SOCIETY TALK: Struggle to decolonise the mind continues

The man, identified as Elwin Ter Horst, was arrested in the South Coast after neighbours called the police when they heard him assaulting his Kenyan girlfriend. Not only was the Dutch man arrested for domestic violence, police also found drugs in his home and he was clearly under the influence of something.

What was surprising in this incident was not the fact that a foreigner was caught doing all things. What surprised and angered most Kenyans is how the police reacted.

The story of a white man spitting on, berating, abusing or degrading a black man is as old as colonisation. It also doesn't surprise us how people of colour revere the white man, but for the police to be on the receiving end of abuse from an ordinary person? Well, that’s new.

The discussion about how black folks treat each other vis-à-vis how they treat the white folks is one we have had many times. Many times during my travels in Kenya, I have lamented about the special treatment white people get compared to the rest of us. In Diani, especially, I have seen, in black and white, the way local tourists are treated compared to how international tourists are venerated.

There is a theory that people who work in the tourism or service industry treat white people better in anticipation of tips or gifts from them. 

While it is the norm to see people bending over backwards in the tourism industry, we have never seen the cowardice of our police when it comes to dealing with a regular Joe from abroad. Normally, tourists and visitors in foreign countries try to act right and avoid breaking any laws because a meeting with law enforcement in a foreign country could be very detrimental for all your future travels.

Meanwhile, the police in Kenya reserve all their anger and humiliation for Kenyans. If the recent protests have shown us anything, it is the unbelievable contempt police and defence forces have towards their kind.

These people, who are Kenyans themselves and took an oath to serve all Kenyans, treat us worse than they would dogs on the street. They beat us brutally and shoot us at point-blank range, even if we are minding our business during a protest.

These same people will take humiliation and degradation from palm-coloured folks in the name of superiority. They still operate on the colonial mindset that the white man is far superior and more powerful than them, even though they are the enforcers of the law.

Can you imagine if a black man had been arrested on domestic violence charges? Can you imagine what would happen to that black brother if he had been caught in possession of hard drugs? Woe unto him!

We don't need to assume because we already know the kind of beating he would get before being put in cuffs. He would be put straight into a holding cell while the cops find exaggerated charges to add to his file, then comes the negotiation of how much he is willing to part with before the ink dries. This is how a Kenyan is treated “under the law”.

So what makes a muzungu so special? That is because our own people treat them like the young masters of the day, welcoming the coloniser’s spawn with a bent back and a dimmed ego. If you have ever entered Kenya through the airport on an international flight and wound up behind a white guy at passport control, then you understand my sentiments. 

This national and international embarrassment must stop. The mentality of bending over backwards for the colonisers and their offspring must be exterminated. The ideology that white people are better, richer or smarter than black people is what enslaved us in the first place.

We have come a long way since then. We know that there is no superiority in race. I honestly believed we had left the colonial mindset behind, but it is clear as day that we have a long way to go in our attempt to decolonise the mind.