BY ERIC WAMANJI
A pal muses that soon, to be admitted to a Chinese outlet, Africans will be required to bleach their damn dark skins using cheap Chinese chemicals.
This was hot on the heels after blacks, it was discovered, could not be admitted to a Chinese eatery. Of course Kenyans were outraged by the expose on racism against blacks. It evoked emotional outrage online and on the streets.
Racism is a sticky devil since, a section of mankind, out of idiocy, self-proclaimed deity statuses far higher than other mortals. And thus, from the desert sands of Arabia, to the glossy and glowing streets of New York, from Moscow to Brussels, racism is masticating mankind like a gluttonous shredder. It is the most discreditable barbarism mankind has ever invented.
But, the Chinese, so desperate to rule the world, should be the last to be caught in this fetid rut. Such repugnant acts will absolutely repulse the people they hanker to colonise.
Lest the Chinese forget, they are entering Kenya and Africa at the wrong time in history. This continent has suffered two major devastating epochal nauseating tragedies in the hands of foreigners: slavery and colonialism. The continent is sensitive. It hates to relive the primitive and painful eras orchestrated by the Europeans. Just a reminder, the battle for independence was a bloody one. It was about the sovereignty and for the dignity of the people of this land.
The Chinese have whetted the appetite for Africa after most of it has been exposed to the lifestyle of the West like the basic philosophies of human rights and dignity. It’s imprudent to reverse these gains by being racist.
Also note that, unlike in China where religion is frowned at and mercilessly crucified, here, its different. Kanyara’s and Kyoanas of this world have a field day with our souls (and yeah, well, wallets too).
The Chinese too should also recall that theirs is an embodiment of everything fake, highly sneered at, though we partake on their cheap nonetheless. Most of us, given an opportunity will jump on anything made in Japan, US, UK. So, even if our minds have been colonised, it’s not an oriental mental slavery. In short, we love your cheap products but we hate them with equal measure.
And oh, yeah, please also take your time to consult the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, and of course, our constitution.
Psychological Complex.
Chinese are suffering from a psychological complex. Rising in economic power, yet too late to colonise and exercise imperialistic expedition on territories. Whatever they are doing in Tibet, Taiwan and even Hong Kong does not sate this demonic crave. So, its nationals, on mass exodus to other parts of the world, especially Africa, like ants, come to sting the locals.
To imagine you are going to colonise a people at this time and age using brawn tactics like racism is like trying to reconstruct the Great Wall. The racist matter has added more murk to your already gray image. Anything Chinese is likely to evoke merciless consumers of our ivory, wanting human rights records and even fake and cheap products. Chinese nationals here can only do worse by engaging our society in such discriminatory bunkum.
And yeah, ye mortals of the orient note that most Kenyans are decent people. They rise before dawn to hustle for the day; they enjoy spending their money.
Kenyans are well schooled. They don’t have a Chinese accent, and those who schooled in China are never proud of it (I’m yet to meet a Kenyan with a Chinese accent. It tells you about the hopeless Chinese soft power. Ask Joseph Nye).
When a Kenyan acquires an iPhone, she’s over the moon, and so when she acquires a BMW or Mercedes Benz. See, ask Kenyans, they are busy trooping KFC and Subway. Get my point? When they want an education, the first flight to Heathrow, Schiphol, Manitoba or Houston. Whyever, should they worship you?
China, there is no brand you are selling to us worth dying for. The other day I was shopping for a phone, and Tecno was scoffed at. I settled for Sony, though a cheeky girl actually thought an iPhone 6 would be perfect. Over my dead body will I drive a Cherry Tigo -that sick imitation of sleek Japanese engineering.
Forgive my stereotype, but I’ll never touch dog, donkey, or snake meat. Neither my pals nor any Kenyan I know. The githeri, mokimo, ugali, managu… that mama, so lovingly cooked for us, remain the finest. So, it’s even futile to discriminate us on food grounds. And those who sing you hosannas and defend you, we know them. Karl Marx calls them comprador bourgeoisies- the aristocratic class chewing the progeny of Mother Kenya.
Racism cannot thrive in an environment, where Africans have gone to school, have made money are exposed to the law of the land. This will backfire, at best and at worst enflame xenophobic reactions against the mongoloids. It’s a diplomatic nightmare folks.
Such acts are transgressions against our civil and human rights. Don’t thrust us, as to paraphrase Martin Luther King Junior to “perilously close to resenting all Chinese people”
The restaurant owners should have instead taken time to study, perhaps the most of unlikely institutions – Starbucks. It’s CEO, Howard Schultz, who for long bravely initiated a dialogue on race, using his coffee outlets. Here he says of his campaign: “foster dialogue and empathy and help bridge the racial and ethnic divides within our society that have existed for so many years,”
This is not to say that all the Chinese are culprits. Racism perpetrated by the pink skin has been ubiquitous. The British inducted it and it spread like wild fire. The US is still battling with the race question. Locally, just after independence, Kenyan Asians, some coming fresh from yokes of caste segregation in India or from boats and shanties, treated Africans as inferior.
Its not uncommon to walk into a restaurant in this city, wait for 15, 20 or even 30 minutes and the waiters have not “seen” you, but a pink skin is scramble upon, treated with gloved hands and mellowing smiles.
And, another reminder again, Kenyans are not thugs. Yes, in our midst we have criminals, and so is in the Chinese society. At least here we rob and tell you guys to lie down and make away with a mere Ksh 600K, that’s pocket change; in China you rob and then you pull out kidneys, liver, name them for sale.
And so, even as the Chinese make forays into our Motherland, they ought to respect the dignity of the people. That’s an irreducible right bestowed upon every individual in the world. It would prove a daunting task to imagine, our ivory will disappear and at the same time we receive the most vile, most savage, most barbaric, inhuman treatment from the Chinese. No. Kenyans wont tolerate that. It will be in China’s interest to recall such miscreants before Kenyans kick them out. Indeed, China should shape up or ship out!