Xenophobia vs Racism

Hey, I wrote an in depth article on just that question some time ago. Here’s a short version:

“Racism” has two meanings, none of which are synonymous with xenophobia.

1. The belief that each race has distinct and intrinsic attributes. In that
definition, a racist statement is one that assumes that there is some amount of
difference between humans from different genetic backgrounds. By that definition,
everyone sane is racist. For example : “Black people are blacker than others”. Or
“Chinese people have slanted eyes”.
2. The belief that there is a qualitative hierarchy between races. In that
definition, a racist statements is one where you present a certain race as more or less
able than another in some quality. For example: “Black people can run faster than
others”, or “Asians are better at math”, or “White girls are hotter than Black girls”.
It has to be about race. If it’s about culture, then it’s xenophobia. That’s one of the two
differences between them.

“Asians are better at math” is racist if you mean “Asian” as a race. Which, to the great dismay of
semantic nazis around the world, seems to be the accepted use of the word. “Asians are better
at math” refers to a superiority that comes from their Asian genes.

However, if you say “Asians are disgusting because they eat cats and dogs”, then you’re
referring to a habit they might have, a cultural thing. That’d be xenophobic.

Other example of xenophobia: “Mexicans take our jobs”, “Muslim refugees come to Europe
only to claim benefits and rape Swedish girls”, “Black people are not very dependable”
(mentions a race, but refers to a supposed cultural behavior), “Russian people are all thugs”,
“White people are selfish” (Borderline again. Only if the proposition refers to the supposed
ruthless imperialism often associated with Whites, that would come from their culture).

The other difference between “racism” and “xenophobia” is that “xenophobia” must be
negative, when “racism” can be negative, positive or neutral.

For example, the racist statement “Blacks can stay in the sun longer than Whites” isn’t
particularly negative. It’s just a fact, but since it highlights racial elements, it’s racist.

Xenophobia, on the other hand, has “phobia” in it, so it can’t be positive. How do we call a
positive of neutral cultural statement such as “Muslim people have excellent hygiene”? There
just isn’t a word.

Sometimes people think that xenophobia and racism are similar and their usage can be interchanged.

However, this is not the case as the two words are very different. Xenophobia refers to dislike or fearing

unknown or something that is different from you. Racism on the other hand relates that any race
determines the traits of human and their capacity making them more superior than the any other race.

[DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [ARNP NAME] | [ARNP NAME]
NAME [Patient Name] DOB [DOB] AGE [age] DATE [date | time]
pg. 2

Across the world there are racial discriminations present between people belonging to different groups.
They are discriminated against based on their cultural or ethnic beliefs.

Xenophobia is not only aversion to a person but it is a fear or dislike of other cultures and beliefs. Even

though some people feel that is a certain ‘target’ group that is not really accepted by the society; in reality

it is the phobic who holds such reservations and beliefs. It may be possible that the phobic person knows

that he or she is averse to the target group, they may not accept the fact that they are actually afraid or it

is their fear. A xenophobic person has to only think of one thing ‘“ that the target group is in fact foreigners.
This argument depicts the fact that xenophobia and racism are totally different because a person belonging

to a different race may have the same nationality. So while xenophobia comprises of multiple aspects,
racism is based only on one aspect.

For example homosexual people can easily become the target of a Xenophobic while they will not be the

target of the racists. Some racists tried to prove that whites were more superior to other races and that they

were superior to the Jews also. This gave birth to holocaust rationalization. Slavery and colonization in

which blacks were treated as inferior races was also a part of racism. Apart from this racism also tried to

rationalize homophobia in which the logic was that anything that goes against God is sinful.

In racism, racists treat people belonging to one race with complete disrespect and cause humiliation. This

practice is not ethical and moral and is not tolerated by most of the parts in the civilized world. On the

other hand when people belonging to one culture are afraid of another culture, they are called xenophobic.
Even this practice is unlawful and not tolerated by the society today.

