So yesterday on CH a group of Somalis started a room ‘Are dark people really East African’ . Urgh! Then South Sudanese folks opened a different room reacting to this with a whole convo on antiblackness, colorism, EA identity politics etc

Conversation spanned across a no of very interesting topics including the EA Indian Ocean slave trade, Arabization, Islam and their effects on EA identity politics

I kept thinking of how for us Kenyans, Tanzanians and Ugandans have always known were and are East Africans and E. Africa itself. Unequivocally. Its what we were taught and it what we know.

Sorry about the grammar up there but basically we always knew and have known we were the ‘real’ EA. Everyone else was always Eastern Africa Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi etc The horn was the horn.

And in that I think about how we excluded others and for a country as young as SS this identity is something they have to fight for against pushback from the some folks in the horn due to colorism and identity politics

And for us how we’ve always ‘othered’ people from the horn.

EA is so diverse in terms of racial, ethnic, cultural composition and given our colonial histories and ramifications identity politics on who belongs/ who doesn’t will always be a thing

But I don’t understand how we can actively fight to exclude people from a region. Of what significance is that? What does it serve?

But this is all rooted in Ethnonationalist /ethnic politics spilling out into larger EA. Meaning countries have to sort out their internal shit

In fact, some Somalis including bantu Somalis were justified in calling out the internal colorism and discrimination against darker skinned folks. Because ultimately that’s what they were replicating on a larger platform.

So anyway, me personally nobody can tell me I’m not and Kenya is nt East Africa because what?! And why would I deny other people that identity? What would I stand to gain from that?

All the same interesting convo.

Interesting bit is how Drake kept coming up (negatively) and how he pushed a narrative of EA girls being lightskin Habesha, Somalis, Eritreans etc No context just vibes