The King’s shattered dream

It doesn’t take much living or armchair research to expose the racist dungeon. Sidney Muisyo, Communications Specialist with Compassion International – KE, is on the Danish case.

Some years ago I was privileged to be part of a team that was starting a Kenya office for an international media company that will remain unmentioned for now. As a new entity, we had a lot of pitching to do in order to get business coming in. One of the company directors was a mzungu. A great chap, really, and very professional in his area of expertise. However, as black professionals we knew the local business terrain better than our mzungu boss.

I recall the day it finally dawned on our boss that many of the business opportunities we bagged could to a large extent be directly linked to the fact that it was a mzungu running the company. To his credit, our boss was realistic and gracious enough to admit to the black professionals – us – that all he did was to make the calls, do the presentations, and sign the contract. He knew that his ‘whiteness’ was the key that opened the door. It seemed that the white skin had some sort of juju effect on blacks. On our part, we had no qualms about using this business competitive edge!

What was disturbing, though, was that much of the business was given by black corporate heads, who would not give fellow black professionals like us any time of day. At times it was plain embarrassing to sit through a presentation and watch a big shot openly fawning to this mzungu who had no technical clue about what he was presenting!

Years later, the writer had the occasion to work abroad. Here, a person’s race determined one’s access to life’s opportunities. If you were black, you had to fight for every ounce of respect and every inch of opportunity. Institutionalized hindrances designed to humiliate and victimize were part of ‘the system’ that dogged blacks at every turn.

You could be stopped for driving a fancy car simply because the white police thought that a black man should not drive such a car. If you happened to be arrested and taken to a court of law, you were significantly likely to be jailed for the same minor offense that would see a white fellow free onto the streets. Being caught with small quantities of cocaine for personal use, for example. The ‘system’ made sure that schools, hospitals, and other forms of infrastructure and social resources in predominantly white communities were better funded.

Every black professional I met knew what a corporate glass ceiling was all about. You could work you’re a** off only to see a wet-eared white fella promoted over you, regardless of the fact that you were definitely more qualified and experienced.

To my dismay, I discovered that even God was divided along racial lines! There were churches for whites and there were churches for blacks. It was said that the Sunday 11:00 am is the most racially segregated hour in that country

It seems to me that Martin Luther King Jr. was right in his latter days observation – that there is no white man who does not, deep within his heart, believe that he is better than a black man and that there is no black man, who deep in his heart, does not somehow feel inferior.

Perhaps, what makes King a great man is not the fact that he preached equality at a perilous time and at great cost to himself, but that he had the courage and faith to believe that racism can be overcome, and despite every contrary indication. Sadly, it has become fashionable nowadays to emasculate the real Martin Luther King Jr. He has become a fad of fashion, a sort of a benevolent black Santa Claus. We pick out the unthreatening, heartwarming bits and bites from his menu of cold and hot indictments against racialism. Few know the King of the latter years, long after the "I have a dream" oration. Few want to admit that the King of the latter years was deeply depressed by the depth of the racism abyss.

It is clear by now – or so I hope – that the examples I have alluded to above are drawn from the USA dream or nightmare, depending on which side of the divide you were born into.

Nonetheless, I have often had the nagging feeling that our European friends would rather discuss racism within the American context, and not within their context. I could be wrong, but there it is. One suspects this is self-serving. Somehow it is easy to forget that white Americans descent from all over Europe, Britain, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands and so forth. An interesting question arises – did the Americans learn about racism while in America or is racism a carry–over from the old world?

Whatever the case may be, European history cannot be divorced from racism. One need not even mention Nazi Germany to prove this point. My assertion is that most Europeans have never quite stopped this absurd superiority assumption, and simply change tack to keep with the times. Let us pick Denmark today as a representative of Europe, and steer clear of the ‘usual’ problem countries of France, Britain, Germany and Austria.

To my Danish friends, I apologize for stepping on your toes a bit too eagerly! It is, however, no different from the ‘I really don’t understand you people (meaning blacks)’ comments that I hear a bit too often from you!

