones with titles such as political analyst at the bottom, even better, an expert in a certain field [albeit, such writer may delude your precious with poorly constructed sentences, meaningless paragraphs, poor choice of words and wasteful reading].

That said, I have been meaning to write about corruption, the type we seldom don’t see. The version we are so afraid to admit because of our dependency syndrome that has made us all beggars. The one that has plagued Africa and kept us poor till this day!

I want to cut to the chase as early as possible. I have been astonished and stupefied to learn that most of the people, especially foreigners [not just Africans] but Europeans, Australians, Americans, Brits… they all somehow have a way of ending up working for the same NGO or company or performing consulting in the same project or related projects. And they often hung out together as one people. This of course baffled me. I was confused at how this was possible. How close were this people? How could they call us tribalist and corrupt and yet here they were thousands and thousands of miles away from home, working together; with others even creating positions for their people back home?

Then I came across a piece of writing by a White person, or so his name gave the impression. In reading ‘Bleached Bones as White Skeletons in the Closet’, I came to the conclusion that indeed White racism and tribalism are more rampant today on the African continent and in South Sudan than anywhere else in the world. I have the pleasure of travelling to China through Dubai. I was shocked to find that it was all the same story. American consulting firms, British firms, Australians; albeit, I guessed by the accents that all were from the same place, region or country. So back to ‘Bleached Bones’ then!

George W. White, a Harvard Law School graduate turned historian wrote that “Of the many manifestations of racism in the United States, one that is particularly insidious, because it is difficult to identify as such, is the idea that Whiteness signifies normality and that non-Whites are a deviation from the norm. If in given situations and accounts of events the racial backgrounds of the persons concerned are not stated, they are to be presumed White.”

According to the theory of Whiteness underlying such an assumption, all manifestations of “American-ness,” unless they are given a specific ethnic/racial designation, partake of that one unstated designation. The same assumption regarding Whiteness is also applied to “European-ness,” particularly in regard to the peoples and civilizations of western and northern Europe.

With this conception of Whiteness in mind, George has undertaken an analysis of Eisenhower-era (1953-1961) American foreign policy towards the emerging states of Black Africa. The backdrop for this analysis is, on one hand, the exigencies of American leadership of the West in the Cold War, and on the other, the growing struggle at home for African American integration and civil rights.

Let us pause and reflect: While working with Deloitte Consulting, I had the privilege to be one of the youngest Associate Advisors [Anti-Corruption Commission and Peace Commission] and the second black person to sit in on the weekly meetings of all senior Advisors. My first meeting was memorable in the worst sense. Of course there were awkward glances. When I spoke, one Senior Advisorretorted slyly that, “he speaks English.”

Central to Professor White's thesis is the idea of the transformation of Whiteness from a paradigm of open oppression of non-Whites to a more seemingly benign (but just as harmful) form of hidden control. This transformation, according to him, has occurred and manifests itself in five ways: as “White innocence” reflected in contemporary commitments voiced by the White establishment in favour of democracy, civil rights for all, and claimed generosity that is expected to cancel out the very long history of White-imposed racial oppression; “White entitlement,” meaning that because of the self-proclaimed good qualities of White people they are entitled to a “disproportionate share of power, resources, and esteem”; “Black erasure,” which refers to the unwillingness of Whites to recognize the accomplishments of Black people and the legitimacy of their aspirations; “Black self-abnegation,” meaning that Blacks must willingly agree with White assumptions of Black erasure; and “Black insatiability,” referring to the belief that Black expectations are unreasonable even when they are the quintessence of reasonableness.

Now, it is not my intention to propagate an African approach at proclaiming black supremacy over any other race, not that it would not be well received in certain quarters. My wish is that Africans and South Sudanese at that to start looking at the relationship of Western NGOs and consulting firms that operate in our country; and develop some interest in the pattern, that pattern of one Western expert, soon bringing another colleague and another and another; with disregard to the bulk of existing qualified nationals. If you find a pattern, then something is wrong with our system; and you will find that our labour laws are too weak to attempt to address these problems, or our government so overwhelmed with the supremacy or White people that, it becomes shameful to listen to a South Sudanese expert [case in point is the shock on the faces of National ministers and deputy ministers when I was recruited by Adam Smith International to provide consulting as part of a DFID capacity building project: Effectively Interacting with the Media].

So back to how good writers come up with the ideas for their writing! There must be adequate meaningful research into the final process of writing. It is not just a question of the existence of a problem. There must also be more than just bones. There must be flesh to give the story some meat. Many stories I have read, have been dry! I hope you think about it. Is tribalism really bad? Is it bad when I can work well with a Zande, Lotuko, Acoli, Kuku, Bari or Ma’di with whom I studied for many years or lived with in refugee camps?

“If you go to Nigeria or you see its pain and suffering, you will not see a country,” says Nigerian afrobeat saxophonist Femi Kuti. “You will see chaos. Now if Jesse Jackson or any of your top politicians have been to Africa, or Nigeria especially, and come back and say it’s a developing country, [they] are liars. That’s not development. Africa is the richest continent on the face of this earth. There is nothing we don’t have. Why are the people so poor?”

Think about what is really happening around you. Don’t just open your eyes so that you can see a road and not stumble over. Open your eyes to allow your mind to see clearer.