Summary:

1.Xenophobia refers to dislike or fearing unknown. However, racism refers to disliking a certain race of

humans.

2.A xenophobic does not like anyone who is different from the rest and does something that is sinful. On
the other hand racist doesn’t tolerate people who do not belong to his or her human trait.

3.Slavery and colonization can be attributed to racism.

[DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [ARNP NAME] | [ARNP NAME]
NAME [Patient Name] DOB [DOB] AGE [age] DATE [date | time]
pg. 3

Read more: Difference Between Xenophobia and Racism | Difference

Between http://www.differencebetween.net/language/difference-between-xenophobia-and-
racism/#ixzz55PIt3dlt

How Scientific Racism Shaped Kenya

Inside the decades of dubious research and ideas that shaped Kenya.

Maureen was in labor when it happened. The stern nurse needed an answer, but she was in
too much pain to think. Her body and mind were fighting each other by that point. 22 years
old and lying on a stretcher outside the theatre at Kakamega Hospital, she had never felt
more alone. And the nurse wouldn’t let her be wheeled in until she signed the bloody forms.

“I can see in your file that you are HIV positive,” the nurse said again, unmoved, “You must
have tubal ligation since HIV positive women are not supposed to give birth.” So she took
the pen and signed, and then zoned out. When she came to, she was a mother. A few hours
later, the child was dead. In her pain, she had signed away her right to ever have another
baby.

That was in 2005.

Forced sterilizations of HIV-positive pregnant women first came to light in 2012, although it
had been happening for decades. The report, Robbed of Choice [PDF] has multiple reports
like Maureen’s. Almost all the cases documented were of poor women in public hospitals
and non-governmental clinics. It was our modern form of eugenics, an attempt to clean up
the gene pool by getting rid of those we deem unfit, or at least their right to reproduce.

Eugenics, derived from Darwin’s theories by his cousin in the 19th century, is more about
class than race. In its origins it was about getting rid of the undesirables, not just based on
skin color, but also on their socioeconomic status. Among its pioneers was Frederick
Osborn’s view of eugenics as a social philosophy deserving of some form of proactive
action. To actively do this in politically sensitive times required tact, such as deliberately
under developing certain areas, refusing to invest in education and healthcare, and
sometimes outright sterilization.

In the utopia the colonial project envisioned, Kenyans would always be at the bottom of the
social pyramid, with whites at the very top, and Asians in the middle as a buffer. But because
Kenya attracted the British aristocracy, the class element was important to immigration
policy of poor whites who were seen as undesirable. With hordes of eugenicists driving the

[DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [ARNP NAME] | [ARNP NAME]
NAME [Patient Name] DOB [DOB] AGE [age] DATE [date | time]
pg. 4

colonial project, its ideas on class and social control infused themselves into the colonies in
such core ways that it never left.

***

In July of 1933, 60 white men and women gathered in a boardroom in Nairobi. Among them
were medical doctors, executives, journalists, scientists and other prominent white people.
There were also a few Indians in the room. Their common goal was to formalize a group,
ending up with the lengthy name Kenya Society for the Study of Race Improvement
(KSSRI). It was a eugenics organization where scientific racism would thrive, all designed to
prove that blacks were inferior.

Of the 60 people in that room, two of them emerged as the mouthpieces of the group. Henry
Gordon and F. Vint were both medical doctors who would try to use science to prove that
whites are superior by nature. This was the core of the eugenics movement, but in Kenya it
was only one part of it. Gordon and his compatriots also had an argument for tightening
immigration to limit the social pedigree of white settlers. At the time, Gordon was in charge
of the only mental health institution in the country at the time, Mathare Mental Hospital.

In Race and Empire: Eugenics in Colonial Kenya Chloe Campbell explores how Gordon
and Vint used science to prove that Kenyans did not possess a sufficient innate mental
capacity. Gordon’s first study included a sample size of 219 Kenyan boys. He concluded that
86 percent had mental conditions, but even the rest couldn’t be considered okay without
creating several grades of “European ideas of normality.”

