As Black Africans in the Western world contend with everyday racial discrimination and abuse, their lookalikes in some parts of Africa suffer the same kind of malevolence in the hands of fellow Africans.
Often times we hear of harrowing tales of Black Africans being discriminated against and called all sorts of racially demeaning names by their fellow Africans in North Africa, which is predominantly inhabited by Afro-Arabs.
Last year, an unidentified Egyptian official caused a storm when he allegedly made a disparaging comment at the United Nations Environmental Assembly held in Nairobi, Kenya, in May.
Yvonne Khamati, a Kenyan diplomat attending the conference, filed a formal complaint with the Kenyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accusing an Egyptian expatriate of referring to sub-Saharan Africans as “dogs and slaves.”
We Are Not Racist
In the letter, Khamati, African Diplomatic Corps Technical Committee chairwoman, said the abusive comment was made, after the conference failed to reach a resolution on the conflict in the Gaza Strip. She said the comment was made in Arabic.
The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs later released a statement denying the allegations of racism and accusing the Kenyan diplomat of making flimsy accusations against the republic of Egypt.
While it’s not every Arab in Egypt and other Afro-Arab countries who is racist, it is no secret that racism exists in most of these countries and the people involved don’t want to accept it.
It is this self-denial that led renowned Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy to write an article in the New York Times, entitled, “The Arab World’s Dirty Secret,” where she wrote about the racist exchange between an Egyptian and a young South Sudanese:
I was on my way home on the Cairo Metro, lost in thought as I listened to music when I noticed a young Egyptian taunting a Sudanese girl. She reached out and tried to grab the girl’s nose and laughed when the girl tried to brush her hand away.
The Sudanese girl looked to be Dinka, from southern Sudan and not the northern Sudanese who “look like us.” She was obviously in distress.
It’s a contradiction that Africans, including Afro-Arabs, like to point the finger at White people as the initiators of racism and discrimination against Black people when clearly the first form of oppression against Black Africans was from the Arabs.
Slavery, Abuse & Persecution
In Mauritania, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, and other Afro-Arab countries, slavery and other forms of oppression against Black Africans is still widespread.
In Sudan, it has been widely reported that nearly 20 million Black Africans in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile regions were ethnically cleansed during the first and second Sudanese Civil wars.
It is this form of abuse that triggered the infamous Darfur War, which ended with the excision of South Sudan, a predominantly Black Nubian state, from the larger Sudan.
Racism is also very rife in Libya if the 2000 anti-African racist violence is anything to go by. According to Amnesty International, thousands of Black Africans were massacred during the Libyan Civil War in 2011.
Black African migrants in Algeria have often suffered attacks, most of which are done in broad daylight and in the presence of local law enforcement officers.
Even though slavery was officially abolished in 1981, at least 20 percent of the Mauritanian population, mainly dark-skinned Mauritians, are still enslaved.
Given the history of slavery and colonialism in Africa, it’s likely that some people could still be suffering from a superiority complex and an identity crisis, but it is egotistical and absurd for anyone, especially an African, to discriminate against a fellow African based on his or her skin color.
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Good article, but don't put so-called Su-Dan-ese with Arab countries. 95% of the so called Sudanese are still 80+% Kushite -- the greatest civilization in African history. Only their cultural identity drifts towards Afro-Arab due to many Arab/British invasions when the country was weak. When Sudanese live in Arab countries they are treated just like other Africans. From a DNA standpoint so called Sudanese are most closely aligned with Ethiopians.
Dona
Your language choice tells me a great deal about you. Due to your street language this will be my last post. The country was not called Sudan on even a European map until the British and their Arab workers from Egypt completed their conquest of the country in the 19th century. I have an original map from the 1880s that still refers to the country as Nubia. There were two Sudans in Africa after European led conquests. The other was French Sudan now thankfully called Mali. In both cases it was a disrespectful name placed on an ancient people by invaders.
Talk about your country , you have no business to talk about other people , if you feel agitated from Sudanese because you feel inferior , that is not our problem, your language is so stupid when you said ( so called ) Sudan , all fucking Sfrican countries had no names before colonization mother fucker , go and kiss your ass stupid, you have no fucking map and you know nothing about Sudan and history of the land, last post or first post, I do not fucking care , because you have to have some courage to talk about your own fucking country and leave our land and our history alone idiot .
Fucking hell you swear a lot, I prefer the women from Kenya more myself. ?
British invasion happened in 1889 , the country already speaking Arabic for hundreds years, sinner a first Arab country founded in 1504 in Sudan , there no Arab invasion happened in all history of Sudan , Arab came as different tribes interned Sudan since 1320.
They are Sudanese not so fucking called Sudanese Mother Fucker
You spelt the exact same word twice, what are you clarifying?
No one is more racist 5gab Caucasian no matter what so that statistic and presumption is false and ignorant. Yes these people have superiority complexes a feel dark Africans are inferior an yes they are guilty of racism and insidious atrocities but no one more than Europeans!
Wait, blacks got lynched by locals in Libya after Obozo and Killary helped overthrow Qaddafi and we didn't hear about it?
Why am I not surprised?..
the MAIN point is white supremacy empowers racism so you will always have people or groups who are fine with self-deprivation Afro-Arabs can not be RACIST at all , the race system is against any and all groups who are melanated.
Agreed
The afro-arabs are more racists than the white i agree on that
You shouldnt think of one group of people as superior to others. Its stupid to focus on a persons skin colour, sexuality etc. Some people just hate what they perceive as different. Its the same thing all over, Im affraid.
It's always amusing when one group of people speak of racism perpetrated against them, and all the harm caused by it, but never consider the repercussions of their very own hateful statements, actions and opinions.