Shame, bowing to everything white

While in Nairobi last January, I noticed Kenyans offered white guests preferential treatment over their fellow citizens. The irony was we were in Nairobi to participate in the Martin Luther King, Jr’s the Future is Human Summit.

At most government offices we visited, and at each hotel we stayed, most Kenyans only extended courtesies to the white guests accompanying me. Servers and government officials disregarded the council member from Richmond, Calif, on several occasions as he looked Kenyan. I felt like I was on an apology tour, reminding my guests that racism, camouflaged as capitalism, is embedded in our national psyche.

It is not a secret that the Kenyan’s affluent only trust everything white. They believe sophistication, superiority and success cannot exist absent whiteness. The Kenyan clergy lead with this thinking. They mimic and exemplify the teachings of white preachers without critique. When white televangelists visit Africa, the local clergy and their governments extend world-class hospitality reserved for Heads of State, a generosity that is never acknowledged or reciprocated.

In most villages, the locals contribute immensely to build churches. However, their schools are dilapidated, and their health centres incapable of saving them in the event of illness. Most religious organisations would not survive without their large following in black nations. Yet we kill and dislike each other over our spiritual inclinations, faiths unknown to us before colonisation.

Government is always speaking of attracting investment. However, only white people and the affluent receive first-class and efficient government service. White people tell me at meetings in California that they jet into our country, meet the Cabinet secretary for so and so and fly out everything sorted for them within a few days.

Yet, government ministers and services are unavailable to the masses who are in most need of them—from incorporating a small business, registering the birth of their child, or applying for a passport. It is not a secret that to succeed in Africa’s silicon savannah, you need a white person to secure funding from the venture capitalists. And these liberal white groups, guided by the saviour complex, always disregard their black innovators offering them marginal returns in terms of wages rather than stock options.

Our national plans for wealth creation emphasise foreign investments while destroying the potential of local entrepreneurs. We develop strategies to appeal to western donors rather than cultivate the resilience and innovation of our people. Local industries face insurmountable challenges to conduct business. However, the government is always eager to offer substantial tax breaks to foreign corporations while destroying local industries.

We permit international schools to operate without complying with our labour laws, paying their less educated and inexperienced white employees four times the salary of Kenyans. We are not affected by the daily lineup of Kenyans at foreign embassies seeking to travel abroad as a result of economic hardship. Citizens treated worse by their kin than the colonists.

We are a disgrace to our ancestors and the white people who died fighting for our equality—a stain to freedom fighters. We are our worst enemies. We hate ourselves. We hate our brothers and sisters and love to kiss everything white, even when infested with the coronavirus. Shame on us.

Former chairman of the Martin Luther King, Jr Africa Foundation @mwangimukami