In another study of 278 Kenyans, 112 of whom had already been diagnosed with mental
illness, he tested them for syphilis. While he found that more than half the group with mental
conditions suffered the venereal disease, he concluded that it was racial differences, and not
social and economic ones in the new colony, that caused the disparity. This argument wasn’t
new; in a 1905 book, a settler blamed Indians and Swahilis for the rise of venereal diseases
in Kenya. He offered that “the healthiness of a place is greatly increased by not allowing any
native habitations within a given distance of the white settlement.” This was part of the
thought process for segregation of urban centers based on race, with whites occupying the
best areas, Asians the middle class areas, and Kenyans the poorest.

Vint, a government pathologist, focused his studies on correlating skull size with
intelligence. He studied 100 skulls and arrived at the conclusion that Kenyans had lighter
skulls and smaller pyramidal cells. In 1934, he concluded that Kenyan brains couldn’t even
grow past 18, and that they started decreasing in size after that. That was the same year
primary education became mandatory for white kids. Vint’s work was meant to prove that
there was no need of educating Kenyans because they couldn’t even grasp complex
concepts. It was at the core of the KSSRI’s mission.
[DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [ARNP NAME] | [ARNP NAME]
NAME [Patient Name] DOB [DOB] AGE [age] DATE [date | time]
pg. 5

One of the main motivations for the formation of the KSSRI was the growing clamor for
better education for Kenyans. From the onset the colonial system had set to churn out
technical workers, not intellectuals. That was the basis of the first school strike in Kenya, at
Maseno School in 1908, after students found themselves doing menial work instead of
reading.

By the 1930s, there was at least one secondary school, Alliance, and a spirited effort at
expanding independent schools to serve Kenyans. This was threatening the colonial order
that had survived for three decades by piecemeal investment in the base of the pyramid.

There was another context, crime.

With the economic depression of the 1920s and the increasing education of Kenyans, crime
rates among Kenyans had shot up in urban areas. Juvenile delinquency was of particular
interest, and Gordon would go on to claim that majority among his subjects had some
education. The point was that they were suffering mental illnesses because they had been
overwhelmed by British education. This was the “feeble-minded” argument which also
drove investment in mental healthcare and other facets of life, including the justice system.
Using their warped scientific knowledge, Vint and Gordon were providing a pseudo-
scientific basis for continued underdevelopment and incarceration of Kenyans in the new
state.

Interestingly, eugenicists also considered urbanisation as one of the reasons for increased
crime and psychiatric cases. In their thinking, urbanisation ‘detribalised the African and
made him unmanageable.’ It was part of the thinking that the African mind simply couldn’t
handle too much change because it was not genetically wired to do so. It destabilised their
feeble minds and led them to crazy thoughts that they could ever change the social pyramid.
This thinking preceded the official eugenics movement in Kenya which only lasted from
1930 to 1937.

On Christmas Eve of 1911, for example, the DC of Machakos wrote a lengthy report on ‘the
mania of 1911.’ It was the story of Siotune Kathuke and Kiamba Mutuaovio, who had led
several acts of rebellion. Their sermons had supposedly inspired a widespread mania, as
more people began to question to ordained order of things. Another good example is the
commitment of Elijah Masinde, the founder of Dini ya Msambwa, in 1945. He was
committed at Mathari for pretty much the same reasons as Siotune and Kiamba were exiled
to the coast. When he left in 1947, Masinde promptly went back to preaching the end of
white rule again. This idea of opposing ideas as madness survives to this day somewhat, and
must have been what informed President Moi’s derision of Wangari Maathai as ‘that crazy
woman.’

[DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [ARNP NAME] | [ARNP NAME]
NAME [Patient Name] DOB [DOB] AGE [age] DATE [date | time]
pg. 6

Another example is ‘Black Peril’, the racist belief that African men had unbridled sexual
desire and would rape white women. The parliamentary discussion on the law that made
sexual assault a capital offense labored on whether it should be applied to non-Kenyans as
well. Since London would never accept such an explicitly racist law by then, the solution
was to exclude that part on the understanding that rape against a white woman was worse
than against a black woman. This law was used to disproportionately punish Kenyan men for
perceived sexual crimes against white women, in the same way Ewart Grogan had gotten
away with beating his servants in front of a courtroom decades before.

Campbell notes that although the government didn’t fund the eugenicists’ work, it showed its
support in other ways. One was the continued underdevelopment of Kenyans, and the other
was subtle, like giving Gordon a three-month leave from his work to go and try win support
from other eugenicists in London. The movement could not have chosen a worse decade to
try push for white supremacy, as Hitler’s Nazi Germany put similar ideas in its genocide.
The prominence of eugenicists in Britain and countries like Kenya fell for political reasons,
but the ideas survived. In fact, most historians view Nazi’s ideas of racial purity as only an
extreme of what was common thinking among European aristocracy at the time. Winston
Churchill was, for example, an avowed eugenicist who viewed any other race as inferior and
deserving of whatever troubles came its way.

Another prominent scientist in the pseudo-science of ‘African intelligence’ was a retired

doctor called JC Carothers. Carothers had once headed Mathari Hospital. He had submitted a
paper on African intelligence at the World Health Organization when the colonial
government turned to him to write what became The Psychology of the Mau Mau.
Published in 1954, the report shows a slight change in the racist perspective of African
intelligence. Where Gordon, who had preceded Carothers at Mathare, had focused on
biology alone, Carothers expanded it to add environmental issues. He viewed the war as a
cultural war to revert back to the pre-colonial model.

Turning his focus to the Kikuyu, who provided the majority of Mau Mau ranks, Carothers
thought that since the Kikuyu had had more contact with their colonizers “Kikuyu men have
envied this power, not unnaturally, and have tried to capture it by learning.” Kikuyu women
were not part of this because Carothers thought that “Her life…has suffered little change.”
That her focus was still on agriculture and child-bearing, meaning she had lost her men who
“have found themselves with money and powers which have virtually turned their heads.
Power has come quickly to folk who are not…familiar with it.” It was Gordon’s ideas, with a
dash of flair and some added flavor.

Louis Leakey was another instrumental scientist in that decade, helping counter-insurgency
efforts in many ways. His best known effort was on oathing, arguing that the Mau Mau was
led by brilliant psychopaths who had changed the oath’s meaning and even particulars. His
counter-insurgency research and work may have actually escalated the war in 1952, which
[DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [ARNP NAME] | [ARNP NAME]
NAME [Patient Name] DOB [DOB] AGE [age] DATE [date | time]
pg. 7

was one of his goals. He thought that if he made the problem big enough, then it could
quickly be addressed. He used his personal and anthropological knowledge of the Kikuyu
culture to devise a counter-oath that would free oath-takers from the Mau Mau one, and was
core to the psychological counter-insurgency.

***

Eugenics concepts informed many laws of the colonial era, a good number which survive to
date. They were notoriously anti-poor and anti-Kenyan, offering tokenism and hiding behind
legalese. The Witchcraft Act, for example, banned many cultural practices by purporting to
regulate them. It even made it an offence to pretend to be a witchdoctor.

In their resistance of a common electoral roll, settlers argued that it was unfair to be forced to
wait for Kenyans to catch up on the civilisation scale. The compromise they ended up
agreeing with disenfranchised the majority of the population even more, until some slow
change began after World War 2.

After independence, eugenics switched back to its class roots, this time driven by a black,
Western-educated elite. White Highlands went to a new class of supremacists, who quickly
passed the Vagrancy Act in 1968. It had survived as the Vagrancy Regulations in the
colonial system, only to be formalized when Kenyan elites started replacing settlers in
former European areas like Muthaiga and Karen.The law made it illegal to be broke, and was
used to harass poor people until it was repealed in 1997. In that time you could be arrested
and placed in a rehabilitation home if you were found walking in posh estates with no money
in your pocket and no known source of employment.

[DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [ARNP NAME] | [ARNP NAME]
NAME [Patient Name] DOB [DOB] AGE [age] DATE [date | time]
pg. 8

A screengrab of the Vagrancy Act of 1968.

Using the lessons learned during the decade of the Mau Mau war, the new government
launched a similar counter-insurgency against a secessionist movement in Northern Kenya.
The model of brutality, concentration camps and spirited propaganda fit in the ’60s as it had
in the ’50s, with added efficiency.

Combined with other laws and institutions such as the police, the colonial view of the base
of the pyramid survives. It is why the introduction of free primary education and maternity
[DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [ARNP NAME] | [ARNP NAME]
NAME [Patient Name] DOB [DOB] AGE [age] DATE [date | time]
pg. 9

healthcare as public goods were such a big deal. Pro-poor policies have surprisingly been
few in independent Kenya as an African elite only sought to replace, not displace, the
colonial order. The paternalistic relationship between the individual and the state is still
intact, as becomes clear whenever there is an internal threat to social order.

Another legacy of colonial eugenics is the idea of Kikuyu dominance. Carothers notes in his
report that Europeans thought Kikuyus were “more intelligent than other Kenyan
Africans.” At Alliance, started in 1926, Kikuyus provided the bulk of the prefecture for
decades even after the entry of Luo students displaced them from the top academic scores. A
case of unfair punishment (against Luo students who had been in a fight with Kikuyu
students) was the reason for the school’s first strike where tens of students staged a
walkout.

Within Kikuyu society itself, the different villagization of Mau Mau families and
collaborator ones extended class disparity. Families of known Mau Mau soldiers were made
to provide forced labour to collaborator families. And men such as Peter Magana Kenyatta
were involved in the actual interrogation process in concentration camps. By independence,
the thriving Kikuyu elite was from the latter group, and it has worked to sustain that system
to date.

It is this elite that has sold the concept of Kikuyu superiority over other communities. Since
the early ’60s, it has driven the idea that the Kikuyu presidency is God-given, and thinking
about taking it away is just crazy. In the one time in the last fifty years since independence
that a non-Kikuyu was president, there was a widespread fear in Central Kenya of forced
sterilization to curb population numbers. A prominent one involved lax alcohol control, and
another the Nyayo milk. There have been other claims over the years, most around
investment in development, government positions, birth control, and vaccines. Other
communities have had the same concerns in the entirety of the three decades of Kikuyu rule.
In the years after independence, for example, legislators like JM Seroney noted a huge
disparity in government investment in Central Kenya compared to other areas.

The forced HIV sterilizations report points to how institutionalised eugenics survives. They
were happening with tacit government approval, and targeted a class of undesirables. It
probably thrived in the first decade of HIV/AIDS in Kenya when there was official and
social denial of the extent of the problem. We might never know its true extent, although a
few institutional names in it shouldn’t have been a surprise. One, for example, is Marie
Stopes International, named for British author Marie Stopes. While today regarded a feminist
pioneer, the major driving aspect of her birth-control advocacy was eugenics and not women
rights. Her ideas on the poor are especially worrying, as that is whom her clinics targeted
from the onset. There was also the small matter of disinheriting her son Harry because he
married a short-sighted woman. The other institutions like government hospitals are still

[DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [ARNP NAME] | [ARNP NAME]
NAME [Patient Name] DOB [DOB] AGE [age] DATE [date | time]
pg. 10

wallowing in under-investment, with constant labor strikes and neglect. You can see it in
investments in schools and specific geographical areas too, as well as school quotas.

