Why some ethnic groups become pet subjects of hate without even trying

The recent hideous selective slaughter of ethnic Kikuyu in Mpeketoni in Lamu County is not unique in human history.

History is replete with such outbreaks of inter-ethnic violence on a massive scale: against the Jews in Europe, the Chinese minority in Southeast Asia, against Ibos in Nigeria, against the Lebanese in Sierra Leone, the Japanese in Peru, Indians in Burma and Armenians in the Ottoman Empire ages ago.

But what do all these groups have in common and why are they hated so much?

According to Dr Thomas Sowell, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute, Stanford University, who is considered America’s foremost public intellectual, these victims are often generically “middleman minorities” who can be of any racial or ethnic background.

The perverse hatred of these people is founded on the economic role they play in their disparate circumstances. This role, which we shall outline briefly, even when played by people not ethnically different from those around them, has nonetheless produced explosive mixtures.

The hated groups are thus not defined by ethnicity, race, colour, religion or national origin.

READ: Ethnic hate speech reveals roots of Kenya violence

READ: OBBO: Hate speech’s terrible, but it still beats people not being allowed to speak out

READ: MBUGUA: Political leaders are abusing freedom of expression

Under this thinking, the Kikuyu in Lamu were not attacked merely because they were Kikuyu, nor were Jews persecuted in Europe merely because they were Jewish. They were killed because of resentment over their role as “middleman minorities” in evolving economic circumstances.

Middleman minorities are intermediaries between producers and consumers, whether in the role of retailers or money lenders. Retailing ranges from the modest level of street hawkers and peddlers to that of grand merchants owning chains of stores.

OWNING VIRTUALLY NOTHING

In Kenya, the term “broker” is very well understood to define the “middleman” who does not actually own the goods, services or products he or she sells. They merely link the buyer to the seller but in so doing, they are routinely resented because they are deemed to be making money “from nothing”.

There is a deep-seated belief in human nature, arising from the imperative of hard physical manual labour for survival in our primitive past, that only those who handle tangible physical production objects “really” work.

And so middlemen who physically produce nothing are merely parasites who insert themselves gratuitously between the “real” producers and consumers.

This crude misconception of economic theory is at the core of centuries of hostility and violence against many innocent beings, but it is also buttressed by other issues.

In the wider context, as distinguished from an individual “broker”, if a particular ethnic group is to become dominant in the economic role of retailing, money lending or such other middleman activity, it implies that certain social patterns of intrinsic behaviour in the group are fundamentally different from that of the surrounding population. Otherwise, the majority population would supply the majority of middlemen in their society.

This crucial difference cannot be simply that the middleman minority has more money. Again and again in different ages and in various countries, the middleman minority has arrived on the scene as destitute immigrants, owning virtually nothing and barely able to speak a few words of the local language.

VALUES, DISCIPLINE, CULTURE

This was the situation of the vast majority of Eastern European Jews who arrived in the United States of America in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the same era, Chinese immigrants typically arrived in Southeast countries in similar rock-bottom poverty.

It was much the same story with Lebanese immigrants to colonial Sierra Leone and, much later, the Kikuyu immigrants to Lamu and elsewhere in the country.

But how could such people eventually rise above the native born population around them? Clearly, their values, their discipline, and their culture had to remain different. This has the effect of further alienating them from those around them, hence raising even more potential for resentment.

Yet, if the middleman minorities do not remain different, they would lose their competitive edge and not be of any use to those around them.

This fact has important implications in our debate on ethnicity and economic development.

But whatever economic progress Kikuyu people have made in Lamu or elsewhere as is the case for all other middleman minorities, it has come slowly and as a result of a long uphill struggle and hard work. Killing them will not stop it.

Mr Ngugi is a consultant on public affairs and policy ([email protected])