Having said that, I must admit that my choice of Denmark was initially born out of a whim to resist the usual suspects. I therefore decided to do a bit of armchair research on racism in Denmark.

The results I got were embarrassing.

One is at pains as to where to begin, and certainly one cannot do justice to the subject of racism in Denmark given the space limitation of this Danish funded magazine!

I think Mustafa Hussain, lecturer in Sociology at Roskilde University, Denmark, captures a sense of what is happening in his article "Denmark: Democratic façade masks move to racism and xenophobia". Hussain says that compared to other countries such as Germany and Sweden, Denmark is probably the most xenophobic and uncivilized country in the Nordic hemisphere. He notes that even Gunter Grass, the German Nobel laureate, believes that there are racists in the present Danish government.

On top of the list of repressive legislation, which, among other things, presently bars young migrants under 24 from getting a spouse from another country, Hussain gives two parliamentary bills as examples to augment his opinion. One bill by the new Liberal Party proposed that migrant parents lose welfare benefits if their offspring are found to be involved in criminal activities. This amounts to legislating collective punishment. A practice that was common fodder to Nazi Germany. The second bill would legislate slavery in new clothes. The Minister for Integration Affairs, Bertel Haarder, proposed a bill which would force any asylum-seeker of working-age to take any job without pay, which the authorities may order him or her to perform while their application for asylum is under consideration. Anyone not doing the required 7 hours of unpaid labor will have his or her living allowance reduced. Of course, the bill fails to take into account the psychological and emotional condition of most asylum seekers, or whether they have the language and work skills necessary.

Finally, Hussain surmises, "Denmark today has become the best laboratory for any social scientist who wants to observe how the germs of a new-fascism are bred through the very institutions of democracy."

In a report against Racism and Intolerance, the European Commission has expressed its concern over the negative climate prevailing in segments of the Danish society concerning "immigrants, asylum-seekers and refugees". It particularly deplores the treatment of Muslim immigrants, and gives a laundry list of recommendations aimed at combating the present climate.

Of course, another article by the Muslim Media group argues that Danes when confronted with the prejudice says that, "the current xenophobia is temporary and stems from the perception of many Danish people that refugees and immigrants - mostly from the Middle East and Africa - are doing better under the country's generous welfare system than they are."

However, the more important issue is not to prove the fact of racism, but to ask– why the tendency to racism?

I am not sure there are black and white answers to this question, if you will forgive the pun. Nonetheless, I think that Robert Staples, an African-American sociologist and author of the book Urban Plantation, is right when he defines racism as "the generalized and final assigning of values to real or imaginary differences to the accuser’s benefit and at the victim’s expense, in order to justify the former’s own privileges or aggression". Thus, racism is the – regretfully but often successful - attempt to support one’s privilege, advantage or aggression, based upon one’s perceived racial superiority by virtue of hereditary and nature.

It may be assumed that the black inferiority complex is a response to the racial superiority complex of the white race. I suspect the reasons as to this response are simple enough. If a position is repeated often enough, both the victim and victimizer will believe it to be true.

Centuries of victimization surely provide an avenue for understanding why black people feel inferior. Constant pointing at the social, economic and lately, health conditions of the black race as indicators of inferiority are surely an understandable reason as to this sense of pervading inferiority.

To conclude, one must state here that a new generation of blacks – both in the Diaspora and in Mother Africa is not buying the racial red herring. To quote Mandela, racists can go "jump in the sea." It is not lost to the enlightened Africans that more money leaves Africa than comes in as ‘development’ money. It is clear that self-interest is really what precipitates and underlies most of the Western governments and donor/development ‘partners’ relationships in Africa.

The Man and the Lion

Once while a man and a lion were travelling together, they began arguing about who was the braver and the stronger of the two. Just as their tempers started to flare they happened to pass a statue carved in stone depicting a lion being strangled by a man.

"Look at that!" exclaimed the man. "What more undeniable proof of our superiority can you have than this?"

"That’s your version of the story," responded the lion. "If we were the sculptors, there would be twenty men under the paw of a single lion."

Aesop’s Fables No.81