Infused in post-colonial Kenya was not eugenics as a concept, but as a form of social control.
It is many other things now by many other names, but it seems focused on impoverishing the
already poor while enriching those already endowed. A few might cross that socioeconomic
divide, but many never will.

http://owaahh.com/scientific-racism-shaped-kenya/

Kenyans are a brilliant lot despite what the works of 'better men' will indicate. We have proven ourselves on
global platforms by shuttering records, rising to leadership positions and best of all, our spirit of togetherness
especially during times of crisis. I agree that the elite have deliberately chosen to under-develop some areas
just so that they can promote and make us believe in certain stereotypes. If we can learn to get over our
tribalism high horses, we can realize that a United Kenya can take on the world and win. Choosing not to be
swayed on the basis of tribe or statistic but rather on character will transform the nation for the better. The
fruits of our independence should be sweeter than what Kenyans are offered by disappointing regimes.
Education, and social justice, in my opinion could be the foundation of a better, thriving and peaceful Kenya
and I think we are on the right path despite moving at a snail's pace.
Siotune Kathuke, Kiamba Mutuaovio, Elijah Masinde's, and Wangari Mathaai's quest to question the order of
things could perhaps be an inspiration for all Kenyans to better themselves despite the odds so we can all see
a better tomorrow where elected leaders can be held accountable without slithering through the cracks of our
justice system.

Racism stings blacks hardest at home

Africans have perfected the ability to be annoying and outrageous at the same time. Last November, social
networks were abuzz with indignation after a club in Ghana advertised a new policy: indigenous Ghanaians
— read Black people — were no longer welcome at their establishment. The Atlantic Lobsters and Dolphins
Restaurant operated a "whites only" policy, which the owner later claimed was an elaborate joke. The
Government of Ghana failed to see the funny side and quickly closed the restaurant down. Three months
down and it is Kenya’s turn to make silly headlines. It has always been known that Africans — black Africans
— weren’t exactly welcome at some Kenyan hotels. This is especially so at the Coast, where some of
Kenya’s and Africa’s best hotels and restaurants are found. But even in relatively cosmopolitan and non-
discriminatory Nairobi, there are some odd unspoken policies regarding the desired colour and gender of
hotel patrons. There are hotels in the City Centre that will not allow unaccompanied women to patronise
their facilities — usually on the grounds that such women "might" be prostitutes. This label, of course,
applies only to black women. Single European women are warmly welcome, indeed. And it is not just hotels.
A couple of years back, a school in Nairobi was in the news when its headmaster stopped African students
from enjoying the school’s swimming pool, stating that the pool was for Asian students only. Vegetarians A
look at the classifieds sections of the newspapers reveals a culture rife with open discrimination. There are
housing estates in this age that advertising for tenants who "must be vegetarians" — a euphemism for

[DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [ARNP NAME] | [ARNP NAME]
NAME [Patient Name] DOB [DOB] AGE [age] DATE [date | time]
pg. 11

Asians-only, since Africans are known to love eating animals and plants in equal measure and with equal
pleasure. But it is the coastal hotels that take the trophy in discrimination. Ironically, it is Africans who
enforce the discriminatory policies against their own people. The security guards who stop Africans from
entering the hotels are African. The hotel managers who draw up the policies are Africans. And the hotel
workers who refuse to serve Africans are bloody Africans. Perhaps the most blatant cases of anti-African
attitudes by Kenyan Africans are to be found at Kenya’s international airports. Officials at one International
airport are especially notorious for mistreating Kenyans, and Africans, while bending over backwards to
please foreigners. The charade begins at ‘Departures’, where stern-looking cops peruse documents and
ensure that only travellers access the departure lounge. But that’s only if you’re Black. Whites will walk in
without showing any documents and the cops might even salute them, silly grins plastered all over their
black faces. Worst-served The ‘Arrivals’ process is even worse. Whereas in other countries local nationals
get priority, at this airport, the "Kenyans Only" queue is the longest and worst-served with immigration clerks
often missing. And on it goes. It appears Africans just don’t like seeing other Africans and the worst place to
be an African is in Africa itself.

https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000053847/racism-stings-blacks-hardest-at-home

[DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [DR. NAME] | [ARNP NAME] | [ARNP NAME]