Self-hate driving wedge between fellow Africans

The biggest enemy is always the one within. As the Swahili say, “kikulacho kinguoni mwako” [your enemy is within]. That’s why today, I focus on “insider Afrophobia” as opposed to “outsider Afrophobia.” I use the term outsider Afrophobia to refer to the structural racism rooted in the white European West and within the racist hierarchical and hegemonic international order. Outsider Afrophobia is a white man’s disease — the fear, hatred, and systemic domination of “the other.” It’s outsider Afrophobia that’s the root cause of insider Afrophobia — the self-hatred, self-laceration, and self-denigration of blacks, or people of African descent. It’s the enemy’s sword turned inwards against self. Both forms of Afrophobia are insidious, but insider Afrophobia is deeply corrosive.

We will never fully and effectively combat outsider Afrophobia until we’ve conquered insider Afrophobia — the two are symbiotic, but the fibre to overthrow the former comes from vanquishing the latter. I have memories of both forms of Afrophobia from my early childhood in Kitui. I grew up in the environs of Kitui town on the “African” side of the valley — there was a river between known as Kalundu. Kalundu divided the African Quarter from Uzunguni, or the European Quarter. You had to cross Kalundu to go from one to the other. Even the African market — not the “nice” shops — were on the African side. The European Quarter was home to whites, Arabs, Asians, senior African bureaucrats, and the Swahili.